Campus Security: Motlow adds LPRs

Motlow State is using license plate readers at its Moore County campus entrances. Here’s how the technology works.

1:45 p.m. Aug. 11, 2026 | Updated 1:43 a.m. Aug. 12, 2026

DUANE CROSS
MCO Publisher•Editor

License plate readers now watch vehicles entering and leaving Motlow State Community College along Ledford Mill Road.

Motlow Assistant Vice President for College Advancement Mark Hutchins said the Tennessee Board of Regents provided the cameras to the college at no cost to “test them out.” They are not Flock Safety cameras, but use the same broader license plate recognition technology increasingly deployed by police departments, governments, businesses, and other institutions.

Motlow does not share information from its system with a nationwide law-enforcement network. It does share with the Moore County Sheriff’s Department for purposes involving sex offenders, trespassing, and the National Crime Information Center.

Regarding the sex offender point, according to the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry:

• Lynchburg – 13 offenders
• Fayetteville – 78 offenders
• Shelbyville – 186 offenders
• Tullahoma – 87 offenders
• Winchester – 104 offenders

NCIC is the FBI-managed national database police and dispatchers use to check wanted people, missing persons, stolen vehicles, stolen property, and other law-enforcement records.

Hutchins said he sees a clear security use for the technology on campus.

“I can certainly see the benefit,” he said.

Flock is the company. LPR is the technology.

Automated license plate readers – often called LPRs or ALPRs – use cameras and software to identify license plates as vehicles pass. Depending on the system, they can also capture vehicle characteristics, direction of travel, time, and location.

A conventional security camera records video for someone to review later. An LPR turns a passing vehicle into searchable data.

A traditional camera records what happened. A license plate reader helps find it.

Flock Safety is one of the nation’s best-known companies selling the technology, which is why its name has become closely associated with the broader debate. But not every plate reader is a Flock camera.

A digital lookout

Suppose a stolen vehicle is entered into NCIC. If its plate passes a reader connected to the appropriate system, law enforcement can be alerted.

The same principle can apply to vehicles associated with wanted people, missing persons, or active investigations. Instead of requiring an officer to spot a vehicle, recognize the plate or description, and manually run the information, the technology can make the comparison automatically.

A hit is not proof of a crime. Plates can be stolen, vehicles can have multiple drivers, and database information can be wrong or outdated.

The computer says: Take another look. The officer still has work to do.

The privacy question

A plate reader records that a vehicle was in a certain place at a certain time.

One observation says little. Thousands can say plenty.

A vehicle appears at the same workplace every morning, at a medical office Thursday, and at a political meeting Saturday.

One plate reading is a dot. Enough dots make a map.

Police have always been able to see license plates on public roads. The difference is scale. A deputy standing beside the road may see hundreds of cars pass. A computer can record every plate, attach a time and location, store the information, and make it searchable.

Connect enough cameras, and scattered observations can begin to trace where a vehicle has been.

Why Flock became the face of the debate

Flock Safety’s systems spread rapidly among police departments, cities, businesses, and private communities. Depending on agreements and settings, participating agencies can share vehicle information across jurisdictions.

A stolen car does not stop at a county line. Neither does a fugitive.

That reach can be valuable to investigators. It can also turn a collection of local cameras into something much larger.

How far should information collected in one community be allowed to travel?

That question has helped put Flock at the center of a national argument over the reach of plate-reader networks.

Who gets to search?

The debate is not limited to what cameras collect. It extends to who gets access.

Who can search the records? How long are they kept? Are searches logged? What prevents someone with access from looking up a neighbor, an ex-spouse, or another person for reasons unrelated to legitimate police work?

Cases elsewhere involving alleged misuse of license plate databases have shown the risk is not theoretical. Modern systems often leave an audit trail showing who searched and when.

Audit logs may expose misuse after the fact. They do not prevent it.

When local data travels

Data sharing adds another layer. A community may install cameras to recover stolen cars or locate wanted suspects. Another agency may want the same information for a different purpose.

Laws differ from state to state. So do enforcement priorities. Information collected for one reason can become useful for another. Supporters call that cooperation. Critics call it mission creep.

Privacy advocates therefore focus heavily on who owns the data, who can reach it, and what restrictions remain once information moves beyond the agency or institution that collected it.

Moore County has been approached by Flock, but Sheriff Tyler Hatfield points to cost as being prohibitive. The cameras cost anywhere from $250 to $900 for installation and about $3,000 annually for a subscription. Flock suggested Moore County needs more than a dozen. That $36,000-plus annual budget line is not in the works.

Hatfield said Moore County deputies have enough to keep them busy without chasing after neighboring counties' problems.

Tennessee law sets retention limits

Tennessee law regulates automated license plate recognition systems and limits how long governmental entities may retain captured plate data, with exceptions tied to ongoing investigations.

Retention rules govern how long the data lives. They do not decide who gets to search it – or why.

Courts are also wrestling with when observation becomes tracking. An officer seeing a license plate on a public road is ordinary police work. A system capable of recording thousands of vehicle locations and making them searchable raises a different constitutional question.

Digital location records from cellphones and other technologies have already forced courts to consider how much can be learned when individual pieces of location data are assembled over time.

License plate readers bring that question to the road.

Back at Motlow

For most people driving onto campus, the cameras will produce nothing that draws law-enforcement attention.

But every plate still passes through the same basic process. It is seen. It is checked. The encounter can be logged. That capability is precisely what gives license plate readers their value. It is also what makes the rules surrounding them matter.

Who can see the data? How long is it kept? And who makes sure those rules are followed?

The cameras along Ledford Mill Road are the part everyone can see.

The rules behind them matter more.

Updated to include area numbers from the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry.