Michigan ALPR Hits Must Be Verified

Our Take

Credit to The Mitten Grip for spelling out something Flock Safety's marketing rarely mentions: an ALPR alert is a lead, not a warrant. Under Michigan law, a plate reader flagging a car as stolen or wanted is supposed to trigger a verification step through LEIN or NCIC before officers treat it as gospel. That distinction matters because ALPR databases are frequently stale — plates get recovered, warrants get cleared, stolen cars get returned — and the camera doesn't know any of that. It just matches a string of characters and pings a patrol car.

We've all seen what happens when that verification step gets skipped: innocent drivers pulled over at gunpoint because a hot list wasn't updated, or because someone's plate looks similar enough to a wanted vehicle. The law exists precisely because automated systems are confidently wrong often enough to hurt people. The problem is that a statute on the books doesn't guarantee an officer in the field takes the extra ninety seconds to confirm before drawing a weapon. Policy compliance is invisible until someone's dashcam footage goes viral.

This is exactly why transparency and public pressure matter more than trusting agencies to self-police. If you want to see how many of these cameras are watching your commute, check our camera map, and if you think your city council should be asking harder questions about verification protocols and audit logs, our take-action resources can help you get started.