Proposal: Automated Resident Data Collection

Why an Ordinance, Not Just Department Policy

The question isn't how long data is kept. It's who decides.

Today, every rule governing this data lives in internal police policy. That means:

• Rules can change without a vote. Retention was set years ago by department staff and changed twice in 2026, both times by department leadership. This year's changes went in the right direction. Would residents hear about it if a future change went the other way?
• The department reviews itself. Monthly audits run inside the department, and the results go to the Chief. An internal audit is valuable. It isn't the same as oversight.
• Some systems sit outside the policy entirely. Officers can search privately owned Flock cameras in the city, and the city's traffic cameras belong to a different department.
• Good rules depend on one person. The current Chief has led these reforms. Shouldn't the safeguards be as durable as the equipment, which is under a 10-year contract?

The best time to set the rules is while the system is small.

Can the City Do This?

Yes. The Kansas Constitution gives cities broad home rule power and says that power "shall be liberally construed." Where the Legislature hasn't acted, a city can act by ordinary ordinance.

The Legislature hasn't acted here. Kansas's only law on plate readers lets agencies withhold plate data and camera locations from open records requests. It says nothing about how long data is kept, who can search it, or who checks. A 2021 bill that would have required every agency to adopt a written policy and an audit process never became law. Only the records exemption passed, the following year.

One limit: a city ordinance binds the city's own departments, employees, and contracts. It can't govern the Highway Patrol or federal agencies. It can decide what Overland Park shares with them.

What the Ordinance Would Do

1. Cover the data, not just one device. The rules apply to any city department, any vendor, and any outside camera network city employees can search. Police are where this starts, but traffic, IT, and other departments are included.
2. Make the current plate reader policy the first use policy. The October 2026 rules (30-day retention, the facial recognition ban, protected-activity safeguards, a case number on every search, and the pause on data sharing until formal agreements are written) become the starting point in city law. Each system gets a written use policy approved by elected officials.
3. Elected officials approve changes. Any change to an approved use policy, any new system, any new analytic feature (for example, searching by vehicle features rather than plate), and any new data-sharing agreement needs a public vote, after the public has a chance to comment.
4. Independent review of the audit logs. Someone outside the department reviews the search records: who searched, when, and whether a valid case number and reason were attached. Not case files, not investigations. A summary report is published once a year. The reviewer could be an outside firm working under the FBI's standard security agreement, or a city office working under a standard agreement with the department. Minnesota cities hire outside firms for their required audits. Minnesota requires an independent audit of every agency's plate reader program every two years, publishes the results, and suspends programs with a pattern of noncompliance. In Seattle, Washington, the city's Inspector General reviewed every police user's searches in Axon's system, the same platform Overland Park uses.
5. Minimum requirements for anyone OP shares with. Overland Park can't set other departments' policies. It can decide which agreements it signs. Every data-sharing agreement would require the partner to keep OP's data no longer than OP does, not pass it on, use it only with a case number and lawful purpose, and allow its searches of OP data to be audited. Minnesota law already works this way: an agency that receives shared plate data must follow the same deletion, privacy, and security rules as the agency that collected it. Lee's Summit, Missouri, police now require a memorandum of understanding before sharing plate reader data.
6. Same rules for private cameras the city can search. If city employees can search a privately owned camera network, the same retention, logging, audit, and purpose rules apply to those searches.
7. Purpose limits, including traffic cameras. Data collected for one purpose isn't repurposed to identify or track people without elected approval. Traffic cameras are a public service and should stay public. Adding plate-reading or identification software to them would need a vote. Minnesota's law draws a similar line: its traffic enforcement cameras can't be used as plate readers.
8. The RTIC stays a real-time tool. Watching live during an emergency is different from building a searchable history of everyone. The Real-Time Information Center stays focused on live events unless elected officials approve storing, searching, or analyzing its feeds later.
9. Public reporting. Because state law lets agencies withhold plate data from open records requests, residents can't check how the system is used. The city would publish regular totals for every system, including private cameras the city can search: reads and hits; searches by offense category and by role; searches by outside agencies; how many searches the audits flagged, how many were investigated, and what came of them; how often the repeated-search alert fired and how each was resolved; and how long the search records themselves are kept. No plate numbers or personal information. The department's planned dashboard is a good start, but it shows what the system collects, not how it's used. The ordinance would set what it must include, so the public's view doesn't depend on what a vendor chooses to show.

What This Proposal Doesn't Do

• It doesn't turn anything off. Every tool OPPD uses today keeps working under its current rules.
• It doesn't tell officers how to investigate a case.
• It doesn't let outsiders read case files.
• It doesn't target any vendor. There's no safe vendor, only safe rules.

Common Questions

What Other Places Have Done

Sources

• Kansas Constitution, Article 12, Section 5 (city home rule)
• SB 305 (2021) bill history
• SB 434 (2022) bill history
• KLRD: Automated License Plate Readers
• Minn. Stat. § 13.824
• Missouri Executive Order 26-18
• KCUR: Lee's Summit restricts Flock data access
• Austin City Auditor: APD License Plate Reader
• Seattle Office of Inspector General: Annual surveillance technology review (Sept. 2026)
• FBI CJIS Security Policy v6.0
• Johnson County Post: OPPD policy, Oct. 14, 2026