I reviewed the meeting transcription and presentations made by the WRPS to the City Council. They are available here. https://pub-kitchener.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx?Id=9f1c655d-c942-4bf5-bd9b-0b906333e603&Agenda=PostMinutes&lang=English&Item=16&Tab=attachments Apparently a privacy assessment was completed and the Ontario Privacy Commission was involved and there was a bias presentation of support from Fairway Mall and a Kitchener downtown business group…no dissenting opinions were offered. There are also a number of other outstanding questions. Several artifacts refer to incidents at Fairway Mall and in the downtown core, however it’s not clear on how many of these involved vehicles, which begs the question of the necessity of automated license plate readers as a means of reducing crime. CCTV is also of questionable benefit and multiple studies and meta-analyses have found these programs simply result in “displacement effects (crime moves elsewhere); limited deterrence, are actually dependence on active human monitoring” (not being done) and generally suffer from “significant overstatement of benefits by deploying organizations.” There are also many statements to the effect that this program will reduce violent crime, decrease social disorder occurrences and act as a deterrent. If this system is being passively monitored and only checking against known bad actors vehicles, this hardly seems likely to be based on any hard evidence nor does it explain “how” this will achieve these results. City Council have declined to provide any details and instead I’ve been directed to Deputy Chief Davis for more information.