LA City Council hits pause on LAPD plan to put AI license plate scanners on streetlights

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Headline graphic: AI cameras on hold, over a file photo of a solar-powered license plate reader camera

Cover photo: File photo (a Flock license plate camera, 2025; not an LAPD or Axon device) by Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped, darkened and text added by The Southbound 105.

By Alberto Zamudio | The Southbound 105 | Oct. 11, 2026

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles City Council has put the brakes on a plan to clamp AI-powered license plate scanners onto hundreds of city streetlights, sending the LAPD's pilot program with Axon Enterprise back to committee for a closer look at how the data would be used.

In a 10-4 vote Tuesday, Oct. 6, the council asserted jurisdiction over the Board of Police Commissioners' approval of the three-month pilot. The motion was introduced by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez and Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson. Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield, John Lee, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez voted no, City News Service reported.

More than a plate reader

Under the pilot, Axon's subcontractor Ubicquia would install cameras on top of streetlights, drawing power from the lights themselves, at no cost to the city. Unlike older readers, the system uses AI to identify not just vehicles and plates but pedestrians and objects on streets and sidewalks, according to the Los Angeles Times and Ubicquia's own description.

LAPD Chief Information Officer Dean Gialamas told the council the department uses the readers mainly for vehicle and plate information and that the pilot does not include facial recognition, biometric identification, audio recording or person-focused analytics. "It's a test of technology to see whether it suits the needs of the department as well as the needs of the communities who are asking for them," he said.

The promised guardrails

Gialamas has said the Axon agreement would become the template for all LAPD plate-reader vendors. Under it, the city would own all captured data, and none would be shared with federal authorities. Searches would be limited to criminal investigations, missing persons and other serious public-safety cases and could not be based solely on protests or other First Amendment activity. The department also promised shorter data retention, fewer officers with access and audits to flag unusual searches.

Those promises land on top of a rocky record. A report last month from the LAPD inspector general found gaps in the department's agreements with its three current plate-reader vendors, Flock, Motorola and Axon, including no clear rules on how long data is kept or who it is shared with. Earlier this year the LAPD let its agreement with Flock Safety lapse over concerns that federal immigration authorities were using Flock data.

A heated floor debate

Park, a strong supporter of the technology, said the city urgently needed the devices "up and running." Blumenfield argued the pilot had been in the works for a long time and should not be slowed. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez called deployment irresponsible, citing reports of officers using plate readers to stalk romantic partners and track women seeking reproductive health care. She also pointed to the LAPD's robot dog, which she said quietly went from pilot to permanent program without council input.

Harris-Dawson said plate readers along the Figueroa corridor had helped rescue dozens of juvenile sex-trafficking victims, but added, "if I'm honest I don't know what else the cameras are doing," according to the Times. Rodriguez said that as sanitation and street services adopt the technology too, the city needs one universal policy.

The $235 million deal the council can't touch

Separately, the Police Commission approved a 10-year, $235 million contract with Axon covering replacement body cameras, Tasers, cloud video storage and AI software that drafts police reports. Council members said they had concerns about that deal too, but no authority to stop it. The Times corrected an early version of its story that said the council had halted that contract; it did not.

What happens next

The pilot goes to the council's Public Safety Committee, likely at its Oct. 20 meeting, with a final full-council vote expected no later than Oct. 23. Residents can comment on Council File 26-1394 through the City Clerk's website or in person at the committee meeting.

Sources

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