Half of New Jersey residents are opposed to the use of automated license plate readers by local law enforcement, according to a recent Rutgers-Eagleton poll.
Nearly 7 in 10 support requiring police to get a warrant before searching license plate reader data. About two-thirds support requiring that license plate reader data be deleted after six months instead of the three years currently allowed.
“New Jerseyans don’t agree on whether they want these cameras in their communities, but they largely agree on how they should be governed if they are there,” said Ashley Koning, an assistant research professor and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Requiring a warrant, requiring monthly audits and shortening how long the data is kept each draw majority support across the board.”
Political party affiliation is the widest divide on license plate readers overall, the poll found. Republicans are the most supportive partisan of the technology and the least supportive of limits on it. Democrats and independents support requiring a warrant before searching the data and barring New Jersey police from sharing data with law enforcement in other states. Independents are the more supportive of requiring monthly audits than either Democrats or Republicans.
The state’s youngest residents are the least supportive age group of license plate readers used by local law enforcement: Twenty-eight percent of those 18 to 34 support the use of the technology, sharply below every older cohort (45% among ages 35 to 49, 48% among those 50 to 64 and 55% among those 65 and older).
Results are from a statewide poll of 1,004 adults contacted through the probability-based Rutgers-Eagleton/SSRS Garden State Panel from Sept. 24 to Sept. 27. The full sample has a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points.
