NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Metro Police are responding after the rollout of a new data analysis showing the impact of its license plate readers on poor and diverse communities at Monday's Community Oversight Board meeting.
Law enforcement agencies have touted LPRs as a valuable tool that can help catch violent offenders, while others have questioned whether the technology might disproportionately target minority groups.
The report, presented for Community Oversight Board members on Monday, raised concerns among board members about where the LPRs were getting the most verified hits. The most hits were in the north part of Nashville, which includes the 37208 zip code, which is often cited as an area with one of the highest incarceration rates in the country.
The Community Oversight Board's analysis showed a heat map of those verified LPR hits, with the highest concentration of hits in some of the poorest and most racially diverse neighborhoods in Nashville.
"It showed in Quadrant A, the more impoverished area, there's more stops, more arrests and vehicles recovered," Jill Fitcheard, Executive Director of the Community Oversight Board, said. "Even though we talked to the police department about equitable distribution of license plate readers, I wasn't really surprised by what the findings showed."
Metro Police Deputy Chief Greg Blair said the LPR locations were selected because of their high crime rates and the large amount of traffic that goes through intersections there.
"Those locations are picked based upon crime data and the information we get from commanders," Blair said.
The oversight board report also highlighted another disparity. The LPRs in the north quadrant, which make up just 25% of Metro's LPRs in Nashville, accounted for 74 percent of LPR hits ending in vehicle stops, and 76 percent of hits ending in arrests.
Metro Police said that's because intersections with LPRs are much closer together than other parts of the city. This means a fleeing car will more often travel through multiple LPRs in the north quadrant, making it easier for police to find the car.
"If you get another hit, or two to three hits, you have a better chance of finding a vehicle," Blair said. "Some other quadrants where it hits, there may not be another camera system close by, which makes it very difficult."
The Metro Council approved a six-month pilot program for the LPRs in Nashville. That program ends on July 22, at which point Metro Police will make a final presentation to Metro Council members to figure out the next steps.
