Sep 3, 2025 | By: Matthew Freeman

Beltrami Co. Board Hears More on License Plate Readers Installed in Bemidji

Bemidji residents have expressed some concerns over the last few months after several cameras were installed on multiple utility poles around the city. On Tuesday, Sergeant David Hart with the Paul Bunyan Drug Task Force told the Beltrami County Board that these eight cameras are automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and were installed by the Task Force.

“I underestimated the public interest in this,” admitted Hart. “These cameras capture images of the vehicle as they’re traveling past in the surrounding area, and then it gets a nice zoomed-in picture of the license plate itself.”

Those images are converted into files that capture data like time, date, and vehicle descriptions that the Task Force stores for use in future investigations if needed.

“It can also be used now with advancements with AI technology to not only search for a license plate, but search for make, models, colors, types of vehicles, and then unique identifiers,” Hart added.

The data is encrypted and stored in a cloud server. The Task Force retains the data for 30 days, at which point it’s overwritten. During the meeting, Hart said that what he wanted to clear the air on was that this technology cannot be used to monitor or track individuals.

“We’re not collecting data and having some large database or something like that,” he said. “These are not being used to monitor or track subjects of active investigations. Again, it gets deleted [after] 30 days, unless it gets exported as part of a criminal investigation, then it’s obviously subject to the [Minnesota] Government Data Practices Act.”

Members of the Beltrami County Board asked if the crime rate in the county is currently high enough to warrant these cameras being installed, which County Attorney David Hanson addressed.

“I do maintain a database of the crime rates for Beltrami County,” Hanson said. “I do all 87 counties [in the state], and we’re always in the top five consistently since 2015 when I started tracking it. We, in my opinion, do have a high crime rate.”

ALPRs have been in use for several years now, and Beltrami County Sheriff Jason Riggs believes they will be a massive benefit to not only the Task Force, but the Sheriff’s Office as well.

“The ALPRs been instrumental in finding hundreds of Silver alerts [for missing senior citizens] and AMBER alerts across the country every year because of the fact that they run 24/7,” he stated. “That’s the big benefit to them, is having that information.”

Hart ended the presentation by highlighting news articles that paint Bemidji as nothing more than a town full of crime. He said he doesn’t want to see those headlines in the future and believes these cameras will help make that reduction happen.

“I don’t want to continue to see us in the news for things like that,” Hart asserted. “I’m raising kids here. We need to do everything that we can to kind of turn the tide a little bit.”

Out of the eight cameras in use, seven are installed within Bemidji city limits and one is in Northern Township: