Chandler stops using ALPR cameras after audit: Here’s why

Our Take

Credit to Arizona's Family (3TV/CBS 5) for digging into a story that should be happening in every city with these cameras bolted to utility poles: an actual audit. Chandler apparently found something in its Flock Safety system that didn't add up, and rather than shrug it off, the city hit pause on all 40 units. That's rare. Most departments treat these cameras as infrastructure, not as surveillance tools that need regular, adversarial scrutiny.

The specifics of the 'anomaly' matter less than the precedent. Flock's pitch to city councils is always the same: trust us, it's just plate reads, it's audited, it's compliant. But audits only mean something if someone is willing to act on what they find — and willing to admit a system might need to be shut off instead of patched and left running. Most jurisdictions never get this far because no one's asking the questions until a crash, a leak, or a lawsuit forces it.

Chandler deserves some credit here, but one city pausing one deployment doesn't fix the structural problem: these networks exist with almost no public visibility into who's querying them, for what, and whether the data is being handled the way vendors promise. Check our camera map to see what's watching your own commute, and if your city hasn't run an audit like Chandler's, that's a conversation worth starting at take-action.