ALPR Committee Meeting 10/27/26 at 4:00 p.m

The City of Minot ALPR Committee met on October 27, 2026, to review police use of the automated license plate reader system and oversight practices. Police staff reported four searches during the prior month: one operational search related to a robbery investigation, which produced no investigative match, and three administrative searches. They also discussed a separate NCIC hot-list alert that led to a vehicle stop and arrests for felony drug offenses; the case remains in court proceedings. Staff clarified that individual vehicles can generate multiple system reads, making raw read totals an imperfect measure of how many vehicles were captured. The committee asked staff to check whether Axon can provide a more useful count of unique vehicles or searches.

Members and staff discussed establishing regular audit review by the city manager, but said the process is not yet in place because of training and staffing constraints, including the departure of the police department’s intel analyst; filling that position is anticipated no earlier than early 2027. The committee also reviewed the U.S. v. Kyle decision and its implications for historical ALPR searches. Staff said the ruling is from a federal district court in another circuit and is persuasive, not binding, and that current Minot policy does not permit the type of broad historical search at issue. They noted the system retains data for seven days and that access to historical information requires supervisory involvement. No procurement, contract, budget, or spending decisions were identified. The only motion was to adjourn, which passed.