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LAPD inspector general audit found officers wrongly stopped 161 innocent people flagged by faulty license-plate-reader hot list

A Los Angeles Police Department Office of the Inspector General audit, released July 11, 2026, found that during a two-month review period officers acknowledged 161 automated license-plate-reader "hot list" alerts as accurate stolen-vehicle matches that were in fact wrong, generally because outdated data was never cleared after a vehicle was recovered. Although LAPD policy requires officers to verify an alert's accuracy before stopping a vehicle, the audit found this frequently did not happen, and the false hits routinely triggered "high-risk" stops against people who had done nothing wrong. The findings led LAPD to let its data-sharing contract with Flock Safety expire.

Part of: Wrongful Stops From Bad License-Plate Data

Jurisdiction
California
Location
Los Angeles, California

Abuses documented

Actors

  • Los Angeles Police Department

An audit released July 11, 2026, by the Los Angeles Police Department's Office of the Inspector General found that officers repeatedly relied on inaccurate automated license-plate-reader (ALPR) "hot list" data to stop innocent drivers as suspected car thieves. During a two-month review period spanning August 1 to September 30, 2025, officers acknowledged 161 ALPR alerts as accurate stolen-vehicle matches that later turned out to be wrong. The errors generally arose because outdated information was never cleared from the hot list after a vehicle had been recovered or a plate was no longer wanted, so the system continued flagging cars that had done nothing to warrant suspicion. [1]

LAPD policy requires officers to verify an ALPR alert's accuracy before stopping a vehicle, but the Inspector General found this verification frequently did not happen. The false hits routinely triggered "high-risk" stops — involving backup units, air support, a supervisor on scene, and the driver ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint — against people who had committed no offense. The watchdog urged the department to reconsider its use of the technology. [1, 2]

Updates

2026-07-13 — LAPD let its Flock Safety data-sharing contract expire [3, 4]

Following the audit, LAPD allowed its ALPR data-sharing contract with Flock Safety to expire over the weekend of July 12–13, 2026, with the department's Chief Information Officer citing "serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights." The Los Angeles Police Commission was separately set to consider suspending the department's use of automated license plate readers.

Why we recorded this

When a police department feeds officers automated data it has not kept accurate and then acts on that data by force, the burden of the error falls on innocent people subjected to armed stops. An LAPD Inspector General audit found that stale, uncorrected license-plate-reader "hot list" data caused officers to treat 161 innocent drivers as stolen-vehicle suspects and subject them to high-risk stops, despite a department policy requiring officers to verify each alert first. This archive records government surveillance systems that collect and disseminate personal data without the safeguards needed to keep innocent people from bearing the consequences of the government's own data failures.

Sources

  1. LAPD Regularly Pulled Over Innocent People Because License Plate Readers Flagged Their Cars As Stolen — 404 Media investigative accessed July 14, 2026
  2. LAPD watchdog urges reconsideration of automatic license plate readers — NBC Los Angeles investigative accessed July 14, 2026
  3. LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire, citing 'serious concerns' over civil liberties and privacy — TechCrunch secondary accessed July 14, 2026
  4. LA Police Commission to Consider Suspending Automated License Plate Readers — MyNewsLA secondary accessed July 14, 2026

See also