A new neighborhood watch

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 4th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: neighborhood security.

All across the United States thousands of neighborhoods are fighting crime by buying cameras that snap a photo of every car that comes and goes.

The photos can help catch criminals with evidence. If someone steals a car, police can be notified in real time.

REICHARD: But does this go too far? WORLD senior writer Emma Freire has the story.

EMMA FREIRE: Alder Meadow is a small, affluent neighborhood in Auburn, Washington, a suburb of Seattle.

DON BUSHELL: It's a pretty nice neighborhood. The houses go for like a million 2, a million 3, a million 4. And they're pretty big houses.

That’s Don Bushell. He’s a lawyer, musician, and president of the local HOA. He has lived in Alder Meadow for 17 years and loves it.

BUSHELL: There’s owls, lots of owls. And, you know, I'll be in here playing music and as soon as I stop, they’re like singing with me.

In 2017, Alder Meadow installed a camera at the neighborhood entrance that snaps a photo of every car coming in. Thousands of HOAs across the country are doing the same thing, but Alder Meadow got a lot of local media attention.

NEWS ANCHOR: A small neighborhood in southern King county is trying to keep criminals away by snapping pictures of license plates.

That’s probably because many neighborhoods prefer to keep quiet about their use of these cameras, but Bushell is willing to talk about it in public.

Bushell was the driving force behind bringing the camera to Alder Meadow. It all started one afternoon in 2015. His wife came home not realizing a burglar was upstairs stealing cash and jewelry from her dresser.

BUSHELL: She parked the car in the garage and then came into the house and she heard our alarm system go beep beep. That meant somebody just opened the back door. So the guy who's ripping us off was leaving the house when my wife came in. And I'm not exactly sure, but I'm sure of one thing: my wife did a foot chase with the guy about 50 yards behind him. And he dropped some of the jewelry.

Afterward, Bushell connected with two other people who had been robbed by the same man. Using their home security cameras, they pieced together five out of six characters from the burglar’s license plate. Bushell took that to the police.

BUSHELL: So six months later, they had apprehended that guy and we showed up in court and, you know, spoke to the judge. Right before the guy went to prison for 13 months.

But homes in Alder Meadow continued getting burglarized. Bushell’s experience had taught him the value of a license plate in catching criminals. So in 2017 he suggested the HOA purchase a camera.

BUSHELL: I was shocked at the level of angst about it.

Residents worried a camera that records the comings and goings of their cars would violate their privacy.

Dave Maass understands their fears. Maass is director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on digital privacy.

DAVID MAASS: Law enforcement officers are required to get, in best case scenario, they're required to get an extensive amount of training before using license plate readers or accessing license plate reader data. And even then, abuses happen, breaches happen and problems happen and mistakes are made by police, even with all that training. And your average homeowner association is run by local members of the community with no law enforcement background, no training whatsoever before using this.

Maass says the best argument against placing these cameras in the hands of an HOA is the fact that, well, most people hate their HOA.

MAASS: And so the fact that you would like trust a body that you have so many issues with to begin with, with your privacy, with data about you, with this kind of powerful law enforcement grade technology, it just boggles my mind.

After the initial resistance, Alder Meadow residents had a meeting to talk through the concerns. Eventually they voted in favor of the camera and purchased one from a company called Flock Safety in Atlanta.

As president of the HOA, Don Bushell runs the system and praises its accuracy.

BUSHELL: It's a cool technology. The technology knows what kind of car it is. It'll say, oh, it's a 2016 Toyota sedan or something with the color. It'll be pitch black out, but it'll know it's gray. So it's pretty good. And it tells you how many times that vehicle has been in the neighborhood in the last 30 days. So if the vehicle's been in the neighborhood 10 times the last 30 days, it's probably not criminal activity because they're always coming in.

The plate reader system has two options. The HOA can keep the photos for itself and only share them with police after someone commits a crime. That’s what Alder Meadow voted for in 2017. But HOAs also have the option to give police automatic access.

That means the police get alerts if a vehicle that has been reported stolen enters the neighborhood, and they can respond quickly. Bushell thinks that’s a good idea because otherwise officers won’t act until a citizen calls 911.

BUSHELL: We had four incidents in the last six months and all of them involved stolen cars or stolen license plates. And we had another incident that was kind of even different. One of the incidents was somebody was firing a rifle in the middle of the night, shooting at deer that are out in the woods.

Bushell knows he needs the neighborhood's support before giving the police access and he won’t move ahead without it.

Bushell believes demand for license plate reading cameras is not going to decrease any time soon.

BUSHELL: This is a blue state. They heavily defunded the police. You know, the police agencies have less—I believe they have less—funding than they used to have and it kind of makes sense to use. Well, it makes great sense economically to use technology.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire.

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