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.”…