The Chico Police Department lost access to data produced by its automated license plate reading cameras when it turned off sharing with federal and out-of-state agencies, ChicoSol has learned.
Chico PD turned off data sharing that may have been in violation of state law on July 8 after a ChicoSol investigation, losing access to records, several City Council members have told ChicoSol.
“When [Chico PD] hit ‘stop sharing’ with all these agencies, it was like closing out the browser, it deleted the search history,” said Councilmember Addison Winslow. “That data belongs to us. It was on our system and we deleted it.”
Some of this data appears to have been retrieved, said Councilmember Katie Hawley. As of publication of this story, the police department has yet to regain full access to the lost data, and it remains unclear how data was recovered or how much data is still inaccessible.
In a July interview with ChicoSol, police Chief Billy Aldridge said the city’s ALPR system audit was reviewing “something like 3 million records of total use of our system.” It is not clear how many, if any, of those roughly 3 million records were lost.
Aldridge declined comment when he was approached at the Sept. 15 City Council meeting. A Chico PD spokesperson could not be reached for comment on this story.
Motorola’s ALPR access records typically show which agencies accessed ALPRs, as well as when and why the network was accessed. California state law requires ALPR operators record the date, time and purpose of license plate searches.
The city’s ALPR cameras are supplied by Motorola and are posted at 27 locations.
Since the suspension of the data sharing, the city has struggled to retrieve access records. Suspended agencies include ICE and Border Patrol, public records show.
“A lot of time was spent on customer service with Motorola,” Winslow said. “It was on our end. We should have known what [suspending sharing] would do, and we should have copied the data first, but we didn’t.”
By the end of July, Chico PD, with support from the offices of the city attorney and city manager, had plunged into an internal investigation.
Hawley said today that she has been told that the department had found “workarounds” for retrieving some of the lost data.
The department did not want the degree of data loss to be “public until Monday, when [Chico PD] would have a better understanding of how to quantify [the data loss],” Hawley said.
The department is set to present its investigative findings at a special City Council session at 6 p.m. Sept. 21 in the Council chambers.
Motorola could not be reached for comment.
Elias S. Myers is a contributor to ChicoSol.