LAPD’s plan to install license plate readers on Western Avenue hits roadblock

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

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 on hold.

Nava disputed Cho’s account that the district had pulled funding for the cameras.

“We never committed any kind of funding. The cameras from Axon were supposed to be fully funded by Axon. They were a donation to PD,” he said. “There was no funding that was given to be pulled in the first place.”

He said the district plans to install a different type of camera, but that the details are still being worked out over the next few months, including how many cameras would be installed. 

The section of Western Avenue between Olympic and Santa Monica boulevards runs through both CD13 and CD10. A spokesperson for CD10 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LAPD initially described the cameras as part of a broader effort to combat human trafficking along Western Avenue ahead of the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics. The department said the cameras would help identify people involved in human trafficking and people targeting minors.

Advocates of sex workers have raised concerns that the cameras would increase police surveillance along the corridor and further criminalize people who work there.

Jayme Kusyk, a Koreatown resident and member of the abolitionist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, said replacing ALPRs with conventional surveillance cameras would not eliminate the concerns raised by sex workers.

“Certainly we definitely want less cameras up, so to any extent they’re fighting that, that’s great,” she said. “But a camera is a camera is a camera. It doesn’t have to be enabled with ALPR technology to still be really harmful.”

She said even conventional CCTV cameras could increase criminalization of sex workers.

“It still increases criminalization. It won’t decrease demand,” she said, adding that clients could become more volatile if they believe they are being watched.

At an Olympic Division Community Police Advisory Board meeting on Nov. 4, LAPD Officer Dan Chavez said officers conducted an operation that morning that resulted in multiple arrests related to sex work, including one person arrested on suspicion of pimping.

One of the sex workers “provided our officers with information saying that she was being pimped by this person and they were able to arrest that individual,” he said. 

The city also recently debated the use of Axon’s license plate reader technology.

On Oct. 6, the City Council voted 10-4 to assert jurisdiction over the Police Commission’s approval of an Axon pilot program that would install automated license plate readers on city streetlights. Soto-Martínez, who represents CD13, and Heather Hutt, who represents CD 10, both voted in favor.

The council later voted to veto the pilot, but the measure failed because it needed 10 votes to overturn the Police Commission’s approval. The veto received nine votes on Oct. 27. Hutt and Soto-Martínez both voted in favor of the veto.

Los Angeles Documenter, Ashley Bolter, contributed reporting for this story from the Nov. 4 Olympic Area Community Police Advisory Board meeting. The L.A. Documenters program trains and pays community members to document proceedings at public meetings. Learn more about the program here.