Residents weigh in on Kentucky police contract with drones, license plate readers

Our Take

Credit to Local 12 for actually showing up to a city commission meeting and putting residents on camera instead of just running a press release from the vendor. That's exactly how these contracts get scrutinized — or don't. Axon isn't just selling body cameras anymore; it's bundling drones, license plate readers, and cloud storage into one package, and once a city signs, the political and financial cost of walking away only goes up.

What's notable here is that Covington residents are asking the right questions before the ink dries: who sees this data, how long is it kept, and what stops it from being used for something other than its stated purpose. Those are the exact questions that get skipped in most towns, where a chief brings a slide deck, council nods along, and the cameras go up before anyone outside city hall even knows the vote happened. Public comment at a commission meeting is one of the few leverage points citizens actually have, and it's good to see it used.

Kentucky isn't an outlier — this same playbook is rolling out county by county across the country. If you want to see whether ALPRs have already landed near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a contract to be signed before you find out, our take-action page has steps for raising these questions before your own city commission does the same thing.