Ohio Public Records · R.C. 149.43
Every ALPR search
generates a record.
We measure it.
A semi-automated records project that requests license-plate-reader search logs — not plate data, the audit trail behind it — from every law-enforcement agency operating ALPR systems in Ohio.
Illustrative preview — the request engine runs on a separate, internal system.
Current state
ALPR search activity in Ohio
is not subject to statewide reporting.
Automated license-plate readers photograph vehicles that pass, logging the plate, the time, and the location. Ohio has hundreds of agencies fielding these systems — sheriffs, city police, university police, park districts — and no statewide requirement that any of them report how the data is searched, by whom, or why.
These systems are also rarely standalone. Widely deployed ALPR platforms support cross-department and cross-state search, and many agency contracts enable it — a plate logged by one agency's camera can be queried by agencies elsewhere in the country. No Ohio reporting requirement distinguishes searches run by the agency that operates a camera from searches originating outside it.
Oversight, where it exists at all, is self-reported. There is no dashboard a resident can check to see whether their local department's use of ALPR matches its stated policy. This project compiles that record, one agency at a time.
Statewide scope
Statewide scope: all 88 Ohio counties.
Every county below is in scope for the request roster — that's all 88, the full count for the state, not a tally of counties contacted so far. Where shown, camera counts are county-level totals only, not individual locations, pulled daily from OpenStreetMap's crowdsourced registry as a scale reference, not the status of any records request. Filing coverage fills in separately as agencies are identified and responses come back.
How the requests move
Four steps, run on repeat
- 01
Identify
Cross-reference Ohio law-enforcement agencies against known and suspected ALPR vendors and grant records to build a request roster.
- 02
Request
File a standing public-records request with each agency for plate-search audit metadata: operator, originating agency, timestamp, and stated reason for query.
- 03
Track
Monitor statutory response windows, log delays and denials, and escalate or re-file where an agency goes quiet.
- 04
Publish
Compile what comes back into aggregate, statistical findings on ALPR use across the state — counts and patterns, not the underlying records.
RECORD REQUESTED
- SUBJECT
- Search audit log
- NOT REQUESTED
- raw plate captures
- FIELDS
- operator · origin agency · timestamp · reason code
- AUTHORITY
- Ohio R.C. 149.43
What we ask for
Search audit logs,
not plate captures.
This project does not seek raw ALPR captures — the photos of a car, on a street, at a given hour. That data is sensitive, largely exempt, and not the point.
What we request is the record of the record: who ran a plate search, when, through which system, from which agency, and what reason was logged for looking. Because common ALPR platforms allow cross-department and cross-state searches, whether a query originates inside or outside the operating agency is one of the variables this project measures.
Records take time to produce.
Findings are published as data accumulates.
The Ohio ALPR Transparency Project is an independent, in-development public-accountability effort. It is not affiliated with any law enforcement agency, vendor, or unit of government.