Renton residents urge council to cancel Flock ALPR contract, citing privacy and immigration concerns

Dozens of Renton residents used the council's public-comment period on May 18 to call for the city to terminate its contract with Flock Safety, a company that operates automatic license‑plate reader (ALPR) cameras, saying the system threatens privacy, risks data breaches and could be used for immigration enforcement.

“My name is Adam Diba. I reside here in Renton,” said Adam Diba, who described a climate of fear in immigrant neighborhoods and urged city leaders to provide accurate information, compassion and support to community organizations serving affected families. Several other speakers cited similar concerns, including potential misuse of ALPR data by federal agencies.

A number of residents recounted privacy and data-security worries that they said state and vendor assurances have not resolved. “Flock is nefariously marketed as a tool for public safety, but in reality our government has outsourced mass surveillance to a built multibillion dollar private data broker company,” said Amy, a community health‑care worker, who urged the council to terminate the contract. Leslie Jensen said the police chief offered no evidence to back claims that data are not shared with out‑of‑state or federal agencies and pointed to other cities that have canceled Flock contracts after finding undisclosed sharing.

Speakers also raised public‑health and reproductive‑privacy concerns. Ashley Fidan, a nurse anesthetist, warned that ALPR data could be used to identify and penalize people traveling to Washington for abortion care, noting that cross‑state use of location data could expose vulnerable patients to legal risk in other states.

Technical and oversight questions were raised about the system's performance and governance. Michael Westgard and Wyatt Fitzpatrick cited research and watchdog reports they said show Flock systems have been vulnerable to backdoor hacks, retained more data than advertised and been queried by agencies for protests and activism. “The architecture itself” was described as enabling misuse beyond any single agency's control.

Council President Ruth Perez and the mayor thanked residents for speaking and invited additional information by email. Mayor Armando Pavoni clarified during the meeting that the police chief had requested the cameras be turned off when legislation was pending and that the chief was responsible for reactivating them once the technology and law aligned; he said the mayor did not independently turn the system off or on.

The council did not take immediate formal action on the Flock contract during the meeting. Several speakers urged council members to maintain the pause on camera operation and to require a public, transparent review of evidence about data access, retention, third‑party sharing and the system's effectiveness before any further use.

Next steps: Residents asked council members to require the police department to provide verifiable documentation about who can access ALPR data, for what purposes, and whether federal or out‑of‑state agencies can query Renton's records. The council has scheduled committee meetings for ongoing public‑safety and community‑engagement items; no vote on the Flock contract was scheduled that night.