Lexington doesn’t need license plate readers. We need more investment instead.

When Mayor Gorton and LPD Police Chief Weathers first introduced the “free” pilot program of 25 automatic license plate readers from a venture capital-funded startup with no consistent data to back up its claims that their readers prevent crime this past March, council members were skeptical. Could increasing unwarranted police surveillance through a program with no civilian oversight really help with issues Lexingtonians were concerned about, like gun violence and a lack of affordable housing? Eager to appear “public safety” focused in an election year, council approved the year-long pilot program, ostensibly to gather enough data to properly assess the program’s effectiveness in preventing crime and the public’s experience of increased police surveillance. Designed to provide us and our elected officials adequate time and data to assess its usefulness and potential harms, the program was to last until August, 2023, a full year from the last camera’s installation.

Then the election happened, and the makeup of city council shifted. Less than one month after we voted in the most diverse council in Lexington history, the mayor and our police chief have brought the license plate reader program back before our lame duck council to end the pilot program nine months early in order to expand it, all interest in gathering data and gauging public sentiment across a year forgotten. Have the readers improved crime clearance rates? Have they prevented crime? Has anyone been harmed or put in danger by increased, warrantless policing? We have no idea. But we need 75 more license plate readers, and we need them now.

Let us set aside for a moment the fact that these readers are wrong as much as 10 percent of the time, putting innocent people in danger. Let us set aside for a moment the large amount of data that shows police officers routinely abuse tools of surveillance around the country and here. Let us set aside privacy concerns regarding what the tech company behind the readers will do with our data. Let us set aside the cost, which is nearly enough to fund the data-backed Group Violence Intervention Program that local, grassroots organization, BUILD, has been seeking to prevent gun violence here for nearly a decade. Let us set aside the year-long pilot program’s original intent: to provide data. Let us set aside the massive demonstrations that happened here in 2020 to not only show rage at the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor but also to demand accountability, oversight, and transparency from our own police department.

Let us set aside even the mayor’s own Commission on Racial Justice and Equality that recommends greater civilian oversight of LPD and the fact that we, the public, will never know how LPD uses these readers or if the information they give us regarding their effectiveness is accurate. Let us finally set aside the crush of bad laws currently being passed by regressive, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-reproductive rights legislatures around the country and here in Kentucky, and the reality that being on the wrong side of those bad laws coupled with increased police surveillance means less safety and increased carcerality for millions of Americans.

Instead, let us center the fact that sending a quarter-million-dollars annually to a Colorado tech company is little more than a dog and pony show meant to distract us from the fact that the harm and crime besieging our city is a result of decades of disinvestment in things like affordable housing, domestic violence services and prevention, anti-poverty measures, and community-driven anti-gun violence programs, and that what is needed to reduce the harm and crime besieging our city is true investment that counters the conditions out of which crime and harm spring. License plate readers can’t do that, but funding programs and services that meet our needs can.

Don’t fall for the dog and pony show. Contact your electeds today, and tell them we don’t need surveillance; we need investment.

Reva Russell English is an organizer, farmer and artist in Lexington.