Documents indicate that Washington Township is paying for Flock Cameras with Opioid Settlement Funds

Our Take

Orwell Day's reporting points to something we've suspected for a while: Flock Safety's sales pitch works so well that cash-strapped towns will raid almost any pot of money to afford it, including funds explicitly earmarked for opioid addiction treatment and recovery services. Washington Township isn't the only place doing this, and that should alarm anyone who thought settlement dollars from the pharmaceutical industry's reckoning were actually going to help people, not bankroll a camera network that tracks every car on every road.

This is the quiet second scandal of mass ALPR deployment. It's not just the privacy erosion, the lack of warrants, or the data-sharing with ICE and out-of-state agencies we've flagged before — it's the budgetary sleight of hand that gets these systems installed in the first place. When a township can't justify a surveillance expansion out of its general fund, it goes looking for money earmarked for something sympathetic, counts on nobody reading the fine print, and calls it a win for 'public safety.' Meanwhile the people those opioid funds were supposed to serve get nothing.

If your town is flush with settlement money and suddenly flush with Flock cameras too, that's worth a records request. Check our camera map to see what's already been installed near you, and visit our take-action page for ways to push back before your city council quietly signs the next contract.