Police group urges Youngkin to veto bill regulating use of automatic license plate readers in Virginia

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- The Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police is urging Gov. Glenn Youngkin to veto a bill meant to regulate the use of automatic license plate readers in Virginia.

Currently, there are no state laws regulating when law enforcement can access the data from automatic license plate readers and how long they can keep it.

 “We would rather start over with a new bill than to try to make this one work,” said Dana Schrad, the group’s Executive Director.

Schrad said they were willing to accept parts of the bill that would limit law enforcement’s access to the data collected to only certain scenarios, like when they’re investigating a crime. 

“We were willing to acquiesce to that,” Schrad said.

However, her organization is not on board with the part of the bill addressing how long law enforcement can keep the data.

Earlier this month, the General Assembly rejected Youngkin’s proposed change that would have increased the amount of time law enforcement could access the data before it had to be deleted from 21 days to 30 days.

“We actually preferred 60 days, that was what was requested by a number of chiefs around the state. 30 days was a compromise, and we felt like 30 days was a hard line for us,” Schrad said. “There’s just a number of situations in which there are delayed crime reporting. That would allow a buffer to be able to use that data to successfully solve those cases.” 

Meanwhile, while some criminal justice reform groups say they’d prefer an even shorter retention period, they don’t really care what Youngkin decides to do with the legislation after the General Assembly rejected his amendment that would have allowed the readers on state highways starting next year. 

“Adding them to 60,000 miles of highways puts this in the hands of state police, who the Governor has deputized as effectively ICE agents,” said Rob Poggenklass, Executive Director of Justice Forward Virginia.

Youngkin has until May 2 to consider the bill.