More than 30 years ago, the General Assembly created a fund to reward tipsters who shared information leading to motor vehicle theft arrests.
If there’s leftover money in the Help Eliminate Auto Theft — better known as HEAT — reward fund, the Virginia State Police can allocate it to educational programming to help drivers prevent auto theft or to support local law enforcement or judicial agencies in their efforts to reduce theft.
Since 2022, the Virginia State Police has been using an increasing amount of money from the fund to help local law enforcement agencies buy equipment to help them prevent and solve vehicle theft and related crimes.
The application form is simple. The funds are doled out first-come, first-served. “If a sheriff or chief can articulate to me that this tool will help them combat or prevent auto theft, I’m going to approve their application,” said Peter Lazear, a first sergeant with the Virginia State Police who manages the HEAT program.
Some police departments and sheriff’s offices say they’ll use the money to pay for supplies for community events or tools for analyzing recovered vehicles.
Most of the grant awards, however, go toward surveillance equipment and services from companies such as Flock. These tools record license plates and other details for vehicles that pass by and allow law enforcement to search for a specific vehicle in a matter of seconds to piece together its route. Flock, in particular, has a vast network of license plate reader cameras throughout Virginia.
Cardinal News reviewed more than 1,200 documents relating to the Virginia State Police’s HEAT equipment reimbursement program, which were obtained via the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The documents spanned July 2023 to February 2025 and included emails, application forms, vendor invoices and reimbursement forms, along with reports about HEAT initiatives and grant programs.
Of 83 applications reviewed by Cardinal News that were submitted for the fiscal year ending in June 2024, 69 law enforcement agencies asked for reimbursement for license plate reader technology equipment or services. Fifty-seven applications specifically asked for reimbursement for Flock license plate reader equipment and services.
HEAT gave a $1,875 reward to a single tipster in 2024, Lazear said.
Meanwhile, the Virginia State Police allocated $1 million to the HEAT equipment reimbursement fund for fiscal 2024. For the current fiscal year, it increased the pot to $1.5 million.
That money ultimately comes from drivers like you.
3-decades-old state fund makes surveillance possible in rural areas
When the HEAT fund was established in 1991, it created an assessment on motor vehicle insurance companies operating in Virginia.
Each insurer must pay one quarter of one percent of premiums collected for comprehensive coverage — the category of auto insurance that covers theft — to the state.
For fiscal 2025, HEAT had a budget of $4.4 million, collected from Virginia’s approximately 200 insurance companies. Over the last 10 years, HEAT’s budget has more than doubled. The assessment in insurance companies is the fund’s only source of revenue.
The fund’s scope has expanded over time beyond the reward program for tipsters that’s outlined in state code. The office trains local law enforcement agencies on strategies to prevent and solve auto theft cases and awards grants to help local agencies send officers to auto theft investigation conferences.
The HEAT team, which includes seven auto theft investigators spread across the state, travels to community events such as races and car shows to talk about how drivers can prevent theft. Sometimes it provides free etching services to put vehicle identification numbers on the catalytic converters that are often targeted by thieves. Sometimes HEAT takes one of three trucks to events, or sometimes the Corvette, each vehicle wrapped in graphics advertising the cash awards available to tipsters.
HEAT added the equipment reimbursement grant program in 2022, in response to the advanced technical savvy employed by many auto thieves. Law enforcement agencies needed technology tools to keep up with what thieves were using, Lazear said in a February interview.
Auto theft and theft of vehicle parts spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic in Virginia and nationwide. In 2021, viral social media videos showed how easy it was to steal some Kia and Hyundai cars, which led to a dramatic increase in thefts of those makes. The two companies have since addressed the vulnerabilities, and recent nationwide drops in auto theft are credited largely to those fixes.
But the increase in auto theft in the earliest years of this decade meant the equipment reimbursement grant in Virginia was an instant hit.
In the first year of its grant program, fiscal 2023, HEAT gave out $450,000 of the half-million it had allocated, with awards going to 50 law enforcement agencies in Virginia. For fiscal 2024, the pot increased to a million.
For fiscal 2025, which ends June 30, HEAT committed $1.5 million, with a maximum award of $12,500 per applying agency. By February 2025, Lazear said that he had run out of money to award applicants.
Grantee agencies must show proof they purchased the items or services outlined in their applications in order to get reimbursed.
The applications come primarily from smaller localities. For each of the two fiscal years reviewed, only about 10% of the funds have been awarded to law enforcement in Virginia’s largest cities. At least half of the accepted applications were from localities in Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Records for fiscal 2023, the first year of the grant program, were unavailable, according to Lazear and public records staff for the state police, because they were not retained when the previous HEAT coordinator retired.
“I think there are some really, really large metropolitan agencies that probably don’t need our funding,” Lazear said. “They have large budgets. But as you get a smaller agency that has three or four officers, $12,500 goes a long way to helping them.”
In Southwest and Southside Virginia, grantees have ranged from the police department in Lynchburg (population 82,000), to send two detectives to a vehicle forensics training course, to Mountain Empire Community College Campus Police Department (population zero), to put toward a license plate reader camera system.
In between are dozens of county law enforcement agencies alongside forces in small towns like Dublin, Rural Retreat and Haysi.
Of the 47 applications from Southwest and Southside Virginia submitted for fiscal 2024, all but two requested funds for license plate reader equipment or services. Thirty-seven requested funding specifically for Flock equipment and services.
For fiscal 2025, 59 applications came from the region, with 51 planning to use the money for license plate reader technology. Forty-four agencies asked for money for Flock equipment or services.
Grant a selling point for surveillance tech companies
As the equipment reimbursement grant has grown in popularity, some local law enforcement agencies have begun sending in their applications a week or two before the start of the fiscal year, hoping to get to the front of the line.
Part of that interest is due to Lazear’s outreach through law enforcement networks, he said, which leads to additional word-of-mouth among local agencies.
But surveillance firms such as Flock have also caught on to the grant program. A review by Cardinal News of invoices from Flock to local law enforcement agencies in Virginia found that in many instances, Flock is charging close to $12,500 — the same amount as the maximum HEAT equipment award — for setup and one year of service for a handful of cameras.
The Clintwood Police Department in Dickenson County and the Pearisburg Police Department in Giles County each paid $12,300 for two Flock Falcon cameras plus fees in spring 2024. HEAT reimbursed the entire amount.
Rocky Mount Police Department paid $12,600 for four Flock Falcon cameras and setup fees in fall 2024. So did the Wise County Sheriff’s Office, the Wytheville Police Department, and the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office in December 2023. After the reimbursement grant, the law enforcement agencies each paid only $100 out of pocket.
Lazear took over the HEAT program in 2023. He said he set the annual award cap per agency at $12,500 because it could provide a significant award to each applicant while still spreading the money to a lot of local agencies.
Surveillance tech companies have figured out how much HEAT will reimburse, Lazear said, and have begun matching their proposals to that dollar amount.
On several occasions, local law enforcement emailed Lazear asking specifically about grant money for Flock.
“I spoke with Shayne from FLOCK who indicated there was a grant through HEAT that the town could apply for in reference to purchasing four flock cameras for our organization,” wrote Chief Mike Brown of the Alberta Police Department in Brunswick County in September 2024.
“I have been in communication with Brandon Williams from Flock Safety and have been considering the LPR system here in the Town,” wrote Greg Jenkins, chief of police of Scottsville on the border of Albemarle and Fluvanna Counties, the following November.
Lazear often clarified in his responses that the grant could be used for a variety of expenses.
When Mount Jackson Police Chief Keith Cowart emailed Lazear in May 2024 asking about information for “grants that HEAT awards to agencies for the FLOCK Safety cameras,” Lazear wrote back that the grant money could be used for purchasing “any equipment you need to combat auto theft, not just Flock cameras.”
“We may alert agencies when there are grant funds available that could be used to purchase Flock tools to help their communities,” said Flock Director of Communication Holly Beilin. She added, ”Generally, we think it is positive when lawmakers allocate funds to support public safety goals.”
Some grantees have offered success stories following their awards.
In Haysi, a town in Dickenson County with a population of fewer than 500, the police department used its Flock system to narrow the search area to locate a septic truck that had been stolen from a local business.
Over a five-month span in early 2024, “Our camera data was used 18 additional times for narcotics investigations, and hit and run accident investigations,” Chief of Police Bobby Edwards wrote to Lazear that May. “This camera has been the best investigative tool we have had in years.”
HEAT’s equipment reimbursement grant operates at the discretion of the superintendent of state police, who must sign off each year on the use of surplus funds. That means continued grant funding isn’t a guarantee for local agencies.
The equipment reimbursement grant was created under state police Superintendent Gary Settle, who retired in February 2025. His successor, Matthew Hanley, was named in late February after serving briefly as interim superintendent. In a statement Monday, Hanley said that the HEAT equipment reimbursement grant is “currently pending approval” to be reauthorized. He said the state police “believes this program has proven to be extremely effective” in helping local agencies fund projects and gain technology around reducing auto theft.
“Paying for renewed service is not really a high priority for us,” Lazear said of agencies that want to use the grant to pay for ongoing technology services. “We want to make sure we’re getting the equipment into the hands of the people that need it.”
If a local agency is planning to use the grant to enter into a multi-year contract with a company such as Flock, Lazear said he often has a discussion to make clear the program could end at any time. Many agencies, he said, are willing to accept the risk.
Some localities have stated in their applications that their use of license plate readers depends on support from HEAT. The Amelia County Sheriff’s Office purchased three Flock cameras in fiscal 2024 with an equipment reimbursement grant. For fiscal 2025, it applied for a $9,000 grant to pay for continuing Flock services.
“Without grant funding, the ACSO may have to cease our utilization of the cameras,” Chief Deputy Philip Siegle III wrote in the application dated July 8.
HEAT granted the sheriff’s office the entire $9,000.
Previously in the State of Surveillance series, the police department in the tiny town of Boones Mill installed two Flock cameras thanks to a grant from HEAT.
The town manager told Cardinal News that it depended on HEAT grants to keep its service with Flock. “We just have to reapply and will get that money every year,” B.T. Fitzpatrick said. 
Virginia drivers fund police surveillance technology expansion
Virginia is one of a handful of states that collect an assessment from insurance companies to combat auto theft.
In Michigan, Colorado, Minnesota, Arizona and Illinois, for example, insurance companies pay $1 per insured vehicle per year; in Texas, the fee is $5, and in New York, it’s $10 annually.
The most recent of these programs was established in 2007. They mostly occur in states with the largest urban centers vulnerable to auto theft, said Bob Passmore with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, a national trade association for insurance companies.
Passmore said the insurance industry is generally supportive of these assessments that aim to reduce auto theft. If stolen vehicles are recovered — or if theft is prevented in the first place — it reduces the amount insurers have to pay for policyholder claims.
Transparency about such assessments varies by state. Drivers in Arizona, New York, Minnesota, Michigan and Colorado surveyed by Cardinal News reported seeing their state’s fees on their policy renewal bills.
In Virginia, most drivers may not realize their auto insurance company takes a thin slice off the top of what they pay and sends it into the state. Other states charge a flat fee per vehicle that insurers can easily collect from consumers; in Virginia, the legislation directs insurers to pay a percentage of their revenues, not to collect it from drivers directly. The law that established HEAT does not require insurers to disclose the assessment to customers.
The average comprehensive premium in Virginia costs $327 per year, according to analysis by Insurance.com. Based on that estimate, one quarter of one percent of that premium would only amount to 81 cents a year that a driver is ultimately kicking into the HEAT fund.
Passmore said transparency and oversight are important components of these programs.
Colorado, for example, mandates an audit of its auto theft prevention cash fund every five years. Audits of Virginia’s fund aren’t required.
The Virginia State Police superintendent appoints a seven-member advisory committee to oversee HEAT’s finances and achievements, reflecting a common feature among states with auto theft prevention programs.
“We share our intentions on our use of the funds, and we don’t spend a dime without their oversight,” Lazear said of the advisory committee, which includes representatives from law enforcement, the Department of Motor Vehicles and insurance companies. “Each year we’ve increased [the equipment reimbursement grant] a bit and still been able to maintain all the other levels of training and public events that we have.”
Annual statistics posted on the HEAT website stop at 2022. The State Police’s Facts and Figures publication, which serves as an annual report, includes a brief section about the HEAT fund and auto theft statistics but does not provide any financial details of the fund or outline uses of the money collected from insurers. The State Police also publishes an annual “Crime in Virginia” report with statistics on various categories of crimes but does not detail methods the agency uses to prevent or solve those crimes.
Virginia’s law doesn’t require that the state police report to legislators about HEAT’s spending and activities. “VSP does provide details when requested,” Lazear said in a statement.
At this point, about one-third of HEAT’s annual budget goes to equipment grants.
Only $16,500 in rewards have been paid to a total of nine tipsters since 2019, according to data provided by HEAT.
“As long as the programs are funding effective programs, we don’t find ourselves objecting,” Passmore said of the auto insurance industry. He said it’s important that the money committed to theft prevention programs gets used for those goals, not for other purposes within a state government.
He recalled one issue in Illinois about 20 years ago where the state tried to sweep unspent auto theft prevention fund balances into the general budget. But situations like that are rare, he said.
The theft prevention programs are generally effective, with states reporting that they’ve reduced auto theft to the tune of 60-70% since establishing their theft prevention funds.
Virginia, too, has reduced its rate of auto theft since it launched its program in 1992. But recent increases have chipped away at some of that progress, making it harder to discern the early impact of the equipment reimbursement grant.
Are Virginia grants for surveillance equipment actually reducing auto theft?
Nearly 13,000 vehicles were reported stolen in Virginia in 2024, according to preliminary data from the Virginia State Police.
That’s a significant drop from the year prior, when more than 15,000 vehicles were reported stolen statewide.
It’s still, however, higher than pre-pandemic numbers. Auto theft increased nearly 45% between 2019 and 2023.
“Year-to-year focus is too narrow,” Lazear said in a statement May 29. “Virginia State Police would like to point out that auto theft is actually down 37% since the inception of HEAT in 1992. Also, there are many factors that contribute to auto theft, and they are inter-related.”
One notable change: far more vehicles are being recovered in recent years. “We recovered over 11,000 vehicles last year, which is a tremendous increase from the year before,” Lazear said. “That’s a direct result of the HEAT funding.”
Between 2019 and 2023, the rate of vehicles recovered increased by 42%. In 2023, just under 8,000 stolen vehicles were recovered.
“Vehicle recoveries are very important” in the overall effort to reduce auto theft, Lazear said in a statement May 29. “If you never recover stolen vehicles, you never solve the auto theft problem. Virginia State Police/HEAT educate troopers and officers to help them spot and recover stolen vehicles. This makes a huge difference in recovery efforts.”
Hanley, the state police superintendent, called the use of LPR cameras in the state “very successful,” particularly for recovering stolen vehicles.
“In one locality in Virginia, stolen vehicle recoveries were up 500% in 2023 compared to previous recovery averages prior to the implementation of LPRs,” Hanley said in a statement. He did not specify the locality.
In Wytheville, which sits in the shadow of Interstate 81, a Flock alert for a stolen vehicle helped the police department locate the vehicle and apprehend the suspect. The investigation revealed that the suspect was involved in multiple breaking and entering cases in Henrico, which were then able to be solved with evidence recovered from the stolen vehicle recovered in Wytheville.
“Our agency has recovered multiple stolen vehicles/trailers in a short amount of time. We have additionally solved countless other crimes with the equipment,” Detective Lonnie Anders wrote to Lazear in a May 2024 email.
Auto theft in the town has fluctuated in recent years: 19 thefts reported in 2022, eight in 2023, 15 in 2024 and three so far this year. But the number of recoveries has been increasing, Anders told Cardinal News by email Monday. Recoveries of stolen vehicles help the police department solve more cases, which sometimes help solve other crimes, including narcotics distribution.
“These arrests are positively impacting case clearance rates,” he said.
Wytheville spent its fiscal 2024 grant award of $12,500 on four Flock cameras.
When the fiscal 2025 grant application opened, the police department asked for $12,500 again.
This time, it would use the money to renew its service with Flock.
