去年9月，在一名枪手在天使报喜天主教堂向儿童开枪数周后，另一名男子威胁要在明尼阿波利斯另一所学校开枪扫射。我们的警员利用车牌识别器追踪了他的车辆，将其追出州境。在堪萨斯城附近一个警长办公室的协助下，他三小时内就在密苏里州被拘留。
Last September, weeks after a gunman opened fire on children at Annunciation Catholic Church, another man threatened to shoot up another Minneapolis school. Our officers used license plate readers to follow his car out of the state. With help from a sheriff’s office near Kansas City, he was in custody in Missouri within three hours.
这就是这项技术在最佳状态下的表现。而在最糟糕的情况下，它让警员数十次追踪前任伴侣的车辆，或将一张城市居民驾驶路线图交到联邦特工手中。两者皆是事实。华盛顿正在通过抛弃前者来回应后者。
That is this technology on its best day. On its worst, it lets an officer track a former partner’s car dozens of times, or hands federal agents a map of where a city’s residents drive. Both are true. Washington is answering the second by throwing away the first.
越来越多的城市已放弃了Flock Safety，该行业最大的供应商。跨党派的“Flock-Off法案”将切断任何继续使用该系统的部门的联邦资金。参议员伯尼·桑德斯（I-Vt.）和杰夫·默克利（D-Ore.）以及众议员亚历山德里亚·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯（D-N.Y.）提出的“Ban Flock法案”将从左翼方面做同样的事情。当参议院司法委员会下属小组委员会上个月邀请供应商的首席执行官出席作证时，没有一人到场。
A growing list of cities have dropped Flock Safety, the industry’s largest vendor. The bipartisan “Flock-Off Act” would cut federal funds to any department that keeps them. The Ban Flock Act from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) would do the same from the left. When a Senate Judiciary subcommittee invited the vendors’ CEOs to testify last month, none showed up.
另一方最响亮的声音是特朗普总统，他的辩护是：“我喜欢它们。”我理解这种愤怒。我在乔治·弗洛伊德被谋杀后领导了明尼阿波利斯警察局，此前还领导了纽瓦克警察局。只需一名警员践踏公民自由，就能摧毁数千名警员赢得的信任。批评者关于滥用行为的说法是正确的。数十名警员因使用车牌识别器跟踪他人而被解雇或起诉。
The loudest voice on the other side is President Trump, whose defense is, “I like them.”I understand the anger. I led the Minneapolis Police Department after George Floyd’s murder, and the Newark Police Department before that. It takes only one officer trampling civil liberties to destroy trust earned by thousands. Critics are right about the abuses. Dozens of officers have been fired or charged for using plate readers to stalk people.
但这场反弹瞄准了错误的目标。问题从来不在于摄像头，而在于缺乏治理。只有乔什·霍利参议员（R-Mo.）提出的“Stop Flock Abuse法案”试图制定规则来提供这种治理，即使该法案也将最重要的工作留给了各机构自身。
But the backlash is aimed at the wrong target. The problem was never the camera; it is the absence of governance. Only one bill, Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.) Stop Flock Abuse Act, tries to write rules to provide that, and even that leaves the most important job to the agencies themselves.
这种权衡是真实存在的。大西洋城在进出城的每条道路上都安装了读卡器，一项同行评议研究发现，枪击案、汽车盗窃和财产犯罪均有所下降。奥斯汀市在2025年放弃了Flock系统。今年春季发生一起连环枪击案后，该市的民主党市长表示，这些摄像头“本会有所帮助”。三条规则至关重要；几乎每项法案至少有两条做错了。
The tradeoff is real. Atlantic City put readers on every road in and out of town, and a peer-reviewed study found shootings, car thefts and property crime all fell. Austin dropped Flock in 2025. After a shooting spree this spring, its Democratic mayor said the cameras “would have been helpful.”Three rules matter most; nearly every bill gets at least two wrong.
第一，数据保留期限。新泽西州保留车牌数据三年；即使是Flock现在也默认保留一周。但特伦顿正在推进的一项法案将在48小时内删除几乎所有数据。这并不能保护隐私，反而会销毁证据并伤害受害者。目击者可能无法立即找到；被击昏的受害者可能要数天后才能恢复意识；度假归来的家庭可能发现家中被盗。在这些情形下，在48小时规则约束下——关键证据就消失了。
First, retention. New Jersey keeps plate data for three years; even Flock now defaults to a week. But a bill moving in Trenton would delete nearly everything within 48 hours. That does not protect privacy. It destroys evidence and punishes victims. A witness isn’t immediately located; a victim knocked out regains consciousness days later; a family on vacation returns to a home burglarized. In any of these scenarios, under a 48-hour rule — critical evidence is gone.
纽约大学法学院的警务项目有一个更好的方案：警方在大约一周后删除数据，一份密封副本由州总检察长保存一年，未经搜查令不得访问。保留证据，将其锁起来，把钥匙交给法官。
NYU Law’s Policing Project has a better answer. Police purge after about a week, and a sealed copy sits with the state attorney general for a year — off limits without a warrant. Keep the evidence, lock it away, give the key to a judge.
第二，监督。每项法案在保护公民自由方面都很薄弱；它们提出的解决方案是让机构自我审计。新泽西州上一次全州范围的审计由州警察进行，而州警察本身就是该系统的主要使用者，该审计涵盖517个机构，发现了两起重大违规行为。伊利诺伊州的机构从未在其摄像头数据中发现联邦移民特工，而是州务卿的审计人员发现了，这违反了州法律。
Second, oversight. Every bill is weak on protecting civil liberties; the solution they proposed is for agencies to audit themselves. New Jersey’s last statewide audit, run by the State Police, itself a major user, covered 517 agencies and found two significant violations. Illinois agencies never caught federal immigration agents in their camera data. The Secretary of State’s auditors did, and it was against state law.
在我担任警察局长期间，明尼阿波利斯市接受了一次独立审计。我们通过了，但仍然制定了更严格的规则。这就是外部人员的作用——他们能看到你看不到的东西，当他们给你清白时，公众就有理由接受它。
Minneapolis went through an independent audit while I was chief. We passed, and we still came out with tighter rules. That is the point of an outsider — they see what you cannot, and when they clear you, the public has reason to accept it.
第三，核实。摄像头会误读车牌，热点名单会过时；然而几乎没有一项法案对此有所涉及。在科罗拉多州奥罗拉市，警方根据一次误报行动，持枪逼迫一名妇女和四名女孩在停车场面朝下趴在地上。这使该市赔偿了190万美元。上个月，参议院的一名证人是一名佛罗里达州妇女，她因摄像头将其SUV误认为是致命车祸肇事逃逸车辆而被监禁。这些并非摄像头故障，而是未能进行核查的失败。在警官确认警报准确且最新之前，不应拦截任何人。
Third, verification. Cameras misread plates, hot lists go stale; yet almost no bill addresses it. In Aurora, Colo., officers acting on a false hit forced a woman and four girls to lie face-down in a parking lot at gunpoint. It cost the city $1.9 million. The Senate’s own witness last month was a Florida woman jailed after a camera misidentified her SUV as the vehicle fleeing a fatal crash. Those were not camera failures. They were failures to check. No one should be stopped until an officer confirms the alert is accurate and current.
与其拆除摄像头，不如看看会发生什么。许多“放弃”Flock的城镇已经与竞争对手签约；摄像头并不会消失。下一次大规模枪击事件将把剩下的城镇也带回来，就像它们最初到来时一样：毫无规则。
Tear the cameras down instead, and two things happen. Many of the towns that “dropped” Flock have already signed with a competitor; the cameras are not going anywhere. And the next shooting spree will bring back the rest, the same way they arrived the first time: with no rules at all.
危险从来不在于杆上的摄像头，而在于背后的数据库，以及谁有权打开它。在纽瓦克和明尼阿波利斯，改革意味着由警方以外的人设立护栏，并对越界行为追究后果。反弹让国会在警务问题上难得获得公众关注，并达成两党共识：必须有所改变。制定规则，保留工具；公众两者都需要。
The danger was never the camera on the pole. It is the database behind it, and who gets to open it. In Newark and Minneapolis, reform meant guardrails set by someone other than the police, and consequences for crossing them. The backlash has handed Congress something it rarely gets on policing — public attention and bipartisan agreement that something has to change. Write the rules and keep the tool; the public needs both.
布莱恩·奥哈拉曾担任新泽西州纽瓦克市副市长兼公共安全主任，以及明尼阿波利斯警察局第54任局长。他是罗格斯大学公共安全中心的杰出研究员，也是奥哈拉领导力集团的负责人。
Brian O’Hara served as deputy mayor and public safety director in Newark, N.J., and as the 54th chief of the Minneapolis Police Department. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Rutgers Center on Public Security and principal of the O’Hara Leadership Group.