Redmond PD completely suspends Flock camera use amid statewide concerns over ICE access

Our Take

Credit to KOMO News for surfacing this one: Redmond PD didn't wait for a lawsuit or a leak to hit pause on its Flock cameras — it did so amid mounting statewide concern that federal immigration agents could get backdoor access to local ALPR data. That's a notable admission. Departments love to insist their license-plate networks are airtight, local-use-only tools. When a police department suspends operations rather than defend the setup, it tells you the risk was real enough that "trust us" wasn't going to cut it anymore.

This is the pattern we keep seeing nationwide: local cops adopt Flock for stated purposes like stolen cars or Amber Alerts, and then the data ends up reachable by ICE, other agencies, or anyone with query access and a flimsy justification. Washington has sanctuary-style protections on paper, but a camera network doesn't care about state lines once the data's networked and searchable. A pause is good. It is not the same as a shutdown, and history shows these systems have a habit of quietly rebooting once public attention moves on.

Redmond residents and anyone in a similarly "paused" jurisdiction should treat this as a moment to push for permanent answers, not a news cycle to wait out. Check whether your community has these cameras on our camera map, and if you want your city council or police department to actually answer for who can query this data and why, our take-action page has the tools to make that happen.