Under the plate-reader policy Rhode Island State Police sent to every department on Oct. 19, a photo of your car’s back end can sit in a police database for up to 30 days. Flock Safety, which makes most of the cameras, cut its own recommended default to seven days in August.
That gap is the best single measure of what Rhode Island’s long-awaited rulebook does. The state now has written standards for Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers, or ALPRs,, including outright bans on using them for immigration enforcement or sharing data with ICE. But the retention limit trails the vendor, the document is a template, not a law, and the penalties it lists depend on statutes Rhode Island doesn’t have. Gov. Dan McKee, who ordered the review, has left those binding questions to the General Assembly, which returns in January 2027 and has let two stricter bills die in committee.
A 60-day pause with no end date
McKee started this on Aug. 18. His office announced that the State Police would not install or activate any more ALPR cameras, urged cities and towns to pause new installs too, and gave State Police Col. Darnell Weaver and the Department of Public Safety 60 days to produce statewide standards with the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association, the League of Cities and Towns and others. Cameras already running could keep running. “Public safety and personal privacy are not mutually exclusive,” McKee said in that release…