Lexington to pay $1.6 million for license plate cameras. It’s not ‘a boogeyman,’ chief says

Lexington will be paying $1.6 million over the next five years for 100 license plate reader cameras around Fayette County.

The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted Tuesday to move the issue to the council meeting agenda. A final vote will likely come at the April 25 council meeting.

Flock license plate reader cameras take still images of license plates and then feed those license plates into various databases. The Lexington Police Department has been using the cameras since March 2022 as part of a pilot program.

The cameras have been controversial. It was a top issue in the 2022 council and mayoral races. Some have worried the cameras would be placed in minority neighborhoods. Lexington police have said they are placed throughout the city based on crime data.

The contract is single source, meaning Flock was the only provider. There were no other bids for the license plate reader cameras.

The contract is $305,404 for the first year and $317,400 for each of the next four years for a total of more than $1.6 million.

One person spoke against the contract at Tuesday’s work session.

Reva Russell English asked the council to hit pause on the contract. Police say seven internal audits of the system have been conducted.

“We don’t know how the system is being used,” English said. “Let’s get a real audit that doesn’t just come from LPD.”

Helped recover 264 stolen vehicles, find 21 missing persons

According to Lexington police data, since March 2022 Flock cameras have assisted police with recovering 264 stolen vehicles, helped find 21 missing persons and assisted in the seizure of 68 firearms. Police say 433 people have been arrested as a result of a tip from the license plate reader cameras.

Since the first license plate reader was installed in March 2022 until the end of November 2022, the average number of days to recover a stolen vehicle dropped to 5.6 days. That’s roughly half the time it took police to recover a stolen vehicle in 2020 and 2021 without the cameras.

“We have a return of investment of $3.7 million in stolen property returned,” said Police Commander Matthew Greathouse.

Violent crimes are going down, he said.

“That system is being used on an hourly basis,” Greathouse said. Police have been able to find several people with dementia by using Flock cameras, he said.

“It has been more successful (than what we thought it would be),” Greathouse said.

Councilman David Sevigny asked if there was a clause in the contract that would allow the city to be released from the contract if technology changes. Greathouse said he is not sure if the city would still have to honor the five-year agreement if something happened to Flock, which is currently a private company.

Councilwoman Tayna Fogle said she would like to see an external audit. Fogle also said she still doesn’t know how many Flock cameras are in her council district, which includes the city’s east and north sides.

Greathouse said the public integrity unit does a separate audit but it is an internal police report.

Fogle also questioned if the Flock cameras contributed to the decrease in homicides. Greathouse said many factors contribute to a decrease in crime and Flock cameras may have been part of the solution.

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said they have not had a complaint about privacy rights violations.

“People want to use it as a boogeyman and it’s not,” Weathers said. “I don’t have police to put on every corner.”

One false arrest

Still, there has been at least one issue with the cameras.

In April 2023, police arrested Nicholas Trujillo-Ruiz, 71, for a 1980 murder in Texas after getting a tip from a license plate reader camera.

The problem?

He wasn’t the right guy.

The real Trujillo-Ruiz had died several years prior.

Lexington police were investigating a shots fired call on April 10, 2023, in the 3700 block of Camelot Drive. Police said offers found shell casings and were given a description of the suspect’s vehicle by a witness. A Flock camera provided investigators with a license plate number for a vehicle matching the description of the suspected shooter’s vehicle, according to police.

When officers arrived at the home, a Mexican identification card for Trujillio-Ruiz was given to the officers, who ran that name through a criminal database and found the outstanding warrant for a murder. The man who was wrongly arrested was Javier Manriquez.

Lexington police said if Manriquez had been honest with police at the time of his arrest about his true identity, he would not have been arrested on the murder charge.

Police later refused to release the body-camera video of Manriquez’ arrest despite the murder charge against Manriquez being dropped. Police said at the time Manriquez still faced charges in connection to giving police the wrong identification.