Louisiana License Plate Reader Laws

Status at a glance

The only ALPR statute: tampering

Louisiana’s one statute that names license plate readers is narrow. La. R.S. 14:57.1, added by Acts 2024, No. 343, is a criminal law against damaging or interfering with cameras. It doesn’t set rules for how police use ALPRs or the data they collect.

Subsection A makes it unlawful for any person “to intentionally vandalize, tamper with, or destroy a crime camera system” by causing damage, changing the “location, position, aim, focus, or functionality of the system,” tampering with its performance, or making it inoperable.

Subsection B defines the protected equipment. A crime camera system “includes any camera or license plate reader erected or installed for the purpose of observing or deterring illegal activity,” along with its poles, software, power supply, data connectivity hardware and other parts. The definition doesn’t say whether the camera must be publicly or privately owned.

Under subsection C, a violator “shall be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than two years or may be fined not more than two thousand dollars, or both.”

What the statute doesn’t cover

R.S. 14:57.1 protects the cameras. It doesn’t regulate the people who run them. It says nothing about permitted police uses, how long data is kept, sharing between agencies, stops based on alerts, public records, audits or what happens to evidence gathered in breach of any rule. We found no other Louisiana statute that does.

An earlier attempt at an ALPR statute didn’t become law. The Legislature’s page for 2016 SB 54, an ALPR pilot program bill, shows it was “Involuntarily deferred in House and Governmental Affairs.” Where rules on use and retention exist, they come from agency policies like the one below.

One agency’s policy: New Orleans

New Orleans Police Department Operations Manual Chapter 41.3.9, “License Plate Recognition System,” shows an effective date of 01/15/2017 and a revision date of 01/7/2024. It is one department’s policy, not a statute. Other Louisiana agencies may follow different rules.

• Use. LPR systems “are authorized for official public safety purposes,” and misuse “may result in disciplinary actions” (para. 2). Reads “shall not be cross-checked to obtain ownership information except for legitimate and officially sanctioned law enforcement investigations” (para. 15).
• Retention. Data is kept under a departmental schedule. “Absent specific a specific schedule, the data shall be purged after 60 days” (para. 20; the doubled wording is in the original).
• Sharing. Data disseminated outside the department or cooperating agencies must be recorded in a Secondary Dissemination Log that shows “what was shared, why it was shared, and when and who authorized the sharing” (para. 18). Sharing among agencies follows memoranda of understanding, cooperative endeavor agreements or departmental policies (para. 19).
• Alerts. Before a stop on an alert or hit, the officer must visually verify that the plate matches, including “the state of issuance,” and check the plate’s status by MDT query when circumstances allow (para. 10). “Mere receipt of an alarm is not sufficient probable cause to warrant an arrest” (para. 11).
• Records. Investigations that use LPR data “shall document the fact that LPR data was used in the investigative case report” (para. 14). The administrator should “ensure periodic audits” (para. 5(b)).

Courts and the state constitution

We found no Louisiana appellate decision on ALPRs. Secondary sources describe Article I, Section 5 of the Louisiana Constitution as giving more protection than the Fourth Amendment, but we didn’t retrieve an official copy of an opinion saying so. We list that category as not verified. For the federal question, see is ALPR a search?

What this can mean in a Louisiana case

• Which agency’s cameras captured the data, and what does that agency’s written policy say about retention and sharing? See ALPR data retention and sharing.
• For New Orleans data, was it kept past 60 days, and if so, under what departmental schedule?
• If data went to another agency, is there an entry in the Secondary Dissemination Log? See audit logs and search records.
• For a stop on an alert, did the officer verify the plate characters and state of issuance first? See ALPR alert traffic stops.
• Does the case report document that LPR data was used, as the New Orleans policy requires?