(The Center Square) – At least $2 million in Washington taxpayer dollars have gone to Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader cameras. The result: vandalism, cancelled contracts and fewer successful car thefts?
In recent weeks, anti-surveillance vandalism has forced dozens of Washington jurisdictions to rethink or defend their agreements with the Atlanta-based company, which has enticed governments across the country with their artificial intelligence-powered, crime-fighting technology.
Police say the cameras have helped prevent and solve crimes from theft to homicide. Before the City of Redmond cancelled its contract with Flock in July, Police Chief Darrell Lowe told a skeptical council on March 10 that the camera system allowed them to close cases 38% faster and improved stolen vehicle recovery by 72%.
Meanwhile, Flock has reported more than 10,000 solved missing persons cases nationwide in 2025 and boasts several law enforcement success stories on their website.
Agencies using Flock in Washington have online transparency portals, but few police departments are tracking crime-related results from the cameras in a way that’s readily available to the public. One exception is Everett, which publishes recurring Flock reports with outcome metrics and a comparison to its prior three-year stolen-vehicle average. A new state law requires agencies using Flock to report to the Attorney General’s Office starting in December 2027, but it’s unclear how much crime-related data will be included.
Ultimately, it may not matter how well the technology works to prevent and solve crime. At least eight cities in Washington – Olympia, Auburn, Shoreline, Redmond, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Snohomish – have either turned off their cameras indefinitely, ended their contracts or cut ties with Flock in response to the backlash.
How are agencies paying for Flock?
The Center Square has confirmed jurisdictions in Washington have spent at least $2 million on Flock technology – it’s a conservative number, considering some agreements and annual costs are unconfirmed or ongoing. Most of this money comes from state vehicle fees and local taxes.
The Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority, a state grant program funded through vehicle-related fees, is the most common funding source cited by Washington cities, usually paired with a city general-fund match or a separate state or federal grant.
That financing is creating complications. Grant agreements can require repayment if a city cancels a Flock contract early, while breaking Flock contracts may induce liability for the remaining term – a situation Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace have faced. And cities that say their cameras are inactive may still be under contract, such as Redmond was for several months.
To launch the program in Redmond, the City used $7,500 from its general fund, and was awarded nearly $95,000 from the Department of Commerce as well as $44,100 from the Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority. Ending the contract did not create additional financial obligation for the city, Council President Melissa Stuart said, and the state is not asking them to return any of the grant dollars.
In addition to contract costs, Washington cities and counties have paid more than $300,000 in public-records settlements for failing to release Flock camera images. The state has since excluded these images from most public records requests.
Does Flock help prevent and solve crime?
Police departments across Washington say the technology works.
Everett’s Flock reports show a 67.81% drop in stolen vehicles this year compared with the previous three-year average, with about 100 vehicles stolen in 2026 and 68 recovered as of July. Spokane County says Flock data helped recover 88 stolen vehicles, 23 stolen plates and nine missing persons, and contributed to 150 arrests between January 2023 and May 2024. Yakima police say the system has supported 688 investigations to date – 392 stolen-vehicle recoveries, along with cases spanning hit-and-runs, assaults, robberies, fraud and 11 homicides.
Smaller departments describe similar results. In Auburn, officers used a Flock camera to track a domestic violence suspect’s vehicle through the city, allowing them to box in the car before he could flee. Enumclaw’s police chief, Tim Floyd, credits the department’s eight cameras with helping crack three major cases, including tracking a suspect wanted for five murders in Oregon. In Chelan County, Sheriff Mike Morrison has said the department’s 12 cameras have aided stolen-vehicle and missing-persons cases and helped locate a murder suspect passing through Leavenworth.
Individual incidents show how the system is used in practice. In Tukwila, an alert on a stolen vehicle tied to a recent homicide led officers to a pursuit that ended in a crash near the Seattle city line with two suspects detained and no injuries reported. In Liberty Lake, a Flock reader helped deputies match a vehicle description to a hiking-trail assault suspect; he was arrested on foot the next day and charged with second-degree assault.
The technology isn’t without guardrails. State regulations limit how license-plate data can be shared and stored and explicitly bar its use for immigration enforcement – restrictions that followed revelations that the system’s default settings had previously shared data with federal agencies.
The data-sharing controversy
As part of a national “DeFlock” movement, Washingtonians have rallied on social media and damaged cameras in cities such as Covington, Yakima and Ellensburg, while DeFlock Snohomish County and other internet campaigns have urged council members to turn off and divest from the cameras.
Much of Washingtonians’ anger against Flock sparked amid revelations that federal and out-of-state agencies have accessed data from these cameras, including for immigration and abortion-related investigations, as part of Flock’s “National Lookup” tool. At least eight Washington law enforcement agencies enabled direct data-sharing with the U.S. Border Patrol at some point in 2025, according to a report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. Federal agents had some form of network access to at least 18 Washington agencies. The City of Auburn, which has since cancelled its Flock contract, was among the agencies where Border Patrol appeared on approved-user lists the department says it never authorized.
Many Washington cities have since adjusted their data sharing and temporarily suspended camera use to comply with the Driver Privacy Act, a new state law meant to address these and other surveillance concerns.
Among other rules, the law bans automated license plate reader use for civil immigration enforcement, tracking constitutionally-protected activity, and data collection near sensitive locations like schools and reproductive health clinics – a restriction the ACLU of Washington says is unique compared to similar laws from other states. However, the law also permits data-sharing among in-state agencies and expands camera use to gross misdemeanors.
Before Redmond ended its Flock contract, Police Chief Lowe emphasized that data searches were password-protected and audited to prevent violations of local and state policy.
“We know who searched what, when,” he told the council on March 10.
Flock has also rolled out a series of changes, including automatic keyword blocks on immigration- and reproductive-health-related searches as well as more data sharing controls. In August, the company cut default data retention to seven days – for new clients only – and added further data search protections, like lock codes and unusual search flags. Flock hired the security firm Bishop Fox to audit the platform, with results expected this month.
The national ACLU has questioned how much the changes amount to. In a recent statement, the organization called most of them “a thinly veiled PR attempt” offering “largely hollow security promises.”
Many jurisdictions remain in Flock limbo. The City of Renton has decided to cover its cameras while it decides what to do. As public agencies change or reconsider their agreements, working Flock cameras may still exist across Washington through private contracts with businesses or homeowners associations.