For all the delight in Augusta County over the Sheriff’s Office taking down the two Flock cameras that had been up and active in Fishersville, what about the 58 Axon automatic license plate readers that are currently in use in ACSO vehicles?
This isn’t something that’s necessarily hidden – the Sheriff’s Office maintains a publicly viewable database with updated usage metrics.
OK, so, it’s not like they go crazy trying to let us know that this database is out there; it was brought to my attention by an eagle-eyed AFP reader.
I keep saying we need to come up with a Correspondent of the Day award for all of our eagle-eyed readers out there who share this stuff with us.
One problem there being: most of these eagle-eyed readers want to remain anonymous, which, I get.
Back to the Axon ALPRs: the Sheriff’s Office tells us on the page with the usage data what it’s up to with the license plate readers.
Augusta County Sheriff’s Office-VA uses Axon Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology to capture objective evidence without compromising individual privacy. We utilize real-time alerting in patrol vehicles to arrest wanted criminals, recover stolen vehicles and locate missing persons that are on various hotlists. We also retain vehicle and plate images for a period of time to perform searches when investigating reported crimes. All of this data is secure, not sold to 3rd parties, and only used for law enforcement purposes by authorized personnel. This page shows our ALPR policies and usage statistics so that you may understand how this technology is used to help keep your community safer.
Records are retained for 21 days, per the webpage (captured by us at 10:36 a.m. ET, Oct. 1, 2026).
The data for the past 21 days:
- Plate reads retained: 421,678
- Hotlist hits retained: 47
- Hit rate: 0.01 percent
That’s an average of around 20,000 plate reads per day from the Axon ALPRs, which would be on pace for more than 7 million plate reads for a calendar year.
This tracks ahead of what the two Flock cameras in Fishersville were pulling in, based on the numbers that Sheriff Donald Smith presented to the Augusta County Board of Supervisors last month.
I’m not sure the public removal of the Flocks last week was anything more than a distraction aimed at getting us to feel like we’d accomplished something in the name of protecting our right to privacy.
ICYMI
- Augusta County supervisors want to revisit the future of our Flock cameras
- Augusta County sheriff defends .005 percent success rate of Flock cameras
- Augusta County sheriff reverses course on Flock cameras, takes them down
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Chris Graham
