A license plate reader on a pole near City Hall in downtown Louisville.(Jacob Ryan / LPM)In a blowout vote last week, Democrats and Republicans on Louisville Metro Council agreed with police officials that local residents shouldn’t be told where the city’s license plate reader cameras are watch ing them.Louisville Metro Police Department officials say the city’s fleet of more than 200 license plate readers, mostly provided by the business Flock Safety, helps them do things like find stolen cars and suspects in serious crimes. They’ve said revealing the locations could help people avoid detection and make the cameras more vulnerable to being purposefully damaged.The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting requested public records last year that would reveal where the cameras are. But LMPD refused to release them, and Republican state Attorney General Russell Coleman agreed in February that the city could withhold the records.Metro Council Member J.P. Lyninger, a District 6 Democrat, tried another way to make the information public: Pass an ordinance requiring the city to publish a map of the license plate readers it owns or leases. At Thursday’s council meeting, he noted the city of Lexington posts an online map of its cameras.“Lexington has not suffered massive deleterious effects to their local government, to their ability to investigate crime, to apprehend people,” he said. “I think that people in Louisville can likewise be trusted with this information that I believe that they should be entitled to.”However, 20 council members banded together to sink his proposal Thursday. Only four members – Lyninger and fellow Democrats Jennifer Chappell of District 15, Shameka Parrish-Wright of District 3 and Betsy Ruhe of District 21– voted for it. Council Member Tammy Hawkins of District 1 didn’t pick a side and voted “present.”“For me, it’s an ongoing kind of calculation of, you know, prioritizing public safety over the public’s right to know,” said Council Member Andrew Owen, a District 9 Democrat who voted to keep the locations secret.Thursday’s vote came after months of intermittent debate about the merits of Flock cameras by Metro Council members. These discussions followed reporting from KyCIR that detailed police secrecy about and misuse of the technology, as well as potential racial bias in who the tech targets.The chairs of Metro Council’s Democratic and Republican caucuses, Hawkins and GOP Council Member Anthony Piagentini of District 19, previously told KyCIR the police should share camera locations with council members, who could provide oversight.Neither Hawkins nor Piagentini brought that up during Thursday’s vote. Piagentini said he appreciates the intent of Lyninger’s proposal, even though he thinks publishing a map of the cameras would be “a huge mistake.”He said the Flock cameras are visible on poles along local roads.“So it is not as though, you know, we’re using technology that is completely unseen by the public, right? “ he said.However, he said, it’s “well-established law” that governments get latitude to withhold some information from the public to help them enforce the law. He sees shielding license plate reader locations as a “reasonable exemption.” ...read more read less