They installed some here at a Home Depot parking lot right when the ice raids started. It was weird that only the home deport owned portion of the parking lot got them which lead to some investigation into who put them up and sure enough flock has a contract with HD.
Blue city in SoCal with lots of migrant laborers.
Home Depot has had an incredibly aggressive retail theft problem for about half a decade now across virtually every market.
Their response of putting 10 ALPRs in each store's parking lot and locking up everything seems rational based upon what I've seen. There's something about stealing Milwaukee tools that gets certain groups of people very excited. They even have some tool manufacturers designing activation at checkout mechanisms to discourage theft.
I have a hard time believing this stuff is making them any money or is a secret government arrangement. It seems purely about loss prevention in the case of HD. They have been an easy target up until recently.
Home Depot seems like the one compelling win I've seen so far regarding these cameras. You'd have to be pretty crazy to try and steal tools these days. The speed with which law enforcement can react to these signals is incredible. I don't necessarily like the implications for other things but it does make shopping in certain retail environments feel much safer.
So, cameras in the HD and Apple Store parking lots seem acceptable to me based upon the risk these businesses endure. Cameras in public I don't like, but without them the ones in private wouldn't be able to accomplish as much (I.e., interception of felony retail theft suspects while they still have all of the evidence on them).
Home Depot is still garbage at shoplifting preventation. Can never walk in and buy a p-trap kit without every one of them missing parts.
Every Lowes nationwide has installed them at the entrances to all of their stores and/or plazas they're in, even if they're not on the map.
So, if I understand you correctly, Home Depot was actively collaborating with ICE to get their best customer lures arrested? How the fuck does that make sense?!