Tempe’s new license plate reader ban came with a set of instructions on how to ask the neighbors for help.
Eight days before the vote, City Attorney Eric Anderson sent the mayor and council a two-page memo explaining one of the ordinance’s exceptions. His example: a vehicle suspected in a crime drives out of Tempe into a neighboring city, where a plate reader owned by that city or a private company logs its route. Under the ordinance, the memo says, the Tempe officer working the case could ask the other agency for “any information or data” about the vehicle and accept whatever plate-reader data came back. What the officer could not do is specifically ask the other agency to “run an ALPR query” or “search your ALPR database.”
In other words, the ban turns on the wording of the request.
The Tempe City Council adopted that ordinance, No. O2026.46, at its Oct. 15 regular meeting. The vote was 6-1, with Vice Mayor Arlene Chin casting the only no vote, according to KJZZ. It adds a new Article VI, “Automated License Plate Reader Technology,” to the police chapter of the Tempe City Code. The city’s own summary sheet lists the fiscal impact as “No impact on City funds.”
Everything below comes from the agenda packet for item 8C4, which is posted on the city’s Agenda Online portal under the Oct. 15 meeting. The packet holds a request for council action, the ordinance, Anderson’s Oct. 7 memo and a 67-page summary of public input. The ordinance in the packet is labeled “Draft 6.”
What Tempe’s license plate reader ban actually prohibits
The prohibitions are broad. No city agency may “acquire, install, operate, maintain, borrow, lease, subscribe to, accept” or use an ALPR system, and that includes getting one by gift, grant, trial or pilot program. No city agency may query an ALPR system or ALPR data, which the ordinance defines as any search, retrieval or export “however initiated and by whomever performed.” The city can’t spend money on the technology, including grant and asset-forfeiture funds, and can’t sign or renew a contract, subscription, memorandum of understanding or data-sharing agreement for it.
Other agencies and private companies also can’t put plate readers on city property or rights-of-way unless state or federal law forces the city to allow it. If that happens, Tempe has to disclose each installation on its website.
The ordinance tells anyone reading it how to read it. It says the article “shall be liberally construed in favor of privacy of citizens traveling through and upon the streets and highways of the City.”
It also comes with enforcement. City employees who knowingly violate it can face civil or criminal penalties under the city code and can be fired. A supervisor who orders a subordinate to break the rule is the one disciplined, and a first-time subordinate is presumed not to have known. Employees who report violations are protected from retaliation. Data collected in violation of the article can’t be used in any criminal, civil or administrative proceeding, except where it has to be disclosed to a defendant.
Then there’s the cleanup. Any remaining city ALPR systems have to be deactivated within seven days of the ordinance taking effect and removed within 30. Stored data has to be destroyed within 30 days “in a manner that renders it unrecoverable,” and any vendor holding it has to certify the destruction in writing. The city auditor has to verify all of that, and the results have to be posted “in a conspicuous manner” on the city’s website.
The exceptions are about who asked for the search
Section 26-78 lists what the ban does not stop. Tempe can still receive plate-reader data through a search warrant, court order or subpoena in a specific case. It can still use data handed over by a court, a criminal defendant, a member of the public, a private company or another government agency in connection with a specific investigation, “provided that no City agency specifically requested or directed the underlying Query.” Tempe officers on regional task forces can review plate-reader data another agency lawfully obtained, under the same condition.
So the key fact in each case is who ran the search, not whether Tempe ends up using plate-reader data. Anderson’s memo exists to spell that out. The ordinance’s “good faith reliance” clause also protects a Tempe employee who relies on another agency’s or a private company’s representation that the data “was not requested or directed by a City agency.”
People in the room noticed. Eric Fowler, a resident who spoke in favor of the ban at the meeting, told the council, per KJZZ, that the final version stops Tempe from owning cameras and running its own searches but “doesn’t stop Tempe from using the tracking data.” The objection showed up weeks earlier, too. In the city’s online survey, one respondent called the allowance for private plate readers a backdoor workaround.
Tempe’s parking garages and ticket cameras can still read plates
The ordinance also allows ALPR use “for business purposes unrelated to law enforcement such as parking lot or garage enforcement and management.” The condition is that nobody’s location or personal information ends up in a searchable database run by a private third party. One survey respondent asked why, if the concern is privacy and misuse, the city would keep plate readers in its own garages at all.
The bigger carve-out is in the definitions. The ordinance says an ALPR system does not include “a photo enforcement system as defined by A.R.S. Section 28-601.” That’s Arizona’s legal term for cameras that photograph vehicles to issue traffic citations. Tempe turned on its photo enforcement program on May 7, 2025, with permanent cameras at 14 intersections and four mobile units that move around the city. Those stay.
That puts Tempe where Florida ended up last month. Cameras that log your car for police investigations are out, and cameras that photograph your car to mail you a ticket keep working.
The cameras were already off, and a contract for new ones briefly showed up anyway
On paper, the ordinance bans something Tempe had already stopped doing. According to the city’s request for council action, Tempe started using automated license plate readers in 2022. “Following reports of ALPR misuse in other Valley communities,” the city deactivated and covered its cameras and ended its contract with Flock Safety. The city’s public feedback page dates that decision to August.
The council’s next regular meeting was Aug. 31. Item 8A1 on that agenda asked the council to approve a five-year Axon Enterprise contract worth up to $6,996,234.49 for body-worn cameras, Tasers, video storage, interview-room systems, real-time operations software and in-car “fleet” cameras. Mayor Corey Woods pulled the item at staff’s request. He said at the meeting, as reported by AZFamily, that the item was “a clerical error” and “was not updated to reflect” the decision to end the license plate reader program. AZFamily reported that the packet included 11 Axon Fleet 3 plate-reader cameras. Woods said the error was not a change in direction.
Under the new ordinance, that kind of mistake has a name. It’s a contract the city may not enter.
What the public said
Tempe’s public input summary covers two public meetings on Sept. 9, with 16 attendees each, and an online survey that drew 887 responses from Sept. 9 to 15. Asked whether they supported putting the city’s decision to stop using plate readers into city code, 580 respondents (65.4%) said they strongly supported it and 31 said they somewhat supported it. Another 220 (24.8%) strongly opposed it and 41 somewhat opposed it.
Of the 881 people who answered the question, 94 said they work in law enforcement. When respondents picked up to three issues that mattered most, “privacy rights” led with 490 votes. “Crime prevention” got 227 and “cost to the City” got 50.
Chin’s objection was about the scope of the ban. KJZZ quoted her saying a ban on “the wholesale use of technology seems a bit short sighted.”
Where Tempe fits in the Flock backlash
Tempe’s vote is the latest local move against plate-reader networks, and most others have taken a different form. Richmond, Virginia, said it would let its Flock contract lapse after neighboring Henrico County dropped its cameras. In Congress, Sen. Josh Hawley’s bill would cap how long plate data can be kept instead of banning collection. A federal judge in Oklahoma threw out evidence from a warrantless month-long plate-reader search.
Most of those efforts either end one city’s contract or limit what can be done with the data. Tempe’s ordinance writes the ban into code, adds penalties and a firing provision, and orders the old data destroyed. It also defines its main exception by who typed the search.
When the Tempe ALPR ban takes effect
Under Section 2.12 of the Tempe City Charter, as cited in the ordinance, ordinances take effect 30 days after adoption. That puts the start date in mid-November. The 30-day clocks for removing hardware and destroying data start then, and the city auditor’s report has to follow.
After that, a Tempe officer who wants to know where a car went can’t search a plate reader and can’t ask anyone else to search one. The officer can still ask a neighboring agency for any information it has about the car. If a ban turns on how the officer phrases the question, is it a ban or a style guide?