Seattle Police Want to Add StarChase Car Tracking to Technology Arsenal

Critics argue the car tracking technology’s efficacy is low and deployment would expand the scope of warrantless surveillance.

During a bonanza of new police technology authorization last year, the Seattle City Council granted approval to the Seattle Police Department (SPD) to install CCTV cameras, buy new real time crime center software, and majorly expand its number of license plate readers. SPD is now seeking to begin using StarChase, another new technology that falls under the city’s surveillance ordinance. 

StarChase technology is billed as a way for police to avoid dangerous high-speed pursuits that are known to cause many traffic deaths and injuries, which often includes innocent bystanders. StarChase consists of GPS tracker launchers attached to police patrol cars that can deploy a GPS tracking tag onto another vehicle. 

In a briefing to the council’s public safety committee, SPD Captain James Britt described the tags as being both sticky and having magnets. Once affixed, the tags can then be used to track the vehicle remotely, which SPD plans to do primarily through its new real time crime center, which the department says will be fully operational on May 20. The battery life of a tag is approximately eight hours. 

SPD would be allowed to use these trackers when officers have a “reasonable suspicion” of the vehicle’s involvement in a crime. Probable cause is a higher standard that is generally required for search warrants.

Privacy and civil rights advocates have serious concerns about the new technology.

“The use of StarChase poses serious concerns about accountability, oversight, and privacy,” said Tee Sannon, ACLU of Washington’s Technology Policy Program Director. “This technology enables law enforcement to tag and track vehicles in the moment without judicial approval, which is a significant expansion of police power and could enable warrantless surveillance. Once collected, the retention, use, and sharing of this data also raises concerns for people’s privacy.”

State’s rollback of new pursuit laws

In 2021, the Washington state legislature passed HB 1054 in response to the George Floyd protests. The bill limited the scenarios in which an officer could engage in a vehicular pursuit. “At the time, nearly half of pursuit fatalities were uninvolved bystanders, passengers, or officers,” Dr. Shannon Cheng, the chair of police accountability group People Power Washington, told The Urbanist.

Officers could still pursue drivers when they had a reasonable suspicion they were engaged in driving under the influence, but the law required the higher probable cause standard of proof for officers to pursue vehicles carrying people they suspected of committing violent crimes. And officers were not supposed to engage at all in dangerous vehicular pursuits of people who they suspected of low-level, non-violent crimes such as theft or property damage.

Law enforcement agencies were not happy about the change. “The next three legislative sessions saw a full-on press from law enforcement and their allies blaming the ‘inability’ to pursue for a host of negatives,” Cheng said. “Misinformation about what the policy disallowed and fearmongering about the breakdown of society as a result of restrictions on pursuits led to the legislature capitulating and a near-complete rollback in 2024.”

The rollback returned the required standard of proof to the lower reasonable suspicion for all pursuits and removed the ban against vehicular pursuits for low-level crimes. 

Misleading presentation from SPD

SPD has received a grant of $250,000 from the Washington State Department of Commerce for the purpose of purchasing pursuit technology. This money will cover installation of StarChase onto 25 SPD vehicles, as well as a two-year subscription to the associated tracking software. Should SPD want to retain the StarChase program after the two-year period, the software subscription would cost the City $37,500 annually. 

Britt said the new technology is “not meant to change our pursuit policy.”

In his presentation to the Seattle City Council, Britt said SPD is seeking to use StarChase to comply with this new state law. “We’re seeking this because of the updates to the state law […] which requires agencies to develop a plan to end the pursuit through the use of available pursuit intervention options,” Britt said. “So this technology fulfills our obligations to meet that state requirement.”

The actual language of the bill states the following: “As soon as practicable after initiating a vehicular pursuit, the pursuing officer, supervising officer, if applicable, or responsible agency shall develop a plan to end the pursuit through the use of available pursuit intervention options, such as the use of the pursuit intervention technique, deployment of spike strips or other tire deflation devices, or other department authorized pursuit intervention tactics.” 

The bill is clearly referencing the protocol an officer should follow for any individual given pursuit that might occur, and just as clearly does not require law enforcement agencies to purchase new technology in order to be in compliance. 

Council President Sara Nelson asked Britt if the state bill has a “due date when you were supposed to test alternative technologies.” 

Britt responded, “I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that, ma’am.”

The bill does not require law enforcement agencies to test alternative technologies at all, nor does it include a due date. Britt’s response raises the question of how he could be unaware of the language in the very section of law he cited in his presentation.

Nelson, appearing to continue to believe in a nonexistent due date, went on to say that the state law is part of what’s driving the council’s schedule regarding this technology. 

Questions of process

Britt said SPD worked with the Seattle Information Technology department to determine how to gain approval for StarChase. “It was determined that this qualifies as a material update to the existing GPS tracking SIR (surveillance impact report), and therefore didn’t need a full process,” Britt said.

A material update of a surveillance impact report is a less extensive process than creating a new report and is used when, for example, the purpose or manner of a surveillance technology being deployed is being changed. 

The existing surveillance impact report referenced by Britt, adopted by city council in early 2023, covered SPD’s use of geolocation trackers for vehicles, which require either a court order or consent of a witness or informant to be used. Needing a warrant for use is a much higher burden of proof than the reasonable suspicion proposed for StarChase use, and as such is one of the chief concerns expressed by opponents to the technology. 

Two public commenters contended that StarChase is enough of a completely different technology, involving a different vendor, contract, internal team, and a lower legal threshold for use (reasonable suspicion versus probable cause), that it should receive its own new surveillance impact report. 

“Having done this as a material update has really done a lot to lock the public out of this process,” said commenter BJ Last. “The public comment period was less than two weeks. The public had less than two weeks to find out that SPD was looking to acquire this new technology, which they’ve never had before, learn about what this technology actually is, how it would be used, and then actually be able to get down and comment.”

Efficacy of the technology

There is no data available that shows whether use of StarChase reduces the number, duration, or speeds of pursuits. This is in spite of the fact that the company has been active since 2006 and began working with the National Institute of Justice in 2012 to enhance and test their system.

During the council presentation, Councilmember Rob Saka expressed concern about reports that the performance of StarChase technology is hampered by wet or cold weather, as well as something as innocuous as a “dirty car.”

StarChase is already being used by several law enforcement agencies in the region, with mixed results.

The King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) started using StarChase at the beginning of April, with the technology being installed on 12 vehicles. Since that time, they have had six deployments of the trackers, five of which were considered successful and four of which resulted in felony-level arrests. 

“We believe success is measured by a combination of successful deployments which lead to recovery of stolen property and arrests of offenders,” KCSO Communications Manager Brandyn Hull told The Urbanist. “We are also hoping to measure this against officer-involved collisions in pursuits on the specific shifts our pilot officers work to see if we can make any statistical connections between the availability of Starchase and the increased safety of these types of incidents in our community.”

Redmond Police Department has been using StarChase since the beginning of 2023. Deputy Police Chief Brian Coats said his department has deployed it 36 times, which “include shots that missed the target or bounced off due to rain, window, and other environment reasons.” The technology has led to the recovery of eight stolen vehicles and assisted in approximately 12 arrests, Coats added. The department also recently purchased four hand-held StarChase launchers.

“I am happy with the results so far but hoped the technology would be used more often,” Coates told The Urbanist.

Lynnwood Police Department began with five launchers in May of 2023. In the first year of use, they deployed the technology 66 times with 35 successful “sticks.” During that time, five people were arrested in targeted cars, one was later charged, and most successful “sticks” resulted in the vehicle being recovered. They have trained half of their officers in how to use the technology.

“The balance of public safety and the need to immediately apprehend an offender is continually weighed by our officers,” said Commander Joseph Dickinson. 

Not all agencies that have tried StarChase have continued to use the technology. Last summer, the Oakland Police Department decided not to renew their five-year contract with StarChase, after only using the technology four times and never using its tracking capabilities successfully. The Oaklandside reported that “OPD’s 2019 report mentions that hundreds of law enforcement agencies use StarChase, including several in the Bay Area. The Oaklandside contacted these departments and learned that some have discontinued StarChase.” 

A technology assessment of StarChase published by John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in January of 2017 contains three separate case studies of law enforcement agencies using the technology. The failure rate, meaning the number of times StarChase failed to deploy properly, ranged from 34% to 55%. 

Next steps for Seattle

City council’s Public Safety Committee will consider SPD’s adoption of StarChase again as soon as the end of the month. If committee members vote to approve the new technology, the legislation would then need to receive a final vote at full council.

Should SPD receive approval, they would launch a two-year pilot. 

“I’d like to work with our performance analytics and research unit to come up with appropriate metrics to determine success,” Britt said. “In the end, what it’s going to really come down to is: is the juice worth the squeeze?”

Meanwhile, advocates remain skeptical that the use of StarChase will meaningfully reduce high-speed chases.

“I hope departments using [StarChase] would be required to collect data on its efficacy and whether it does serve the purported aim of reducing officers’ need to initiate high-speed pursuits,” Cheng said.