LAPDs plan to install license plate readers on Western Avenue hits roadblock

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Set us as preferred Plans to install automated license plate readers along Western Avenue to target suspected sex trafficking is no longer moving forward after Council District 13 declined a donation of cameras from weapons and technology developer Axon Enterprise.The district is now considering cameras that would not use license plate reader technology, according to a spokesperson for Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez.The cameras would be maintained by the Bureau of Street Lighting, and the councilmember is expected to bring a proposal to the City Council before the end of the year.LAPD had previously said it planned to install 18 cameras along Western Avenue between Olympic and Santa Monica boulevards, a corridor the department has targeted for sex trafficking.The department said the cameras would include live-feed monitoring and license plate recognition technology and could be operating by July.LAPD declined to provide updates over the summer.Axon Enterprise, which supplies the LAPD with body-worn cameras, stun guns and other equipment, offered to donate the cameras to the department’s Olympic Station, according to CD13 spokesperson Andoni Elias Nava.“We are against ALPRs.

We don’t want to see them in our district,” he said.“So once we realized what that was, we said we don’t really want them in our district.”A spokesperson for Axon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.On Monday, Senior Lead Officer Harry Cho said the cameras had been expected to be funded by CD13 and CD10 but that CD13 had pulled its funding.“Right now, there’s no cameras that are city-operated on Western,” Cho said at the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council meeting.Senior Lead Officer Lucy Bermudez confirmed Thursday that the cameras have not been installed along the Western corridor and that the project is...