Albuquerque Police: License plate readers have helped solve 13 murder cases in 2026

Our Take

Albuquerque PD wants credit for 13 murder cases this year, and Flock Safety's ALPR network is the headline tool. KRQE deserves credit for getting police on record with a number, but numbers like these are usually delivered without context: how many leads did the cameras generate that went nowhere, how many plates were misread, and how many of those cases would have closed anyway through old-fashioned detective work. Departments love to cite solve rates when cameras are on the chopping block for budget or policy review, but they rarely volunteer the flip side — how many innocent drivers got pulled over on bad hits, or how long APD holds onto scan data on people who were never suspects in anything.

This is the pattern we track nationwide: a police department touts a handful of dramatic closures, and that becomes the entire justification for blanketing a city in license plate cameras that log every driver's movements, guilty or not. A solve-rate headline isn't the same as a transparency report, and Albuquerque residents deserve the latter — audit logs, access policies, retention periods, and who outside the department can review how these systems are actually used.

If you want to know whether your own neighborhood has one of these cameras watching your commute, check our map, and if you think your city council should be asking APD-style questions before approving more of them, see what you can do at take action.