The city of Renton is waiting to take further action on Flock cameras and the contract with Flock until after a public presentation on the technology.
At the Aug. 10 meeting, the Renton City Council voted against not renewing a contract with Flock for automated license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras in the city, and narrowly voted against turning the cameras back on.
Councilmember Kim-Khánh Văn made the motion to direct the city administration to not renew the Flock contract. She said she did not want to cancel the current contract because of fees that may be involved in the cancellation.
The council directed the city and the police department to host a town hall to present a Flock camera orientation to the public at the previous week’s meeting. Councilmembers Ryan McIrvin and Ed Prince said they would not want to decide on a contract renewal until after the public presentation.
The current contract was written in 2024 and is set to expire this November. Councilmember Valerie O’Halloran said they should not renew the current contract, but draw up a new one better addressing the council’s concerns. Councilmember James Alberson thought it was a “foregone conclusion” that they weren’t going to renew the contract as it currently is.
“I think that when we initially signed the current contract that we have with Flock, we were thinking this is a tool that’s going to help save our residents. I don’t think we were thinking about any of the geopolitical or any of the other things that were out there,” Prince said. “In fact, this contract was done during the Biden administration, so we weren’t thinking about ICE or any of that stuff. I do think now that we know that there’s some concerns, we owe it to come back with our concerns and see if we can get a better contract with Flock.”
According to Renton Police Chief Jon Schuldt, there was an automatic renewal clause in the contract, but the department advised Flock they did not want this to take effect. Because of this, the council will have to review a new contract when the current contract expires in two months.
“I would still say we still have that decision point in the future regardless of right now,” McIrvin said. “I don’t know that the motion accomplishes what the makers sought for it to do.”
Councilmembers Carmen Rivera and Văn voted for the motion, while the rest of the council voted against it. Councilmember Ruth Pérez was not in attendance. Alberson then said the council should not continue to “kick the can down the road” and motioned the city should turn the cameras back on.
“They’re not tracking you. They capture a license plate. But unless you’ve done something, honestly, you probably don’t matter too much to the law enforcement,” Alberson said. “Someone could stand on the corner and see your license plate. That’s not private information.”
Rivera said she thought this motion was disrespectful when the town hall has yet to happen.
“I can see both sides of this argument and I can validate both sides of this argument because I think it’s incredibly important to understand the holistic argument that is being made here in order to understand and be able to respond and be better as was being talked about,” Rivera said.
Alberson said the town hall was to educate the public, not to get their approval. McIrvin disagreed with the motion.
“We nearly universally agreed upon in this dais that the current contract is flawed,” McIrvin said. “So I fail to see how turning the cameras back on with a flawed contract makes sense.”
Initially, the vote was tied with Alberson, Prince and O’Halloran voting in favor of turning the cameras back on, while Rivera, McIrvin and Văn voted against. The mayor would have the ability to break the tie if it had remained, but Prince then spoke up to change his vote.
“I’m going to go back to what I said earlier. I want us to be able to get the chief the information we want on the contract,” Prince said.
Flock contract Q&A
In the city council’s Committee of the Whole meeting the same day, Schuldt and a few other Renton police officers answered the council’s questions regarding the current Flock contract:
Q:Do we have anyone in IT or in the police department to perform checks on the upgrades Flock performs?
Shuldt: “I know initially everything was approved through IT and I’m not sure we have a process in place to answer your question. I can find out that those updates are also vetted in a similar way to the original software.”
Q: Can the police department choose whether or not to receive an update?
Police Commander Denis Moyihan: “So the system at large has not changed since we’ve adopted it. There’s clearly been software updates along the way, but as far as functionality and what the system does and what the interface looks like, the only time those updates have been noticeable as an end user is when we’re requesting updates to the forms or putting additional or mandatory fields into the software to have it um customized to fit our needs.”
Q: Have we addressed some of our concerns with the current contract with Flock?
Shudlt: ”We have a draft ready to send to them to address those concerns that we have heard and to ensure that the contract is also in compliance with the Senate Bill 6002. I haven’t sent it yet. I intend to do that this week, but we’re also waiting on some advice from council, and this is part of it, seeing if there’s any other pain points that we can maybe address as we go forward in it.”
Q: Do we know if Flock has conceded to other cities regarding contract concerns?
Shuldt: ”I haven’t heard of any of the other jurisdictions renewing their contract at this point. I think Flock as a corporation understands the change in state law and I would assume they would be amendable to making those changes in the contract if they want to continue to do business here in the state.”
Q: What issues are you asking for Flock to address in the letter you plan to send?
Shuldt: “To be in compliance the 21-day retention versus the 30-day that’s currently in there, just all the points that are in Senate Bill 6002, the sharing with the federal agencies.”
Q: Can the federal government access our data or cameras with a warrant?
Shudlt: ”I would say it could possibly be if it was a warrant issued by a federal judge. Then I would say we would have to look at what compliance with that warrant would look like and then even weighing, you know, it versus what our state law looks like.”
Moyihan: “I don’t know that … the federal government would issue a warrant to Flock because per our contract, all data that is created by our Flock system is owned by us, the city of Renton, as the customer named in the contract. So Flock, although has some limited access to anonymize data to run diagnostics and tests on their system as needed, the data belongs to us. We are the ones who retain the encryption keys to access that data and get into the cloud where it is stored. So I believe that if the federal government were to write a warrant in order to get data, they would have to serve that to the city of Renton, not to Flock.”
Q: Can we outline what the capabilities of the technology the city uses in the contract?
Shudlt: “I don’t think there’s any issues with spelling out specifically the equipment or the technology that we’re using in the contract. In fact, I think that’s probably prudent for us to have that information in the contract if we choose to go forward.”
Q: Is there any legal recourse we could take in the contract if Flock accesses our unencrypted data?
Moyihan: ”I believe in the contract it says that violations of for ethic reasons, it would just give us the ability to exit from the contract without a penalty. I don’t know that there’s any other recourse unless it was something that was violating one of the state laws within Washington and that would be something that we’d probably need to talk with the city attorney’s office about.”
Q: What of the data is anonymized data and what is the difference between anonymized and customer data?
Moyihan: “So not all data is anonymized. The customer generated data that we create belongs to us. As far as we know, Flock has no access or ability to access that data. They have access to anonymized data, which would, I believe, be things like the number of captures being recorded, transit times to and from servers, server storage data, things like that that have no investigative use, nothing that we could use. It would just be generic data about how the system is operating.”
Q: Is there recourse the city can take if another jurisdiction uses their data in a way not compliant with SB 6002?
Shudlt: “Our initial recourse would be obviously to take them out of our system, but we would also be mandated to report them to the CJTC and probably attorney general’s office for if if it they were in violation of Senate Bill 6002.”
Moyihan: “So, because our contract requires everything matches Washington state law, Flock has modified their software since Senate Bill 6002 passed so that we no longer have the ability to accept or request sharing outside of the state of Washington. So, we can’t share with any federal organization at this point. We can’t share with anybody in Oregon or Idaho. It has to be a sheriff’s department or police department within the state.”
Q: What would happen to an individual that violate SB 6002?
Shudlt: “The individual officer could potentially have a be charged with a gross misdemeanor, would most likely lose their certification to practice law in the state of Washington, potentially civil liability depending on what they were using it for. It’s something I know I don’t think any officer within our jurisdiction for sure would want to risk that. I can’t imagine any other officer wanting to risk their career, their pension or anything for some violation.”
Q: Rivera pointed out a section of the contract the seems to allow Flock to access customer data for their own uses.
Shudlt: “That’s something we can um if we are to continue with the contract with flock, that’s something that we could address with them going forward.”
Q: Is Flock the only company with ALPR cameras like this?
Shudlt: ”They’re not the only ones with stationary ALPR contracts. Their technology does far outpace the other ones that are there currently. I know Axon, for example, I believe, has a system in place, but it’s not to the software abilities that this one is.”
Moyihan: “Flock I believe is also the only ALPR company that I’m aware of that allows sharing within agencies. As all of you likely know, when we have crimes committed to people who live in our community, often times that suspect does not stay here and they may not even live here. So having access to data in the greater area helps us to locate, investigate, and apprehend those individuals.”
Q: What is the difference between Flock and the other companies that offer ALPR cameras?
Shudlt: “One of the biggest things that Flock really stands ahead of its counterparts with so far is their AI model. So sometimes we’re looking for a vehicle that doesn’t have a license plate or we may not have a complete license plate for it. So Flock has a model that allows it to detect a type of car or a vehicle based on features. We can get an investigative lead from a vehicle and then try to obtain a license plate from the camera in some cases.”
Q: With cities not renewing their Flock contract, is there a point where the shared data is not worth it because there are too few jurisdictions participating?
Shudlt: “I would say yes. Currently all the south county departments employ flock except for the Renton police department. So it’s value, like Dennis said, is when you have an incident here in Renton, or even an incident in Kent, Tukwila or Auburn, where they’re trying to locate a suspect vehicle and having that network available to them. So, as long as you have that ability within those shared jurisdictions where a lot of things in south King County don’t only happen in Renton, it happens in the rest of our partner agencies. So if there were to come a day when our surrounding agencies no longer have the system, then yeah, I think we’d have to re-evaluate and look to see if there’s something better.”
Q: Can the council provide their own concerns with the current contract?
Shudlt: “I think we’d appreciate that. Again, we’ve been proponents for the technology, but understand the concerns of the community and if there’s some way to find ground where we could we could still have the ability to use this system but address those concerns, that would be excellent.”
Q: Have there been any hardware defects and what was the process to get those issues solved?
Police Commander Chandler Swain: “So, we have had one that got hit and then one, we don’t know if it’s vandalized or not, but it got pushed around. Flock replaces those. So when I get notified, which is pretty quickly because the system itself will tell me a camera is not working properly. So, I can contact Flock, most likely have already contacted me, but Flock has a third party come out and either replace that camera or fixes the camera and gets it back up.”
Q: Do the police know when the cameras are on and when they’re off and can they be turned on without the department knowing?
Swain: “I would know if they came on. If Flock decided, ‘hey, I’m going to turn the Renton cameras on’ for some unknown reason they would do that, they are the ones who turn them on and off, they’re the ones who I have requested to turn them off. So, they would have the ability. I can’t see that’d be a good business plan for them to do that… I would know if they were on and I know that they’re off if you want to know that. I log in just to kind of check in to see uh everything’s all the data has been gone for quite a while now.”
Q:What is the customer-generated data?
Moyihan: “In almost every case, customer generated data is going to be either a singular or a couple of quick pictures of a vehicle passing a camera. So, the cameras that we have around the city only take photographs.”
Q: Are there any other cameras in our community collecting data?
“There’s probably other cameras that are used by other jurisdictions or other bodies that are used for surveillance or whatnot. WSDOT, I’m sure, has cameras all over the place. I don’t know what their potential use is for law enforcement, but there’s also private entities within our city that employ the Flock cameras. We don’t have access to any of their data, but there are other private entities in the city that have these cameras also.”
Q: How can the police foster better relationships with marginalized people to put this surveillance in place?
Shudlt: “I don’t know if I’d completely call it surveillance. I think it is actually an unbiased tool because it’s just capturing license plates, right? It’s not looking for your race, your sexual orientation, your religion. It’s just capturing a license plate that’s traveling on a public roadway. I know there’s concerns even still around that. I can tell you that we have engaged community. Every community meeting that we’ve attended, whether it’s one of our talks on the block with the mayor, equity commission or chief’s community council, we’ve had these same discussions with them.”
Q: Is there any officer that would testify to the Flock cameras not being helpful to their investigations?
Shudlt: “No and I honestly I wouldn’t be here in front of you if that were the case… I have a stack on my desk of a lot of cases where either our investigators or special operations group or VCU group used the flock cameras as part of their investigation, but without that initial crutch, they wouldn’t have been able to solve those crimes.”
Swain: “Every Monday and Tuesday, I have several officers asking me if there were any updates from the council about the usage of Flock. So, our staff is very eager to get a response and determine whether or not the system’s going to be turned back on.”
DeFlock Renton
DeFlock Renton,a resident-led effort opposing AI-powered mass surveillance in the city, called for the city to permanently end its contract with Flock in a Aug. 10 press release.
After the council voted to cover the cameras, DeFlock Renton said covering the cameras acknowledges the risks, but does not prevent their later reactivation.
“The proliferation of these cameras is a healthcare threat,” Renton nurse Ashley Fedan said. “No one, especially our government, should be able to track our movements to appointments, gather personal data and use us as tracking or advertising fodder. Everyone should have the ability to live private lives while driving through Renton.”
The University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) investigative report, Leaving the Door Wide Open: Flock Surveillance Systems Expose Washington Data to Immigration Enforcement, found the Flock ALPR networks used by Washington law enforcement agencies had exposed data to federal immigration authorities.
Several agencies, including the Renton Police Department, had data accessed without authorization, according to the report. UWCHR’s public record request of Renton’s Flock Network Audit documented two searches conducted by U.S. Border Control on June 23, 2025.
“Our immigrant neighbors deserve to know that technology paid for and operated by their representatives will not become a back door for immigration enforcement,” Renton resident Gabriel Dias said. “We should not wait until we discover the next way federal immigration authorities can exploit our local cameras.”
DeFlock Renton is also concerned with Flock technology changing after installation.
“Flock cameras present dangers to our privacy and civil liberties, not just today, but as their capabilities grow,” Renton software engineer Brian Hughes said. “Our strongest protection against this mission creep is not to allow the system to be built and to invest in policies proven to improve safety while maintaining our privacy.”
DeFlock Renton argues the city has not provided “independently verifiable evidence showing that those benefits outweigh the financial cost, civil-liberties risks and potential exposure of residents’ movements to agencies outside Renton.”
