In one case it found that a grey Chevy owned by David Zayas made a trips typical of a drug trafficker including nine trips from Massachusetts to different parts of New York between October 2020 and August 2021 following routes known to be used by narcotics pushers and for conspicuously short stays.

In March 10 last year, Westchester PD pulled him over and searched his car, finding 112 grams of crack cocaine, a semiautomatic pistol and $34,000 in cash inside. A year later, Zayas pleaded guilty to a drug trafficking charge.

Westchester PD's license plate surveillance system was built by Rekor, a $125 million market cap AI company trading on the NASDAQ. Local reporting and public government data reviewed by Forbes show Rekor has sold its ALPR tech to at least 23 police departments and local governments across America, from Lauderhill, Florida to San Diego, California. That's not including more than 40 police departments across New York state who can avail themselves of Westchester County PD's system, which runs out of its Real-Time Crime Center.

It also runs the Rekor Public Safety Network, an opt-in project that has been aggregating vehicle location data from customers for the last three years, since it launched with information from 30 states that, at the time, were reading 150 million plates per month. That kind of centralised database with cross-state data sharing, has troubled civil rights activists, especially since Sacramento County Sheriff's Office was sharing license plate reader data with states that have banned abortion.