Scottsdale Police Union Rep: Effort to Restrict License Plate Readers Called ‘Defund the Police 2.0’

Our Take

Credit to Jen's Two Cents for capturing the public comment that's making rounds: at a recent Scottsdale City Council meeting, a police union representative named Lottie Kimball reportedly compared proposed restrictions on license plate readers to "Defund the Police 2.0." It's a loaded phrase, and that's the point — it's designed to shut down debate before it starts. Asking a city to add oversight, retention limits, or audit requirements to a mass-surveillance network is not the same as cutting an officer's salary or a patrol budget. Conflating the two is a rhetorical move, not an argument.

This is a pattern we see in city council chambers across the country. When residents or council members push back on unchecked ALPR deployment, the response from police unions is often to escalate the stakes rather than address the actual policy questions: who can access the data, how long it's stored, whether it's shared with ICE or other outside agencies, and what happens when the system gets something wrong. Those are reasonable questions for any city spending public money on a tool that logs the movements of every driver, not just suspects. Treating oversight as an attack on policing itself is a way of avoiding that conversation.

Scottsdale residents deserve a real debate about what Flock cameras are doing in their city, not a slogan. If you want to see where these cameras are already watching in your area, check out our camera map, and if you want to push back at your own city council, our take-action resources can help you get started.