Policy · St. Louis Park, Minnesota · October 31, 2024 (Lexipol)
St. Louis Park ALPR policy
A five-page Lexipol template that restates the statute. It says 60 days where the city practices 30, and says nothing about immigration, network sharing, or the quarterly audits the council added in 2026.
3
Meets
8
Partial
0
Fails
15
Missing
of 26 practices this document could address
St. Louis Park runs 16 Flock cameras. Its written policy is Lexipol’s Minnesota template: the statute’s collection limits, the 60-day destruction rule with its two exceptions, the public log, the audit trail, the biennial audit, and a written-request process for sharing with other law enforcement agencies, reviewed by a division commander.
The city’s actual practice has moved past the document. After FinePrint’s records request showed 2,637 immigration-related searches of the city’s cameras by 134 agencies, almost all out of state and none with a case number, the council cut off agencies with 287(g) agreements, began quarterly audits, turned on Flock’s filters for immigration and reproductive-health searches, and set retention to 30 days. Those rules live on a web page. The policy still says 60 days and still lets any law enforcement agency ask.
Primary source
St. Louis Park Police Department Policy Manual, Policy 425, Automated License Plate ReadersRead 2026-09-28
Document
Practice by practice
What the document says, or does not say, on each practice in the Standard. Practices this kind of document has no business addressing are marked n/a. These marks are evidence for a jurisdiction’s grade; the document itself gets no score.
Stage 1
Decide
- Missing
- Missing
Stage 2
Acquire
- Partial
2.2Published use policy before deployment
Posted on the city website and covers the statutory elements. It does not describe what the city actually does: the 30-day setting, the 287(g) exclusion, the quarterly audits and the search filters appear only on a web page.
- Missing
Stage 3
Deploy
- Meets
3.1Purpose limitation in writing
Collection limits, plate-file matching, and the warrant requirement for tracking, all restated from the statute.
- Partial
425.4.2(d): fixed locations posted on the department website. No limit on count or placement.
- Meets
Locations posted online; public log of use per 425.6.1.
Stage 4
Use
- Meets
4.1Logged justification for every query
425.7(e): every query, response and dissemination recorded in an audit trail. Access requires written authorization and a documented purpose.
- Partial
4.2Access control and separation of duties
Role-based access per the statute; releases reviewed by the Administration Division Commander. No separation between the approver and the reviewer of the log.
- Missing
Nothing on Flock network settings, discoverability, or features added by the vendor. Default sharing was on until June 2025.
- Missing
4.4Misuse is reported like a near miss
No misuse investigation or reporting process beyond the statute’s discipline reference.
Stage 5
Share
- Partial
5.1No sharing without a published policy
425.9: release only to law enforcement or prosecutorial agencies on a written request with purpose, factual basis, case number and the requesting agency head’s authorization. Nothing on federal agencies or immigration. The searches FinePrint documented carried no case number at all.
- Missing
- Missing
Stage 6
Retain
- Partial
6.1Shortest retention that serves the stated purpose
425.6: 60 days. The system is set to 30. The policy permits twice the retention the city uses.
- Missing
- Partial
6.3Sealed and expunged records are removed
Address confidentiality program destruction, per the statute.
Stage 7
Audit
- Partial
7.1Independent audit on a schedule
425.7(c): biennial audits per the statute. The 2025 audit was by LOGIS, the city’s IT consortium, from screen prints the department supplied.
- Partial
7.3Annual public report with counts
Public log of use with the statutory counts. The city now posts monthly organization and network audits, which the policy does not mention.
Stage 8
Retire
- Missing
What to take from it
The policy passes the statute and fails the city. Everything St. Louis Park changed in 2025 and 2026 happened outside this document, which means the next chief can undo it without amending anything. Write it down.