Hotlists are lists of known license plates and vehicles of interest, typically stolen or associated with unlawful activity or missing persons. This article describes how to upload and add to a local, state, and federal hotlist in Axon Evidence.

Hotlists fall into the following general categories of license plates or vehicles:

• Known to be stolen.
• Known to be associated with known or potential criminal activity, such as gangs, watch lists, or known associates of criminal activity
• Having administrative issues such as unpaid car tabs or unpaid traffic fines

Types of hotlists

Different countries, states, and jurisdictions have different lists for different reasons, but they generally scrape a variety of data sources to identify important vehicles of interest. Sample hotlists include:

USA FBI or NCIC hotlists

A collection of lists of stolen automobiles or other automobiles of interest associated with known persons of interest or terrorists.

Access to NCIC hotlists is available to all law enforcement agencies nationwide, but each state has a process agencies must follow to allow ALPR system suppliers, including Axon, to gain access. There is no national standard practice for ALPR system supplier access approval, but typically it only needs to be completed once in each state. Axon will work with each agency and the respective CJIS Systems Agency (CSA) to meet the access approval requirements.

Once approved, Axon Evidence can automatically ingest the NCIC hotlist from state CJIS Systems Agency (CSA) network and push updates to active Fleet 3 systems without agency manual interaction.

State, DMV, or DOR hotlists

Some states maintain a list of vehicles of interest for various processes such as insurance violations, local stolen property lists, or known gang members.

Similar to NCIC, access to these lists are typically controlled by the state CSA and agencies wishing to use Axon ALPR to alert against these lists must follow their state's applicable ALPR vendor access approval process. Axon will work with each agency and the respective CSA to meet the access approval requirements.

Unlike NCIC, state lists vary in content and format from state to state. Integration with these hotlists requires custom API development. Work with your Axon representative to detail the technical and security/legal requirements for your state to enable these integrations.

Local BOLO or APB hotlists

Hotlists can be specific to a police agency or region within a city or county. This includes city-wide APB (All Points/Police Bulletin) or BOLO (Be On the Lookout) alerts for vehicles of interest that don't appear in the NCIC system.

Amber or Silver alert hotlists

Amber alerts for missing children are a critical safety program in the USA that notifies not only all law enforcement but also the public of the details of an abducted child and information on the vehicle involved.

Upload a local hotlist

Uploaded hotlist files cannot exceed 500,000 records and/or 50 MB, whichever comes first. Agency maximum total hotlist records is 15 million.

To upload a local hotlist:

1. On the menu bar in Axon Evidence, select ALPR and then Hotlist upload.
   
2. If you're updating a hotlist that already exists in your database, toggle Update existing hotlist on. Updating an existing hotlist will remove any records that do not appear in the uploaded file.
3. If the hotlist is not already in the prescribed Axon .csv format, download the linked template file and fill it in using Excel or a similar program. File column headers are:
   • Key, licensePlate, registrationState, offenseCategoryId, offensePriority, year, model, vin, color, vehicle Type, registrationDate, expirationDate, note, firstName, lastName, gender, address1, address2, city, state, zip, weight, height, eyes, and birthdate. The bold items require an entry.
   • Most fields are self-explanitory, there are a few special ones:
     • key – The unique record identifier within your hot list. During list upload, if the key matches a key in a list that already exists in Axon Evidence with the same list name, then that associated record will be updated in that list with the information in the newly uploaded list. If the key does not match a key in a list that already exists with the same list name, a new record is added to that list. If you are using some other database type tool to manage hotlists, each record should already have a unique key which can be used to populate this field.
     • offenseCategoryId – This is a coded entry. See Offense category codes.
     • offensePriority – This is a coded entry. See Hotlist priority codes.
4. Enter the List name of the list you're uploading.
5. Enter the List expiration date when you'd like this hotlist to expire.
6. Select Choose file to attach the completed hotlist file.
7. Select Submit to upload the hotlist.

Create or add to a hotlist

When selecting ALPR in the menu, users with hotlist management permissions default to the ALPR Hotlist Record Management screen.

To add to an existing hotlist:

1. On the menu bar in Axon Evidence, select ALPR > Hotlist record > New.
   
2. In the details pane that displays on the right side, enter or select the appropriate content for each field.
   
3. In the List Name field:
   1. To add this record to an existing hotlist, enter a few letters and then select it from the list. Or,...
   2. To create this record in a new hotlist, enter a name, like "Axon" (above), then select the last entry, "Create Axon hotlist".
4. The Notes field is optional. Enter any additional vehicle or vehicle-owner details you have in the Car information and Owner information sections.
5. Select Submit .

Offense category codes

Following are the codes for offense category used in CSV file uploads.

Code	Category	Code	Category	Code	Category
0	Other	1	Abandoned Vehicle	2	Amber Alert
3	Armed Robbery	4	Assault	5	Battery Assault
6	Capias Warrant	7	Car Jacking	8	Child Abduction
9	Deported Felon	10	Disorderly Conduct	11	Expired
12	Felony Theft	13	Felony Warrant	14	Fugitive
15	Gang Member	16	Hit and Run	17	Homicide
18	Law Enforcement Suspect	19	Misdemeanor	20	Missing Person
21	Narcotics	22	Prostitution	23	Protection Order
24	Revoked License	25	Sex Offender	26	Stolen License Plate
27	Stolen Vehicle	28	Suspect	29	Terrorist
30	Unlicensed Driver	31	Wanted Person	32	Wanted Vehicle
101	Suspended Registration	102	Suspended Driver	103	Suspended in Possession
104	Suspended with Registrant	105	Terminated	106	Stolen / Unissued License
107	Spoiled	108	Missing License / License Plate	109	Unattached
110	No Insurance	111	Sanctioned Driver	112	Cancelled/Terminated
113	Unrenewable	114	Expired Tag	115	Expired License
116	Felony Vehicle	117	Attempt to Locate	118	Used in Misdemeanor or Felony Offense
119	Reported Lost/Missing	120	Person of Interest	121	Threats to Law Enforcement
122	BOLO	123	HAZMAT	124	Stop and Hold
125	Court Action	126	Special Interest Person (SIP)	127	Prohibited
128	Suspended Plate	129	Plate in Poor Standing	130	Supervised Release
131	Protective Interest	132	Violent Person	133	Immigration Violator
134	CPIC Data Records	135	Gang or Suspected Terrorist	136	Warrants
137	Notice of Seizure	138	Stop & ID	139	Pointer Vehicle
140	Revoked Plate	141	Disqualified Plate	142	Aggravated Assault
143	Arson	144	Bank Robbery	145	Bias Incident
146	Burglary	147	Death Suspicious	148	Harassment
149	Kidnapping	150	Law Enforcement Purpose	151	Parole
152	Robbery	153	Sex Offense	154	Stalking
155	Theft	156	Threat to Kill	157	Weapons Poss/Dist
158	Terrorist Suspect	159	DFS Alert	160	Silver Alert

Hotlist priority codes

Following are codes for hotlist priority used in CSV file uploads.

Code	Priority
1	Low
2	Normal
3	High

Alert settings

To disable vehicle alerts for a hotlist:

1. Go to ALPR > Hotlist Files.
2. Select Alert Settings for the hotlist.
   
3. Toggle off Vehicle Alert.
   

Vehicle alerts

As shown above, initially all vehicles are enabled for alerts and all enabled categories are active.

To enable or disable alerting in certain vehicles:

1. Select Selected vehicles only.
   
2. To add a vehicle, select from the Vehicles Not Alerted list to move them to the Vehicles Alerted list.
3. To remove a vehicle, select from the Vehicles Alerted list to move them to the Vehicles Not Alerted list.
4. If needed, scroll down to add or remove alert categories.
5. Save your changes.

Person alerts

Your admin can choose to alert a specific person or user group.

1. Toggling on Person Alerton the Person Alert tab.
   
2. Add people or user groups by entering a name in the Search People field.
3. Select the Alert Categories this person or user group should be alerted for.
4. Save your changes.

By default, initially no persons or categories will be active.

To stop alerting specific users or user groups, select the X.

Alert email notification

When a license plate of interest it detected, all users on the alert list will receive an email with details specific to their role and agency:

Hotlist management

Delete a hotlist

1. Select ALPR > Hotlist Files.
2. Check the box of the hotlist(s) to delete.
   
3. Select Delete at the top, then again in the confirmation dialog box.

You can't delete an NCIC hotlist.

View hotlist details

To view update history for a selected hotlist, select ALPR > Hotlist Files, then select the hotlist.

Status indicators

To view hotlist upload status and history or access error reports for user hotlists, select ALPR > Hotlist Files, then view the status report next to the hotlist. There are three types of hotlist status:

• Pending
• Failed
• Completed with errors

 

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Last modified - 19 February 2026