More HOA's consider having license plate readers installed in neighborhoods

DUMFRIES, Va. - FOX 5 has learned there is increased interest in having license plate readers in residential areas amid growing concern about neighborhood crime.

There’s growing interest from various homeowners associations across the DMV about having license plate readers installed in their neighborhoods.

There’s already a huge demand for license plate readers from law enforcement agencies across the Commonwealth and beyond.

FOX 5 spoke with Flock Safety, a company that manufactures these readers. They tell us there’s been a recent spike in interest from residential communities including in Prince William County.

They believe the readers could help curb crime in the community and "narrow search results for a suspect should a crime occur."

The license plate readers would ping license plates entering or exiting a neighborhood. That data and information would then be stored in a cloud system and could be accessed to assist law enforcement. 

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License plate readers are already being used in Fairfax County and the information has been described as critical evidence that can help investigators solve serious crimes.

However, there are concerns about privacy and how the information would be stored and used.

"Be careful what you ask for. It is all fun and games until it is your son or your daughter that they want to snare with one of these things, and then it looks like a really bad idea," criminal defense attorney Jeremy Rosenthal said.

"Folks do things all the time to trade security for privacy. People put recorders inside their own homes and a lot of times that the very evidence that’s used against them or a family member in a domestic type of situation. So you just have to be really, really careful with the trade-off that you’re making," he continued.

But Flock Security says the data they collect is only stored for a month before it’s wiped out and some other companies take a similar approach. 

"For those thirty days it’s stored in the cloud fully encrypted and then once again after 30 days, it’s automatically deleted," said Holly Beilin with Flock. 

It’s also important to note the license plate readers do not have a facial recognition component.