Policies

City of Stillwater, MN does not appear anywhere in the Minnesota BCA's 2025 statewide UAV/drone legislative report (135 agencies filed statewide, checked in full), even though Stillwater Police Department is a confirmed ALPR-using agency per the state's separate LPR-agency list -- the two are different technologies/disclosures, and this indicates no UAV deployment was reported to the state for 2025 specifically.

Checked the full text of the BCA's 2025 UAV report directly (24-page PDF, full text extracted and searched) for this government's name and plausible variants; no match found in any of the by-agency tables.

Last checked 2026-09-20

Stillwater Police Department administrative policy (Policy 427, Lexipol-licensed manual) governing capture, storage, use, retention, audit and release of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) data, citing Minn. Stat. § 626.8472 and § 13.824. Non-investigative data is destroyed no later than 60 days from collection; the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension must be notified within 10 days of any ALPR installation; biennial audits are required.

Policy document confirmed by direct fetch (PDF text extraction via reader proxy, direct curl to the .gov PDF returned HTTP 403/Akamai block) on 2026-09-20. Document is titled 'Policy 427 ALPR.pdf', header reads 'Policy 427 Stillwater Police Department -- Policy Manual', footer stamp reads 'Copyright Lexipol, LLC 2026/04/30' (used as effective/revision date; no separate 'Effective Date' field was present in the extracted text). Found via stillwatermn.gov Police > Policies page, which lists it under heading 'Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)' alongside ~18 other numbered Lexipol policies (e.g. Policy 300 Use of Force, Policy 423 Body Worn Camera). This is distinct from the 2024-11-06 Workshop agenda item 'Police Department Purchase Request for Camera System and License Plate Reader' (Meeting id 6aaf1d188078a353b9011e6b), which is an equipment-purchase discussion item, not this data-handling policy. Checked Meeting records for this government from 2024-11-06 through 2025-02-18 (8 meetings) for a possible follow-up Council vote on the camera/LPR purchase; meeting records exist for that period but agenda-item-level text was not exhaustively searched for a vote resolution, and no evidence of a Council vote specifically adopting this ALPR policy document (as opposed to authorizing equipment purchase) was found. Also confirmed via the separate Stillwater 'Automatic License Plate Readers' transparency page (city site) that data retention is stated publicly as 30 days (differs from the 60-day non-investigative-data destruction deadline stated in the policy text itself, which allows for retention up to 60 days with earlier deletion typical -- both are Stillwater's own statements, not a contradiction that was investigated further here).

Last checked 2026-09-20