Privacy v. policing debate sparks after mistaken identity stop

ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. – People are talking about a recent FOX 2 report involving mistaken identity which led to a mysterious police encounter. We solved it for the driver while working with two police departments to clear their name as being mistakenly wanted from the license plate reader system.

The stop was spurred by license plate reader cameras, that some viewers believe is an invasion of privacy.

Some viewers lashed out with comments like, “maybe stop randomly running plates” and “why are they running our plates prior to a crime?”

St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil took interest.

“There’s always unintended consequences; always,” he said.

Brazil mentioned St. Charles County’s ban on red light cameras as an example of what he calls voters intolerance of certain tactics.

“You start giving inch by inch, you start losing all your freedoms and liberties, and that’s what we have to be cautious of,” Brazil said.

Police officers claim license plate reader cameras simply magnify what’s always been done.

“There’s sheets printed out of all the stolen cars in the metropolitan area and there’s hundreds and hundreds of them,” North County Police Cooperative Major Ron Martin said. “What a police officer would do back in the day is they’re driving around, they’re at a stop light or whatever, they’d look at the sheet, and they’d see if that plate was on the sheet.”

Martin said a license plate reader recently identified a stolen car being towed and the trail led to bigger crimes.

“The driver was a multi-convicted felon that was in possession of a sawed-off shotgun and illegal narcotics,” he said. “So, that was kind of a—that was a three for all.”

Clayton police said a November 2023 murder involving a suspect trying to steal cars was solved with the help of license plate readers.

A plate reader system from the company Flock not only analyzes the plate but also captures the biometrics of the entire vehicle. That was key in the Clayton case, because officers did not have a suspect’s plate number at first.

“We knew we were looking for a white Chrysler 300, so our investigators and the Major Case Squad started searching our database for Chrysler 300s that were in Clayton around the time of the homicide, and we were able to find that vehicle,” Clayton Police Chief Mark Smith said.

The chief said the technology is also key in solving cross-state crimes, like the arrest of a man with a car stolen from Indiana. He said officers were “able to safely take him into custody with the help of two other officers, so we took a stolen car off the street and got it back to the victim.”

The case of the mistaken identity? Roth wishes it would’ve been easier for him to clear up without involving FOX 2 to solve it but said his police interactions were not negative outside being stopped. Roth said he sees both sides of the matter.

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