Kansas Town Uses License Plate Readers to Go After Man Who Wrote Op-Ed
Police in Lenexa, Kansas used automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology to pursue a man who about the police department, according to reporting by Kansas public radio station KCUR. This is a rare public example of exactly the kind of abuse that we鈥檝e long warned against when it comes to mass-surveillance systems like license plate readers. It also comes on the heels of reports about apparent misuse of license plate databases by ICE agents in Minnesota not for legitimate law enforcement purposes but and of a woman who was based on data from license plate readers.
The published by the Kansas man, Canyen Ashworth, was critical of local ICE operations and the role of Lenexa police in them. The same day that piece ran, Lenexa police began to investigate Ashworth, according to internal emails obtained by KCUR. They quickly tied him to an unidentified suspect the police were looking for who had several days earlier put four posters up around town showing a picture of an ICE agent and the words 鈥渞emember when we killed fascists.鈥 The police alleged that the unidentified 鈥淧aper Hanger鈥 had violated an unspecified city ordinance, and the posters were removed.
The Paper Hanger鈥檚 arguably aggressive message was nonetheless speech protected by the First Amendment. And while government officials may regulate constitutionally protected speech through 鈥渢ime, place, and manner鈥 restrictions, they can't do so selectively based on the content of the messages. KCUR reports that in Lenexa, 鈥淧osters about lost pets and community events were generally not removed.鈥
In fact, the town鈥檚 mayor later told KCUR that the town had no formal policy regarding posters on city property.
City and police officials claimed that they were targeting the Paper Hanger because the glue he used had the potential to damage city property. On the basis of this great crime, the police began using license plate readers to track Ashworth鈥檚 movements around town, and several weeks after his op-ed, the police chief emailed patrol officers to announce that 鈥淎 suspect has been developed in the case of the City Center Posters鈥 and announce a 鈥渂e on the lookout for鈥 (BOLO) alert for Ashworth.
Perhaps most ominously, when issuing the BOLO the chief declared 鈥淭his is MYOC,鈥 meaning 鈥渕ake your own case鈥 鈥 which in turn meant essentially, 鈥渢here is no arrest warrant for him so look for any reason to stop him鈥 and, as the deputy police chief at the time put it, 鈥淵ou need to build your own probable cause, your own reasonable suspicion.鈥
As my ACLU colleague and head of the Kansas ACLU Micah Kubic put it, issuing a BOLO on someone for putting up posters is 鈥渂oth a rejection of the First Amendment, and a really ridiculous misuse of resources.鈥
Compared to the blatant targeting of people for their speech and/or political opposition that we鈥檝e been seeing lately from the Trump Administration, this case may look small. But it was for Ashworth. And it's a particularly clear example of the abusive dynamic that mass-surveillance systems always end up falling into:
- Target someone who the authorities dislike but have no evidence has done anything wrong.
- Fire up powerful surveillance technologies that have been sold to the public as a way to stop serious, dramatic crimes and keep the public safe.
- Use those technologies to watch the disfavored person in the hopes of drumming up something that they can be charged with, even to the point of scraping the bottom of the barrel and going after something like 鈥渄amaging glue use.鈥
We鈥檝e seen plenty of this 鈥溾 kind of abuse at the hands of the Trump Administration. But this story is a reminder that such abuse can rear its head in towns across the nation 鈥 small, medium, or large. And when it does, license plate reading programs are a natural tool for the authorities to turn to.