License readers and public safety in the suburbs
As mayor of a suburban community located just off one of the region’s busiest expressways, my foremost responsibility is keeping our residents and businesses safe.
Like many municipalities across Illinois, South Barrington faces the reality that crime does not respect municipal borders. Vehicles used in carjackings, retail theft, drug trafficking and other serious crimes routinely move between jurisdictions in minutes, often using our expressways as quick escape routes.
That reality is a large part of why our village incorporated license plate reader (LPR) technology into our public safety strategy. LPRs give law enforcement officers a critical tool to identify vehicles linked to criminal activity, collaborate with neighboring agencies, and respond more quickly when serious crimes occur.
In communities like ours, proximity to major transportation routes is both an economic asset and a public safety challenge. Expressways fuel commerce and connectivity, but they also enable criminals to travel quickly across municipal lines. LPRs help level the playing field by improving cooperation among regional agencies that share a commitment for safer communities.
It is important to be clear about what these systems do and, more importantly, what they do not do. LPRs capture still images of vehicles traveling on public roadways. They do not use facial recognition. Instead, they provide law enforcement with vehicle-based information that can be accessed for legitimate law enforcement purposes or when an active alert is issued. In South Barrington, this technology has helped officers do their jobs more effectively while respecting the privacy of motorists traveling in and out of our community.
This tool is not only an effective resource for solving crimes. It also is something we often use to prevent crimes. For instance, we know when there is a stolen vehicle that has entered our community. Thanks to LPRs, we are stopping crimes before they happen, which makes our communities safer.
Recent scrutiny of LPR technology in Illinois and across the country has raised important questions about data governance, privacy, and compliance with state law. Those conversations are necessary and healthy, and local governments should welcome them. Any public safety tool must be accompanied by clear guidelines and strong oversight.
In our village, those guidelines are firmly in place. We own the data collected by our LPR provider. Unless that information is tied to an active investigation, it is automatically deleted after 30 days. Access to LPR data is tightly restricted, logged, audited and governed by written policy. Misuse is not tolerated. These safeguards are essential to maintaining public trust.
What concerns me is that in some places, the public conversation has shifted from responsible oversight to outright rejection of the technology itself. LPRs have come under attack not because they are ineffective or inherently invasive, but because of fear, misinformation or a failure to distinguish between poor implementation and the tool itself. Abandoning proven public safety technology altogether risks undermining the very progress communities have worked hard to achieve.
Today, law enforcement is being asked to do more with fewer resources, while responding to increasingly complex and mobile forms of crime. Taking effective tools off the table serves no one. Instead, we must insist on clear rules and accountability to ensure our public safety strategies are both effective and respectful of the values we share. License plate readers help achieve that balance, which is why they remain an important part of our public safety toolbox.
I urge our state leaders to fully consider the value that LPR technology affords our communities and work to ensure the technology remains fully available to law enforcement agencies in Chicagoland and across the state.
• Paula McCombie is South Barrington village president.