ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The decision on how long the Alexandria Police Department keeps license plate reader data rests with City Council, the department said Friday, answering a question that had gone unresolved through a month of public debate over the technology.
"The Alexandria City Council will make the decision, informed by input from the City Manager and Police Department," Strategic Communications Manager Tracy Walker wrote in response to questions from The Alexandria Brief.
The answer matters because of where council now stands. The Alexandria Times reported Wednesday that all seven members support removing the department's Flock Safety cameras, and Mayor Alyia Gaskins told council Tuesday that she does not think there is a role for Flock in Alexandria. Gaskins has been seeking answers about the program since June 2025, when she asked the city manager how many cameras Alexandria had and who outside APD could reach the data.
Alexandria retains data for 21 days, the maximum Virginia law allows. Flock cut its recommended default to seven days on Aug. 13. Gaskins told the Times she supports deleting data after seven days.
APD told the Brief on Sept. 6 that it had made no decision to change the 21-day period. Friday's response did not revisit that, but identified who would make the call.
What else the department answered
The Brief sent APD seven questions on Aug. 14, the day after Flock announced changes to its product. Three were answered Sept. 6. The rest were answered Friday.
On audits. The department said it uses Flock's Audit Assistance feature, which flags abnormal activity for administrator review, as part of its regular audit process. Flock will require all law enforcement customers to adopt it by the end of this year; Alexandria already has. The department audits its system every 30 days.
Walker defined misuse as accessing a law enforcement database for a purpose that is not a lawful, legitimate public safety need, and said no instance identified through an audit has resulted in discipline or referral for misuse.
That answer addresses intent rather than error. The Times reported this month that department audit reports documented at least 56 apparent instances of improper use, most involving officers who did not supply a case number or adequate explanation. Police Chief Tarrick McGuire told council Tuesday those were clerical, occurred over several years, and that officers who repeat them are coached and eventually locked out pending retraining.
The department did not say what share of its searches the monthly audit reviews. The state model ALPR policy sets a floor of at least 5% of monthly queries, downloads and ALPR-driven traffic stops. Alexandria's Directive 10.40, which McGuire signed in October, sets no threshold. The Brief has asked that question three times since Aug. 14.
On case codes. Authorized personnel must associate every search with a case or computer-aided dispatch number and give a specific reason, Walker wrote, and the search must fall within one of the purposes Virginia law allows, selected from a dropdown. Flock will require case codes of all customers by year's end.
On the offense filter. Flock now lets agencies block other departments from searching their cameras for particular categories of offense — its own example was allowing stolen vehicle and violent crime searches while blocking immigration-related ones. APD said it is evaluating all agency-level controls, including that one, and is working with the City Manager and city leadership on the appropriate governance framework.
McGuire told council Tuesday the department has the ability to wall off localities that have 287(g) agreements deputizing their officers for federal immigration enforcement, after Councilman Abdel-Rahman Elnoubi asked. He said his staff is reviewing the agencies APD shares data with. The Times has reported that 11 agencies on Alexandria's sharing list have such agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On search volume. The Brief asked how many searches of Alexandria's cameras outside agencies ran in the past 12 months. The department answered with a figure for the statewide network instead: participating Virginia agencies conducted roughly 500,000 searches of the network over the past year.
Walker noted that a network search does not mean Alexandria camera data was returned, and that Alexandria data comes back only when it matches the criteria of a legitimate search. The department did not provide an Alexandria-specific count.
On the portal. The Brief asked why Alexandria's transparency page did not display sharing partners or search activity, fields that appeared four days later, on Aug. 18, without explanation. The department did not address the timing, saying instead that it complies with state law, that transparency is essential to public trust, and that publishing the information alongside its new public safety dashboard is a step toward that goal.
The cases APD cited
The Brief also asked whether there was anything more recent than the two 2023 examples on the city's Flock portal. The department said license plate readers have supported 35 criminal investigations in 2026 by its violent and property crime unit alone, including four critically missing-person cases, and offered four examples.
In July, a woman reported her husband critically missing after he failed to return from a solo road trip. He was driving without air conditioning, with the family dogs, and had a history of disorientation behind the wheel. A reader hit placed his vehicle in southern Virginia. Working through NCIC, VCIN and State Police, officers located him traveling the wrong way on an interstate and got him home.
In June 2025, three masked men robbed a victim at gunpoint on Hoffs Run and fled in a dark vehicle. Reader data on the vehicle's location helped investigators develop leads. One man pleaded guilty to armed robbery and reckless handling of a firearm and will be sentenced in October. Two other suspects died of injuries from an unrelated violent incident in Washington.
Over June and July 2025, the department investigated a series of indecent sexual acts across Del Ray, Rosemont, North Ridge and Old Town. Vehicle-location data helped connect the incidents and identify a suspect, leading to the August arrest of a registered sex offender from Washington on 10 misdemeanor charges.
In October 2025, a Domino's delivery driver was robbed at gunpoint and carjacked. The vehicle was recovered the next morning and two suspects were arrested, with reader hits among the evidence corroborating the vehicle's movements. The case ended in convictions, restitution and a lifetime protective order.
What remains open
The department has not said what percentage of searches its audit reviews, a question the Brief has now asked three times. It has not said how many searches of Alexandria's cameras outside agencies ran, or why the two portal fields appeared when they did. It has not published camera locations, which Gaskins asked for in August and the department declined on Sept. 6, citing operational and investigative considerations.
The numbers the city does publish keep moving. Alexandria's portal reported 329 search sessions over the past 30 days as of Friday, and lists 152 agencies that can search its cameras, down from 161 on Aug. 18 with none added. The dashboard APD published Tuesday, which breaks 1,348 searches out by offense type led by motor vehicle theft at 292, had not been updated as of Friday. The page says it refreshes roughly every 30 days.
City Manager James Parajon told council Tuesday that staff would return with answers in days for some questions and a couple of weeks for others, published on the city website.
No date has been set for council to take up the retention question. The Brief asked Gaskins on Friday when council may consider it. This story will be updated when a response and more information is received.
Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
