Methods

How the records are requested, what we publish, what we hold back, and how to correct us.

The request

Agencies receive a standard request under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (MCL 15.231 et seq.), in two parts. Part A asks for documents: contracts, order forms and invoices; purchase orders and the council or board records approving them; the use policy; data-sharing agreements; the camera inventory; the retention period and the transparency portal address; and any internal audit or misuse record. Part B asks for the system's own exports: the search audit, the network audit, the sharing configuration, the change logs, hot-list alert reports, and the user list. Each request asks for native electronic files and a public-interest fee waiver. The text is on the file your own request page. We revise the standard text over time and adapt it where an agency's circumstances call for it, for example when an agency has ended its contract or paid for its cameras through a separate authority. Follow-up requests are written for the agency they go to. Every text as sent is published from the agency's page, so the reader can see exactly what was asked.

Where a county sheriff polices a city under contract, the request to the sheriff has both parts and the request to the city has Part A.

Some agencies' request forms cannot be submitted without agreeing to give up something the Act provides, such as its response deadline. Where a form requires that, we file by email.

Which agencies

The list covers police agencies in Oakland, Wayne and Macomb counties, the three county sheriffs, and the Michigan State Police, along with other bodies that may hold records about a camera system: county purchasing offices and commissions, the Detroit City Council and Board of Police Commissioners, and cities policed under contract by a sheriff. It is on the Agencies page and in agencies.csv.

Being on the list says nothing about whether an agency operates plate readers. The request is how we find out. The list will change as records arrive.

The requests filed so far are in the request log.

Five labels

Record The statement repeats what a document or an agency's data export says. The source is linked from the page. Documents we publish are listed in Documents.

Gap The agency did not produce something the request asked for. We note what the agency said about it, if anything.

Question The records leave a point unanswered. We send each question to the agency in writing: with the draft of its findings, or in a later letter when the question is added afterward. Its answer is published on the page.

Analysis This is our reading of the records, labeled so it is never mistaken for a record.

Reported The statement comes from a named, linked source outside our document library, such as a news report, a published council agenda or another project's data. Where the agency's own records later arrive, they replace it.

We describe what the records show and what they do not. The request log records how each agency handled our request: when it answered, what it decided and what it charged, taken from the agency's own correspondence. We also compare an agency's response with the text of the Act and with the appeals we have filed, and we say where they differ. Those comparisons are labeled Analysis; each quotes or cites the Act, and each appeal is published with the agency's documents. We do not ascribe intent to an agency or to anyone who works for it.

Right of reply

The request log is published as it happens. What we asked, when the agency answered, whether it took an extension, what it charged, whether it produced records or denied the request, and each appeal and its outcome are published when they occur, with the agency's letters and ours. The records an agency produces are not part of the log: they are published with the findings drawn from them. The fees and determinations are taken from the agency's letters and portal messages. The answer date is the day the response reached us, which can be later than the date on the letter. The due dates, the business-day counts and the status and waiver codes are ours, set under the rules in the codebook. The log is not sent to the agency for review, and an appeal in progress does not delay it.

Findings go to the agency first. Before we publish findings drawn from an agency's records (what its documents and data show, and every Gap, Question, Analysis or Reported statement about it), the agency's FOIA coordinator and its chief or sheriff receive the draft and seven days to correct facts or reply. The draft is sent once. The records themselves, in our public copies, and the data tables we derive from the agency's exports are published on the same day as the findings, so that each record appears with what we say about it and nothing about an agency is published in pieces.

After that the page changes as records arrive. A Gap, Question, Analysis or Reported statement added or changed after the agency's review is marked on the page with the date it was added or changed. The agency can reply at any time, and its reply is published on the page in its own words. When an agency shows that a statement is wrong, we correct it and give the reason in the corrections log.

A reply is redacted under the same rules as any record on this site and each redaction is marked; nothing else is cut or changed. If no reply arrives, the page says so and gives the date the draft was sent. The dates each draft was sent and answered are in the right-of-reply log, which is empty until the first findings are published. Agencies can write to records@michiganplatereaders.org at any time. A review draft is in the agency's possession from the day it is sent, so anyone may ask the agency for it under the Act.

What we redact

• Names of officers who ran individual searches or entered hot-list records. The public data replaces them with stable pseudonyms (Officer 01, Officer 02, and so on). Public copies of search logs have the name column blacked out. The mapping is kept offline and is never released. A pseudonym is stable within one log from one agency and does not carry over to another log or another agency; where an agency masked the names itself, the public data has no user column. Pseudonyms keep a name from being read off the page. They do not prevent re-identification by someone who holds an unredacted copy of the same log from another source and matches the rows.
• Names of employees in internal records: memos, emails, audit logs, billing-contact fields. Public copies keep the rank or role and black out the name.
• Case numbers, license plates, and the free-text reason an officer typed with a search. The offense category stays.
• Contact details of any person, including the requester: email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, account numbers. An agency's own office address, phone number and general mailbox, as printed on its letterhead and forms, are left in place.
• The requester's signature and handwriting. Where a filing was signed by hand, the site carries a typed copy of the same text; a signature reproduced in an agency's document is blacked out.
• Members of the public who speak at meetings.

We do not redact the names of public officials acting in a public capacity: a chief signing a contract, trustees voting, staff presenting to a board and recorded in its minutes. We do not redact the names of companies, community associations or other private organizations that appear in an agency's records, such as the organizations on its sharing list. Camera locations are published as the agency's own records give them, with the agency's label beside ours; we do not publish locations from crowd-sourced maps. An agency may lawfully release more than we choose to publish. Withholding names is our editorial decision. It implies no judgment of an agency that released them.

Request a redaction

Anyone who is named or can be identified in a document or data file on this site may ask us to redact it, and an agency may ask on behalf of an employee. Write to corrections@michiganplatereaders.org with the page or file and the passage.

We remove anything the rules above say should have been redacted and was missed: an officer's name in a search log, an employee's name in an internal record, a plate, a case number, a contact detail, the name of a member of the public. We also consider any request that shows a specific risk to a person's safety.

We do not remove the names of public officials acting in a public capacity, the names of agencies or companies, or the contents of a contract, vote, policy, invoice or agency letter. We do not remove a statement because an agency disagrees with it; the agency's reply is published on its page.

Each request and its outcome is entered in the corrections log with the date and the file affected, without naming the person who asked or repeating what was removed. When a file is redacted again its hash changes, and the documents table shows the new redaction.

Data

The full data directory is at /data/. Image-only documents are converted to text by OCR for analysis; where OCR was uncertain, the figures on this site come from the summary tables the agency printed, and the page says so.

Limitations

Every request the project has filed was sent by one person under his own name, asked for a public-interest fee waiver, and said the results would be made public. The request log shows how agencies answer a requester who has announced publication. It cannot show how the same agency would answer a request that says nothing about publication.

The standard request text is revised over time and adapted for some agencies, and follow-up requests are written for one agency, so not every agency was asked for exactly the same records. The request log compares agencies across these texts, and each row links the text that agency received, so a reader can allow for the differences.

Request log rows are entered from the agency's own letters and portal messages and checked against them. No second, independent coder reviews the entries; the agency's documents are linked from its page so a reader can check them.

Business days are our count. The day an emailed or portal request is deemed received, one business day after it is sent (MCL 15.235(1)), is day zero, and the count skips weekends, a fixed list of holidays applied to every agency, and any other holiday we know the agency observes; the fixed list is in the codebook published with the request log. An agency may count differently; its own dates are in its letters.

Search logs and network audits cover only the window the agency exported. The page that shows a log states its window.

Where a page rests on records an agency released to another requester, which we found on MuckRock, it says so at the top and names the MuckRock request. We did not file those requests, and a release made in an earlier year does not show what the agency holds today.

Corrections

Errors are corrected on the page and logged, with the date, in the corrections log. If you find one, write to corrections@michiganplatereaders.org.

License and reuse

The text and analysis on this site are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): copy and adapt them for any purpose, with credit. The data files are released under CC0 1.0: use them for any purpose, with or without credit.

The agency records published here are Michigan public records. They are reproduced as the agency produced them, with the redactions listed beside each file, and we claim no rights in them.

To cite the site: Michigan Plate Readers, michiganplatereaders.org, retrieved [date]. For a single page or file, add its title and address. The build date at the foot of every page identifies the version.

Why this is public

Michigan's FOIA opens with its purpose: "all persons ... are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them ... so that they may fully participate in the democratic process." Records obtained under the Act may be republished. Every request we file says the results will be made public; this site is that publication.