Bartlesville residents, officials debate use of Flock automated license-plate readers

Residents, public-safety officials and council members spent the bulk of a Bartlesville City Council workshop debating the legal and privacy implications of automated license-plate reader cameras branded as Flock Safety. Public speakers urged removal or strict limits; others said the cameras can aid investigations. Council members directed staff to gather more information and prepare policy options for later consideration.

Why it matters: speakers raised constitutional and statutory concerns, questioned how long and with whom data is shared, and said state and right-of-way rules already limit some ALPR uses. The city is weighing enforcement benefits against legal risk and public trust.

Dozens of residents addressed the council during the workshop’s public-comment period. One commenter warned the council that inclusion of the Flock item in a workshop could violate the state Open Meetings Act. Several speakers cited Title 47 statutes they said limit automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) to uninsured-vehicle enforcement and argued that use by the police department for broader investigations was therefore unlawful.

A speaker who said he had received documents from Flock told the council that a single Flock camera in Bartlesville averages roughly 4,000 images per day and that a 10-camera deployment would generate “over 1,000,000 photos” daily, most of which would never be used, a volume he said creates surveillance risks if controls loosen or software changes.

City staff and legal advisers described a mixed legal picture. The city attorney told the council that courts long have held motorists have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a license plate that is publicly displayed, citing Tenth Circuit precedent. The attorney also said a recent federal decision and related litigation (a district-court ruling in Norfolk that survived a motion to dismiss and ongoing litigation relying on Carpenter v. United States) raise questions about whether aggregated historical location data could receive Fourth Amendment protection in some circumstances.

Council members and staff said they had removed cameras from Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) rights-of-way after ODOT objected to pole placements. Staff said the removal was performed after ODOT’s request and that the city and vendor worked to relocate devices. Several public speakers disputed the timeline and disclosure, saying ODOT’s requests had been ignored until enforcement made compliance unavoidable.

Speakers also raised data-retention and data-sharing questions: whether images are stored only temporarily, whether queries to the cloud create copies elsewhere, and which outside agencies receive data and how long those recipients retain it. Staff said queries typically access cloud data via an API and that officers download only images relevant to a case into a case file; those downloads become standard evidence and may be retained. Staff acknowledged varying policies among outside agencies that could affect retention and access.

Some public speakers and county officials, including Sheriff Scott Owen, were reported to have withdrawn support or urged caution. The Washington County Commission rescinded its memorandum of understanding with the vendor, the council was told, and Sheriff Owen was quoted as expressing concern about “the appearance of approaching Fourth Amendment boundaries.” Several speakers urged the city to seek an attorney-general opinion or wait for pending legal challenges to play out.

The council did not take a formal vote on deployment or removal. Instead members asked staff for follow-up: to seek technical documentation from the vendor that could be made public, to clarify how data is shared and deleted, and to return with legal and policy options. Multiple council members said they want either stricter safeguards or to place the question before voters if legal uncertainty persists.

The council also asked staff to prepare a working document about possible limits (including retention windows and access controls) and to research the process and thresholds for placing a measure on the municipal ballot or initiating a citizen petition.

Next steps: staff will compile vendor documentation, legal analysis, and proposed operational controls and return to council with a draft policy. The council did not adopt or reject ALPR use at the workshop.