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Resident urges Greenville to remove automated license-plate readers, calls them a privacy violation
Summary
A Pleasant Valley resident told the Greenville City Council that automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) "are frankly a violation of privacy," urging the city to deactivate its systems, ban future use and review costs and documented abuses.
Elias Ryan, a Pleasant Valley resident, told the council that Greenville's automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) collect detailed vehicle data and store it largely without public awareness and asked the city to “legislate the deactivation and removal of the ALPR systems, and also ban the future implementation of such systems.”
Ryan described ALPRs as “an AI powered security and surveillance system” that can record vehicle details including make, model, year and — he said — “intricacies of the vehicle such as dents, scratches, or bumper stickers.” He said the systems “are frankly a violation of privacy,” and cited what he described as local cost figures and examples of misuse.
Ryan told the council the city primarily uses FLOC-brand cameras and said the system includes 57 ALPR cameras inside Greenville city limits, with an annual per-camera operating cost he estimated between $2,500 and $3,000, producing what he calculated as roughly $140,000 in yearly operating costs.
He also cited a law-enforcement abuse case he said occurred in Bonner Springs, Kansas, where, he said, a detective used ALPR access to track and stalk an ex‑spouse, and he referenced a study he said was conducted in Oak Park, Illinois, that he said showed racial disparities in detainment tied to similar camera systems.
The council did not take immediate action on the request during the meeting. No city staff response to the specific deactivation or future‑use ban request appears in the transcript; a staff-level review and an item for further consideration would be the typical next steps for an identified policy request.
The meeting record shows this topic arose during the public-comment portion of the agenda; council members acknowledged the concern but did not vote on surveillance policy at this meeting. The transcript uses the brand name “FLOC” (also transcribed in other places as “flop”); the speaker identified ``FLOC'' as the brand he understood the city to primarily use.
