SPRINGFIELD — For the first time in at least a decade, there were no fatal interstate highway shootings in Illinois last year, Illinois State Police announced. The number of these shootings dropped significantly for the fourth year in a row in 2025, police said.
This development marks a dramatic reversal from 2021, when the number of expressway shootings spiked at 310. Since then, incidents have dropped 80% to 61 shootings last year.
Of the 89 shootings in 2024, 12 were fatal. In 2025, the number of shootings decreased by 31%, with no fatalities, police said.
Expanded use of technology, including the deployment of automated license plate readers on highways, has been central to the decline.
The license plate readers monitor state highways and collect millions of data points, including images, time, date, and location of passing vehicles. Police cross-reference that data against databases of stolen vehicles and those connected to crimes.
Despite success in lowering the number of shootings and finding criminals on the state highways, the technology has also drawn critics and a lawsuit accusing the ISP of creating “a system of dragnet surveillance.”
Expansion of camera program
Last year, lawmakers allocated $7 million in new funding for the technology, as well as $2.5 million reappropriated from a previous year.
The state has installed at least 588 ALPRs across Illinois, with higher concentrations in areas where ISP has identified elevated rates of violent crime and threats to public safety.
A shift in mindset from traffic to trafficking has been key to reducing highway violence, ISP Director Brendan Kelly said in an interview.
The agency has focused more on combating drug trafficking, gun trafficking and human trafficking, while placing greater emphasis on deterring violent crime and vehicular hijackings, he said.
"Allocating our personnel in a focused way was the foundation but also augmenting the hard work of our people with technology like license plate readers," Kelly said.
In 2023, the agency used evidence gathered from license plate readers in every expressway homicide case for which the agency filed criminal charges in Cook County, Kelly said.
The license plate reader system alerts troopers in real time when cameras spot a vehicle reported stolen or connected to a violent crime. State police can then decide whether to pull the vehicle over immediately or use aerial surveillance to follow it until conditions are safer for an arrest.
Kelly said the coordination between license plate readers and ISP's air operations allows police to apprehend suspects without posing undue risk to the public or officers. The technology also helps identify potential witnesses and other circumstantial evidence based on time and location data.
State Sen. Christopher Belt, D-Swansea, chair of the Senate Public Safety & Infrastructure Committee, called the decline in shootings "the perfect intersection of exemplary police work and technology."
Concerns about surveillance
But the expansion of surveillance technology has also resulted in some pushback. A lawsuit filed by the libertarian legal group Liberty Justice Center in May 2024 challenged the ALPR program and asserted that the constant surveillance of the ALPRs infringed on the rights of two Cook County residents.
While the case was dismissed in 2025, plaintiffs are appealing to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. A ruling is expected later this year, which could lead to the possibility of a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read more: State highway shootings decline as critics sue over ‘dragnet surveillance’
The ACLU of Illinois, though not involved in the lawsuit, has also expressed concern about the license plate readers.
“These are very powerful surveillance tools,” said Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at ACLU of Illinois. “The ability to place these around a community and essentially track someone is a very powerful thing.”
Yohnka said the group has reservations about the expanding surveillance network and the lack of clear restrictions on data storage duration, storage methods and who has access to the information.
Last year, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias’ office said it unearthed two instances of license plate reader data being shared in violation of Illinois law. State law requires that police departments and other license plate camera operators obtain a written declaration from all out-of-state law enforcement agencies saying they will not use license plate reader data to enforce abortion restrictions or immigration enforcement.
Giannoulias alleged that police tech company Flock Safety illegally shared data with federal border enforcement and that the Forest Park Police Department improperly shared information with border enforcement via Motorola Solutions technology.
“License plate reading cameras serve as powerful surveillance technology, and as Secretary of State, I’m committed to ensuring that everyone involved in data sharing is following the law and protecting Illinoisans’ right to privacy,” Giannoulias said in a statement at the time.
Read more: Hundreds of police departments use camera company accused of breaking state law
Kelly also noted ISP's license plate reader data cannot be used for immigration enforcement under the Illinois Trust Act.
The Motorola system has strict restrictions on data usage, and any law enforcement agencies that receive shared data are contractually required to abide by state requirements, he said.
History of the program
The ALPR program was initially launched in 2020 in response to expressway shootings, and expanded in 2022 to combat a range of serious offenses. These include vehicular hijacking, aggravated vehicular hijacking, terrorism, motor vehicle theft, and any forcible felony. ALPRs are not meant to be used for speeding or routine traffic enforcement.
House Bill 3339, sponsored by Rep. Thaddeus Jones, D-Calumet City, which was signed into law last year, broadens the definition of forcible felony to include human trafficking and involuntary servitude.
“Currently, there is a plan to maintain and identify potential locations for additional license plate readers,” Kelly said. “(We’re) updating our air fleet and continuing to hire Illinois State Police officers.”
Rebecka Pieder is a student in the Medill Illinois News Bureau, a program at the Medill School of Journalism that provides local news outlets with state legislature and government coverage.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
