Atlas · State

Michigan

What is documented about automated license plate surveillance in Michigan — and what is still an open question.

Are automated license plate readers used in Michigan?

Yes. Volunteers have recorded 3,564 automated license plate reader camera locations in Michigan, across 54 counties. That is a floor, not an inventory — it counts what someone has mapped, not what exists.

Camera data retrieved Aug 15, 2026 · Most recent record Aug 11, 2026

3,564 Camera coordinates 3.0% of the 118,623 we hold nationally. Community-reported, not field-verified by us.
54 Counties with a mapped camera Assigned geometrically from Census county boundaries. A county with no entry has no mapped camera, which is not the same as none.
1 Documented decisions 0 ended, declined, or suspended · 1 adopted, renewed, or expanded.
0 Full dossiers Places researched down to retention, sharing, warrant standard, and audit policy — including the fields that come back unknown.

Known ALPR locations

Coverage incomplete

  • Camera coordinate
  • Jurisdiction record — no camera coordinates held
  • Program ended, declined, or prohibited

3,564 mapped camera coordinates · 42 jurisdiction records · 50 of 50 states have data. Camera coordinates © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Boundaries and roads: US Census, public domain. Roads are drawn for orientation only — a camera near a road is not a claim about which road it watches.

Pinned to Michigan. Open the national Atlas to compare with neighbouring states.

Who supplies the cameras

Vendor attribution as recorded by OpenStreetMap contributors. Where a contributor did not identify the vendor the record reads “Unspecified” — that is an unrecorded fact, not a vendorless camera.

Vendor Mapped cameras Share
Flock Safety 2,923 82.0%
Motorola Solutions 282 7.9%
Genetec 172 4.8%
Unspecified 97 2.7%
Avigilon 58 1.6%
Axis Communications 18 0.5%
Rekor 4 0.1%
Neology 3 0.1%
Axon 3 0.1%
Bosch 2 0.1%
Leonardo/Elsag 2 0.1%

Where in Michigan

3,514 mapped cameras assigned to the county containing them. The 42 remaining counties with at least one mapped camera are in the open data.

  • Wayne 1,180
  • Oakland 532
  • Genesee 248
  • Macomb 233
  • Kent 224
  • Kalamazoo 132
  • Ingham 89
  • Muskegon 85
  • Ottawa 78
  • Calhoun 71
  • Saginaw 69
  • Jackson 66

What governments here have decided

Every decision we hold for Michigan, most recent first. The Decision Record exists because deployment databases record arrivals and not reversals.

Jurisdiction Decision Date Vendor Sourcing
Warren Renewed Jul 14, 2026 Flock Safety Reported

Signal

No Signal story yet names Michigan. That is a gap in our coverage rather than a quiet state — send us what you are seeing.

National developments that apply here

These are not about Michigan specifically. They govern the cameras in it.

Documented harms and verification

Incidents

None recorded in Michigan. Documented harms are hard to find without audit logs; requesting them is usually how one surfaces.

Verified Unsurveilled

What we don’t know about Michigan

7 open questions carried by records in this state. Each one is published rather than left blank, because an unresolved question a resident can answer is worth more than a page that looks finished.

  • Does the Ypsilanti Police Department have access to any county, regional, state, or vendor ALPR database operated by another agency? Ypsilanti verification · public records request
  • Does Ypsilanti have a general surveillance-technology approval ordinance, or only the ALPR prohibition? Ypsilanti verification · public records request
  • Does the city or department use facial recognition or other biometric identification in any form? Ypsilanti verification · public records request
  • Has the city purchased location data from any data broker? Ypsilanti verification · public records request
  • Is a surveillance technology inventory published, and is it current? Ypsilanti verification · public records request
  • Does the city publish an annual surveillance transparency report? Ypsilanti verification · public records request
  • Have there been amendments, repeals, or exceptions to Ordinance No. 1401 since 2022? Ypsilanti verification · council agenda

Help close the gaps.

We hold records for 1 Michigan jurisdiction. There are far more than that. A single records request from a resident often establishes more than weeks of desk research.