# A.C.A. § 27-52-110 — County Automated Enforcement Device Statute A two-page printout from **Westlaw Arkansas Code Annotated** of **A.C.A. § 27-52-110** — *"Automated enforcement device operated by county government or department of state government operating outside municipality"* — included in the [[Pulaski County Flock Safety MSA and Order Form (Contract 6764)|Flock contract file]] as a reference exhibit. The Westlaw printout shows the statute as **effective August 1, 2023** under the 2023 amendments (Acts of 2023, Act 707, § 1). *Observation:* the effective date of the amended statute is the same week as the August 7, 2023 Award Letter to Flock — i.e., the statute was current Arkansas law at the moment of the Flock procurement, and Pulaski County's procurement office took the trouble to keep a copy of it in the contract file. This is a primary public record (Arkansas statute text); embedded as a Tier-1 corpus document via the Westlaw printout that the County included in the FOIA-produced file. ## What's inside Two-page Westlaw printout, with the standard footer *"WESTLAW © 2023 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works."* ### The statute (verbatim, lightly cleaned for OCR artifacts) > *"§ 27-52-110. Automated enforcement device operated by county government or department of state government operating outside municipality — Definitions* > > *Effective: August 1, 2023* > > *(a) As used in this section:* > > *(1) 'Automated enforcement device' means a system operated by a county government or a department of state government that is operating outside of a municipality that:* > > *(A) Uses a device that is capable of detecting a speeding violation; and* > > *(B) Photographs or records an image of the vehicle used in committing the violation, the operator of the vehicle, or the license plate of the vehicle;* > > *(2) 'Highway work zone' means the area upon or adjacent to a controlled-access highway of this state where construction, reconstruction, or maintenance work is performed; and* > > *(3) 'Municipality' means a city of the first class, a city of the second class, or an incorporated town.* > > *(b) Except as used under subsection (c) of this section, an automated enforcement device shall not be used by a law enforcement agency of a county or a department of state government that is operating outside of a municipality to detect or enforce:* > > *(1) A violation of the traffic laws, rules, or regulations of the State of Arkansas; or* > > *(2) An ordinance of the municipality.* > > *(c)(1) A county government or a department of state government that is operating outside of a municipality may use an automated enforcement device to detect and enforce a violation of traffic laws or ordinances:* > > *(A) In a school zone;* > > *(B) At a railroad crossing; or* > > *(C) In a highway work zone.* > > *(2) If a county or a department of state government that is operating outside of a municipality uses an automated enforcement device, then a certified law enforcement officer must issue the citation to the violator at the time of the violation.* > > *(d) This section shall not prevent the Arkansas Highway Police Division of the Arkansas Department of Transportation from using automated enforcement devices to enforce state or federal motor carrier laws.* > > *(e) Automated enforcement device data that is not related to an active criminal or civil investigation shall not be retained by a county government or a department of state government.* > > *Credits* > > *Acts of 2005, Act 1451, § 1, eff. Aug. 12, 2005; Acts of 2017, Act 707, § 354, eff. Aug. 1, 2017; Acts of 2019, Act 315, § 3158, eff. July 24, 2019; Acts of 2023, Act 707, § 1, eff. Aug. 1, 2023.* ## Legislative history | Act | Year | Effective | Substance | |---|---|---|---| | Act 1451 of 2005 § 1 | 2005 | August 12, 2005 | Original enactment | | Act 707 of 2017 § 354 | 2017 | August 1, 2017 | Reclassification or substantive amendment (not separately characterized in the production) | | Act 315 of 2019 § 3158 | 2019 | July 24, 2019 | Reclassification or substantive amendment | | **Act 707 of 2023 § 1** | **2023** | **August 1, 2023** | **The most recent substantive amendment**; the version included in the contract file | The 2023 Act 707, § 1 amendment is the current operative version. The wiki does not contain the legislative-history journal entries that would specify which subsections were added or modified by each Act; a follow-up to the Arkansas Legislature's bill-history database would clarify. ## Key takeaways - **The statute prohibits county-government use of automated enforcement devices for general traffic-law enforcement outside municipalities** (subsection (b)). Counties may use such devices only in three narrow contexts (school zone, railroad crossing, highway work zone), and only when a certified officer issues the citation contemporaneously (subsection (c)). - **Subsection (e) is the data-retention provision.** *"Automated enforcement device data that is not related to an active criminal or civil investigation shall not be retained by a county government or a department of state government."* This rule, if read strictly, would prohibit any standing retention of plate-read or other ALPR-style data by a county government when not tied to an active investigation. - **The threshold question for application to Flock LPR is whether Flock cameras are "automated enforcement device[s]" under subsection (a)(1).** The definition requires **both**: - (A) capability to detect a **speeding violation**, *and* - (B) photographic recording of the vehicle, operator, or license plate. Flock Falcon cameras photograph license plates and run them against hot lists — clearly satisfying (B). But Flock cameras are **not engineered to detect speeding violations**; they detect plate matches and Vehicle Fingerprint attributes (color, body type, decals). Flock's [[Pulaski County Flock Safety MSA and Order Form (Contract 6764)|MSA]] does not represent the cameras as speed-detection devices, and Flock's customer-facing materials describe them as a plate-recognition and Vehicle-Fingerprint platform. *Observation:* the most natural reading is that Flock cameras do not satisfy element (A) — they do not detect speeding violations — and therefore do not fall within the § 27-52-110 definition of "automated enforcement device." If that reading is correct, subsection (e)'s data-retention rule does not apply to PCSO's Flock deployment, and the [[Arkansas Automatic License Plate Reader System Act]]'s 150-day cap (§ 12-12-1808) controls instead. The wiki notes this analysis but does not resolve it as a legal matter; it is the County's and PCSO's legal interpretation that controls. - **The County procurement office's inclusion of the statute in the contract file is documentary evidence of awareness.** Whoever assembled Contract 6764 — likely [[Tashika Keown]] or a County Attorney's Office reviewer — deliberately included this statute. The most parsimonious explanation is that someone on the County side considered whether § 27-52-110 might apply to the Flock procurement and kept the statute in the file as part of the legal-record. The corpus does not contain an internal memorandum or correspondence resolving the question. - **The "outside of a municipality" framing is structurally relevant for PCSO.** All 6 of PCSO's Flock camera locations (per [[Pulaski County ARDOT Right-of-Way Permit Request for Flock Cameras|the ARDOT permit letter]]) are within municipal jurisdictions (Little Rock, North Little Rock, Jacksonville) or unincorporated areas. § 27-52-110 explicitly applies to "operating outside of a municipality" — meaning cameras placed within a city's incorporated limits are *not* governed by this statute. The cameras at Crystal Valley Rd (unincorporated Pulaski County) would fall within § 27-52-110's territorial scope; the others might not. The wiki notes the territorial-scope question; the unsettled application to mixed-location deployments is a separate question from the "automated enforcement device" definitional question. - **§ 27-52-110 does not preempt the [[Arkansas Automatic License Plate Reader System Act|ALPR Act]] (§§ 12-12-1801–1808).** The two statutes regulate different vehicular surveillance scenarios. Section 27-52-110 covers speed-detection-cum-photo devices used for traffic enforcement; the ALPR Act covers plate-reader systems regardless of speed-detection function. PCSO's Flock system is administered under the ALPR Act framework — [[PCSO ALPR Six-Month Practice and Usage Report]] is compiled pursuant to § 12-12-1805; the 30-day retention period in the [[Pulaski County Flock Safety MSA and Order Form (Contract 6764)|MSA]] is well within § 12-12-1808's 150-day cap. ## Cross-references - [[Arkansas Automatic License Plate Reader System Act]] — the statute that does directly govern Flock's plate-reader deployment at PCSO. - [[Pulaski County Flock Safety MSA and Order Form (Contract 6764)]] — the contract file that included this statute as a reference exhibit; specifies a 30-day retention period. - [[Pulaski County ARDOT Right-of-Way Permit Request for Flock Cameras]] — the deployment-location documentation relevant to the "outside of a municipality" territorial scope. ## Open questions / follow-ups - **Why the County included the statute in the contract file.** No internal memorandum, opinion letter, or correspondence accompanies the included Westlaw printout. Whether the inclusion reflects a deliberate legal analysis by the County or a routine procurement-officer habit of attaching potentially-relevant statutes is unknown. - **Whether PCSO's plate-read database includes data unrelated to active investigations.** PCSO's [[PCSO ALPR Six-Month Practice and Usage Report|6-month report]] documents 1,422,898 plates scanned over 4.5 months — far more reads than the 2,092 confirmed alerts. The non-alert reads are by definition not tied to an active investigation; whether they are retained for any period beyond the moment of scan is governed by the 30-day MSA retention. Under a strict reading of § 27-52-110(e) (assuming the statute applied), the routine 30-day retention of non-alert reads would be problematic. The non-application argument turns on whether Flock cameras are "automated enforcement devices." - ~~**The statute's bill history.**~~ **Resolved 2026-06-05 evening** via Tier-2 web research: Act 707 of 2023 (SB 481, sponsored by Sen. Kim Hammer + Rep. Lanny Fite, approved 4/11/2023, effective 8/1/2023) was the most recent amendment (primary public record, [Act 707 of 2023 — Amending A.C.A. § 27-52-110](../../../../web%20archive/2026-06-05/arkleg.state.ar.us/act-707-of-2023-amending-aca-27-52-110-county-automated-enforcement-device.md)). The Act amended both § 27-52-110 (county) and § 27-52-111 (municipal) in parallel. **The Act's substantive change to (a)(1)(A) was the removal of the "photo-radar" qualifier**, broadening the device-definition from "Uses a photo-radar device that is capable of detecting a speeding violation" (pre-Act-707) to simply "Uses a device that is capable of detecting a speeding violation" (post-Act-707). Subsection (e), the data-retention rule, was added by Act 707 as a new provision; it did not exist in the 2020 code. The bill's prior-version arkleg legislative-history detail is in the archive's record. Act 707 also added the "Highway work zone" definition and exception in (a)(2) and (c)(1)(C), and added the certified-LEO-present-and-issue-citation requirement in (c)(2). The Flock-cameras-do-not-detect-speeding analysis above remains correct under the broadened post-Act-707 definition — the photo-radar removal expanded the scope to non-radar speed-detection devices, but devices that don't detect speeding still fall outside the definition. - **Whether other Arkansas counties have considered the § 27-52-110 application question for their Flock deployments** is not in the corpus. The corpus does not document the other 74 Arkansas counties' Flock procurement status.