Miami-Dade County Association of Chiefs of Police President Jason Cohen discusses ALPR cameras

Our Take

WPLG Local 10 handed the mic to Jason Cohen, President of the Miami-Dade County Association of Chiefs of Police, to talk up automated license plate readers. That's a predictable pairing: local news needs a law enforcement voice, and law enforcement needs a friendly venue to explain why thousands of cameras logging your movements are nothing to worry about. Credit to WPLG for covering the topic at all, but a segment built around the top police spokesperson's framing is never going to interrogate the hard questions — retention periods, who can query the data, whether ICE or out-of-state agencies get access, or what happens when the system misfires and sends an armed response to an innocent driver.

These cameras aren't hypothetical in South Florida. Flock-style ALPR networks have been spreading across Miami-Dade and the rest of the state, quietly building a searchable record of where every plate goes, when, and how often. When a chiefs' association president says 'trust us,' that's a talking point, not a policy. The actual safeguards — audit logs, public reporting, data-sharing agreements — are usually buried in vendor contracts most residents never see, and most city councils never debate in public before voting to fund them.

If you want to know what's actually watching you instead of what a police spokesperson says is watching you, check our camera map to see what's been deployed near you, and if your city is considering or already running ALPRs, use our take-action resources to push for real transparency before the next camera goes up.