Tempe City Council returns from recess with new faces focused on transparency, accountability

Our Take

Credit to ABC15 Arizona for catching the irony here: Tempe axes its Flock contract, residents breathe a sigh of relief, and less than a week later the city council is weighing a nearly $7 million deal with Axon that still puts license plate readers on the street. New faces on the dais talking "transparency and accountability" is a good sign, but the real test isn't who dropped which vendor — it's whether the underlying mass-surveillance infrastructure actually goes away or just gets rebranded.

This is a pattern we see over and over: a city cancels one ALPR contract under public pressure, then quietly rolls the same capability into a bigger "public safety technology" bundle from a different company. Axon is a massive player in police tech, and if LPRs are buried inside a $7 million package covering body cameras, tasers, and software, it's a lot easier for council members to wave it through without the scrutiny a standalone Flock vote would get. Transparency means separating out the plate-reading piece and forcing a real debate on it, not letting it ride along with equipment everyone already supports.

If you're in Tempe or anywhere nearby, now is the moment to show up to that council meeting and ask directly whether this contract includes ALPR cameras, how the data will be stored, and who can access it. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and hit up our take-action page for tools to push back before the new system is locked in.