Cops Are Starting To Tow Away Teslas To ‘Secure’ Recordings Captured By The Cars’ Cameras

Well, here’s a not-so-fun new twist in the search-and-seizure narrative. Car owners are being deprived of their vehicles just because cops think footage of a crime may have been captured by the car’s on-board cameras.

Tesla’s vehicles carry more cameras than most. Added to the cars as a way to protect owners — either by documenting their theft as it occurs or providing recordings of accidents — they’ve become just another way for investigators to collect evidence in criminal cases. The car doesn’t actually have to be involved in the criminal act. It just has to be within eyeshot (so to speak) of the criminal act.

But being in the wrong place at the wrong time might mean drivers going without cars because cops have decided the best way to secure this potential evidence is to take cars away from their drivers. Here’s Rachel Swan, reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle. (h/t Bluesky user Hypervisible)

A Canadian tourist was visiting Oakland recently when he had to talk someone out of taking his Tesla from a hotel parking lot.

This was no thief. It was the Oakland Police Department. Turns out, the Tesla may have witnessed a homicide.

In Oakland and beyond, police called to crime scenes are increasingly looking for more than shell casings and fingerprints. They’re scanning for Teslas parked nearby, hoping their unique outward-facing cameras captured key evidence. And, the Chronicle has found, they’re even resorting to obtaining warrants to tow the cars to ensure they don’t lose the video.

That’s not… ideal. And it’s something that has happened at least three times in the last two months in Oakland, California alone. The chances of a Tesla being near the scene of the crime is obviously lower than other vehicles, but at this point in time, it’s pretty much only Teslas carrying this many cameras on-board.

That’s going to change in the future, though. Consumer surveillance tech is a growth market. Other manufacturers are going to start doing the same thing, which will lead to similarly explosive growth in the “towing cars because they were near a crime” market.

At least warrants appear to be involved at this point, which means there’s a paper trail documenting law enforcement’s seizure of the inanimate “witness.” Unfortunately, that’s not going to mean much to car owners who may walk out of their houses, businesses, or places of worship to discover their vehicle missing.

Even though this is handled about as well as it can be at this point in time, this kind of thing is only going to become more common. And, inevitably, some cops are going to decide they don’t have time to get a warrant, much less make a good faith effort to secure the recordings from the vehicle’s owner before initiating a seizure.

It’s not that I don’t think investigators should have this option. It’s that I think it will become the default option, rather than the last resort the quoted law enforcement officials claim it is at this moment, especially as more automakers add this tech to their vehicles. This will escalate much in the way geofence warrant usage has over the past half-decade, allowing investigators to farm out their investigative duties to third party service providers. Once it’s common enough and easy enough, the path of least resistance will become the road most traveled. And that’s going to cause serious problems for innocent people who’ve had the misfortune of having their car “witness” a crime.