Friday, October 2, 2026
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The City of Olympia is moving to suspend and remove its Flock Safety automated license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras after a local law enforcement official recommended pausing the system due to community concerns and potential federal data misuse.
Olympia Police Department interim Chief Shelby Parker said the department configured the system to block automatic sharing with federal agencies and removed immigration-related alerts.
However, a shifting federal landscape created trust issues within the community.
“The federal landscape around data access is shifting, and that uncertainty creates risks we can’t ignore," said Parker, who made her remarks at an Olympia City Council study session on Tuesday, Dec. 2.
City Manager Jay Burney accepted the recommendation and council members expressed support during the study session, which drew dozens of protesters outside of city hall who opposed usage of the cameras.
Burney said the city will begin covering the cameras immediately and coordinate with Flock for removal of the cameras from 15 locations.
While the city is moving to deactivate the system, council members said they are not ruling out future use of ALPR technology.
In her presentation, Parker said the ALPR system aided 112 arrests, including 29 stolen vehicle recoveries. She added the program helped solve serious offenses, such as assaults, robberies, domestic violence cases, and even homicide investigations.
“The value is not the technology itself. It is in how it helps us find the truth faster, support victims more effectively, and hold people accountable," Parker said.
Still, Parker recommended suspending the program. She called the decision difficult, noting “our community’s trust is too important to risk.”
She added that community concerns about privacy and immigration enforcement are legitimate.
“The responsible step is to suspend the system while we evaluate emerging issues and monitor developments at the federal and state levels," Parker said.
Mayor Dontae Payne acknowledged the tool’s usefulness for property and violent crime investigations, but pointed to the current federal climate.
“We have an unhinged president who is rounding up people and violating their human rights on the streets of our country,” Payne said. “We cannot guarantee with 100% certainty that this data won’t be used to support a deplorable federal immigration agenda.”
He said that uncertainty compelled him to support removing the cameras.
Council member Kelly Green described Parker’s recommendation as “a courageous decision,” noting the difficulty of recommending the removal of a tool that has supported police work. She said the changing environment justified the discussion.
Green wanted to go forward with other tools that could assist police without raising similar concerns.
Council member Jim Cooper agreed with Green, saying Olympia had “a good product with, maybe, not an upstanding company — and definitely bad actors at the federal level.” This combination led him to support the suspension.
He also emphasized the city still needs to explore alternative tools for police work, but only after a community conversation about surveillance and city policy.
“I do think that we're in a place where surveillance is fairly normal, and we need to have a conversation as a community about what that looks like and feels like into the future before we can have tools like this to do good policing," Cooper said.
Council members Clark Gilman and Dani Madrone stressed the need for residents to be able to move freely without fear.
Madrone noted many people affected by federal immigration enforcement will not speak publicly, but their lived experiences must be considered when evaluating surveillance tools.
Mayor Pro Tem Yen Huynh, through a letter sent to the council, said the cameras have been an effective crime-fighting tool.
The letter which was read by Payne, emphasized balancing concerns about misuse with the system’s crime-fighting benefits. Huynh encouraged the city to explore alternative tools.
Huynh supports the pause of the use of the cameras, but said it is too early to end the program permanently.
Parker, responding to the mayor’s question about public safety without ALPRs, said the police department will continue strong investigative work, visible patrols, and close coordination with victims and businesses. She said while Flock accelerated investigations, it “never replaced our skill or commitment.”
Council members agreed to develop a comprehensive surveillance policy and conduct public forums to gather community input.
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JW
Pathetic pandering to a bunch of lefty crybabies. This only boosts crime in our community and increases the economic impacts to victims such as those dealing with car theft.
Wednesday, December 3, 2025 Report this
chrispc2u
Considering the tyrannical fascist inclinations of the current presidential administration this is a wise and prudent decision. Neither Trump nor his sycophantic minions respect the US Constitution and if they’re not busy lying or distorting the truth they are in fact going out of their way to flagrantly undermine it. They certainly can’t be trusted with our personal data. Kudos to the city of Olympia for protecting its own citizens from government overreach in a precariously politically divisive time.
Wednesday, December 3, 2025 Report this
terry
This is the degree of critical thinking and analysis we’ve come to expect in Olympia. The Trump haters are willing to dump a proven crime prevention tool and put fellow residents at unnecessary risk simply to frustrate federal immigration responsibilities - constitutionally mandated responsibilities.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
MikePelly
Kudos to the Olympia City council for voting to remove the flock cameras. Our national government is quickly turning into an Authoritarian dictatorship and we need to do everything we possibly can to resist this from ever happening. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Ben Franklin
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
TheVirtualOne
Couldn’t disagree with this decision more. This is a proven tool that is working to solve crimes against residents of this city. Law enforcement is one of the main reasons government exists, yet our city officials have abandoned their duty. This isn’t courage being displayed, but rather spineless reactionary behavior by a bunch of liberal cowards bowing to a handful of leftist idiots who support sanctuary policies that protect criminals.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
Kaleen38
I applaud the decision to halt the program in consideration of potential data misuse. I appreciate living in a city where we look out for each other. And finally, I reject the labels of lefty, crybaby, idiot or coward because you disagree.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
Snevets
Thank you to the council and the Mayor for standing by our Constitution and especially to our rallying community for this to happen. Democracy now!
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
C K
I'm all for ending this super surveillance of everyone though I don't agree with their reasoning. Do I trust that the system will really be removed? not really. Many in positions of power can say whatever they want; any faith, I may have once had, in all levels of government, was broken a long time ago.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
DudeInOlympia
lololol, love the trumpies whining all the way to a massive blue wave next year. "Pathetic lefty crybabies", "liberal cowards" , and "Trump haters" for the win, thank you for fighting to suppress Orwellian ideals. Never leaving this city, couldn't be prouder to live here. The weirdest thing about the Flock cameras though is the fact that the Epstein files still haven't been released, never seen an innocent man fight harder for the release of information that expels his incrimination and would supposedly shut us all up proving he did nothing... oh wait..
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
Chris_R
Thank you, Olympia City Council for allowing criminals and thieves to move freely without fear.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
CobraCommander
JW, maybe take a minute to stop parroting extreme-right talking points and demonstrate your side like these good citizens have?
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
CobraCommander
terry - Trump himself is engaging in highly illegal activities, yet he gets a pass.
Why?
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
CobraCommander
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Benjamin Franklin
MAGA deserves neither liberty nor safety.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
wellnow77
From a human rights standpoint, the council made the right decision.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
TheVirtualOne
The FBI arrested a suspect in the D.C. pipe bomb case today. Evidence from a license plate reader near the area captured his car, a Nissan Sentra, that evening.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 Report this
CLouisRocha
This isn’t about Trump, and it’s not about left vs. right. The two wings are attached to the same bird. The issue here is public privacy and the power of government, especially intelligence and law‑enforcement agencies that have been operating for decades across many administrations.
People in those institutions—FBI, DEA, DHS, various fusion centers, and now tech vendors tied into them—often stay in their roles far longer than any one president. Over time, that kind of continuity builds more real‑world influence and momentum than one politician, even a president. And historically, those same agencies have pushed hardest for new surveillance tools: license‑plate readers, facial recognition, predictive policing software, real‑time data sharing with private companies, and so on. You can see this pattern in everything from the post‑9/11 expansion of surveillance to newer tools like Flock cameras being rolled out in cities all over the country, often with minimal public debate or oversight.
On this Flock camera issue in Olympia specifically, what worries me is the lack of meaningful oversight and transparency. We’re talking about broad, community‑wide surveillance that captures everyone’s movements, not just “criminals.” There’s already evidence that automated license‑plate readers and similar systems produce false positives that lead to wrongful stops and arrests. One highly publicized example: a pregnant Black woman in Michigan was pulled over at gunpoint in front of her child after a bad facial‑recognition hit; Detroit police later admitted the software had been wrong. Other people have been mistakenly arrested because license‑plate readers flagged the wrong car. These aren’t hypotheticals—they’re real cases reported in mainstream news.
The legal umbrella term for all of this is “investigations,” but that word hides a lot. I was under the impression that, by law, an officer must have probable cause (or at least reasonable suspicion) to initiate a stop of a private citizen. Yet with this type of surveillance and loose standards, it feels like anyone can become a suspect just for “looking like” someone on a camera, or driving a car that a flawed algorithm or database flags. These systems are designed and managed by humans, which means bias and error are not bugs; they’re constant risks. And too often, there’s very little accountability for the damage when things go wrong.
We keep hearing about a “shifting landscape” of crime, politics, or technology. That kind of language sounds more like a PR shield than an honest attempt to deal with the law and with civil rights. It’s a way to keep expanding surveillance without really admitting how it can and already has violated people’s constitutional protections—especially the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the basic right to move around without being constantly tracked.
I still believe in truth and in real crime prevention. But that has to include complete transparency: the public has a right to know what technologies are being used, how they are deployed, what their error rates are, and how complaints and abuses are handled. We deserve clear, accessible explanations of how this affects public safety and how it might risk violating individual and community civil rights.
Is it wrong to think that if one private citizen effectively has no meaningful right to privacy—and can have their rights violated at any moment in the course of a vague “investigation”—then public safety and public trust are already compromised?
Here’s a real example from my own life in Olympia:
Not long ago, I was stopped by an Olympia police officer with lights and everything. I had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t in a car; I had simply walked across the street and handed a man a cigarette. That was it. The officer told me he stopped me because he “saw me hand someone something.” I pointed out that this is not a crime.
He then added that he saw me reach into my fanny pack and hand something to the person. That never happened, and I told him so. I also told him he was violating my rights and that this was already an illegal stop: I wasn’t breaking any law—traffic or otherwise—and I had no warrants. He continued to detain me anyway.
I cooperated enough to let him run my license just to show I was being cordial and had nothing to hide. He still kept me there. At the end, he even pretended to “forget” he had my license and dragged things out further. Then he asked if he could “have a look in my fanny pack, just so we’re good.” I told him no—never without a warrant.
I should not have to worry about being subject to aggressive tactics and clear violations of my rights when I’m just walking down the street and handing someone a cigarette. I don’t want the people whose job is to protect my freedom to be the ones who violate it. As ambassadors of the law, they should understand that law—especially the basics—better than anyone.
When an officer doesn’t seem to grasp what probable cause is, or just ignores the standard, and instead relies on tactics to force compliance, that’s a problem. In my case, by the officer’s own description, there was no crime, no reasonable suspicion, and no legitimate reason to detain me. Yet he did it anyway.
If you’re a police officer doing an “investigation,” you should be able to answer some simple questions before you stop someone:
What amounts to probable cause here?
What specific crime do I think is occurring?
Am I right legally, or do I just feel like I am?
I’m part of the public. My rights are supposed to be upheld—especially by the people enforcing the law I’m required to obey if I want to keep my freedom intact.
Do you think my experience is an isolated incident? Statistically, that would be almost impossible. Do you think I got an apology for this? I didn’t. No phone call, no letter, no email, no knock on the door. I waited and didn’t even file a complaint on Officer Spithaler for the unlawful stop. Still no apology. Business as usual.
So when the chief of police talks more about “holding people accountable” (her words) than about proving that current practices and technologies are actually safe and lawful for the public, it creates exactly the kind of environment where it’s convenient to overlook the law in cases like mine. It starts to look less like enforcing the law and more like hoping to “get lucky” and find something arrestable—and if you don’t, you walk away without any accountability or even basic humility.
That’s why I don’t trust blanket surveillance, including these Flock cameras, as any kind of solution. A department that struggles with accountability in simple face‑to‑face encounters should not be handed powerful tools that silently track thousands of people with almost no friction.
We should be watching the watchers. We should be looking carefully at who funds and profits from this technology, how data is stored and shared, and what legal safeguards actually exist for ordinary people. Until then, I honestly find myself considering wearing a mask in public—not for health reasons, but just to preserve a small sense of anonymity and the right to simply exist in public space without being constantly scanned.
Everyone—unless they’ve legitimately forfeited that right through due process—should have their freedom and privacy upheld, especially by those who claim to enforce the laws that are supposed to protect those rights.
Friday, December 5, 2025 Report this
36098501
It’s concerning to see the Olympia City Council decide to dismantle the Flock Safety system. It has become a proven tool for improving public safety and preventing crime without any local examples of misuse or abuse. This system, like Olympia Police Department (OPD) body cameras, demonstrates that technology with inherent privacy concerns can be managed responsibly under proper oversight. Importantly, Flock cameras capture license plate data only, not images of people or faces.
The Council’s concerns about data access and privacy are understandable and expected. However, prior to implementation, OPD carefully reviewed those issues and established strong safeguards through contracts, system configurations, audit logs, procedures, and data controls that meet the City’s own standards and specific system data sharing requirements. These controls have been demonstrated to Council members and align with standard practices used in both public agencies and private industries handling very sensitive data—from personal health information to corporate intellectual property.
If OPD finds that local system data has been accessed or misused by OPD staff, Flock, or an outside entity, that would warrant a serious reevaluation. But at present, there have been no verified reports of such issues locally. Meanwhile, the results from the first year for the community are clear: 112 arrests, 29 stolen vehicles recovered, and multiple crucial leads in assaults, robberies, and homicides. Chief Shelby Parker and her team deserve recognition for implementing the system with integrity, clear procedures, and demonstrated success in keeping the community safe.
Reversing course now appears to be a reaction to the concerns of loud voices rather than a conclusion based on Olympia’s own experience. Other widely accepted technologies—toll systems, traffic cameras, public and residential security cameras, TSA screening, even the smartphones most people carry everywhere—pose greater privacy challenges.
Olympia deserves a fuller, more inclusive discussion - one that brings together residents, technologists, data experts, civil liberties advocates, and law enforcement professionals. A balanced, evidence-based approach would better reflect the city’s diverse viewpoints and help the Council make decisions rooted in collaborative understanding rather than fear of a single loud group rightfully exerting political pressure.
Friday, December 5, 2025 Report this
TheVirtualOne
The city of Olympia paid $98,550 for the two-year installation and program of Flock cameras, which was funded by a grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce. The contract was for 15 cameras at six intersections and ran through July 2026. Total cost: $98,550. Funding: Washington State Department of Commerce grant. Duration: A two-year program that began in March 2024 and was scheduled to end in July 2026. Number of cameras: 15 cameras installed at six intersections.
So for about 17 months, this has cost less than $70,000, which makes the point this is a relatively small investment for the results its achieved.. Hiring another police officer would cost in the neighborhood of $150k/year. The interim police chief stated that so far the Flock system has “aided 112 arrests, including 29 stolen vehicle recoveries. She added the program helped solve serious offenses, such as assaults, robberies, domestic violence cases, and even homicide investigations.” Would one new officer at $150k/yr. be able to achieve those same results? The results are proof enough for me. Public safety is a primary responsibility of government. Do your job and take care of your community first. Leave your political spats at the dinner table or bar.
Friday, December 5, 2025 Report this
CobraCommander
TheVirtualOne - Ah yes, the bomber who the trump dmin didnt prioritize because they were leading an insurrection against the certification of election results. The guy they couldnt find for years and was only caught because of cross-referencing over 280,000 plastic cap purchases? That guy?
Friday, December 5, 2025 Report this
Somney
Thank you to the council and to the OPD for supporting this move. And to the people complaining...If you disagreed, you could have come out to the meetings and made your voice be heard. You did not. Our voice was heard because we spoke up.
Sunday, December 7, 2025 Report this
36098501
Somney – You’ve raised a crucial point that often goes unnoticed by casual observers of Olympia’s political process.
Many in our community perceive the public comment section as unsafe for dissenting views.
There are examples of speakers being followed and intimidated, doxed by active local Reddit and Facebook groups, targeted with vandalism or subjected to organized boycotts by local activist groups. Social media discussions have circulated lists targeting individuals and local businesses.
When this is combined with large Council consent calendars, 7-0 votes and limited public Council discussion or debate, the outcome can appear as unanimous community agreement. For many community members, the risk of backlash and impact to their family or professional life outweighs the benefit of public participation.
Local leadership often emerges from interconnected networks that include graduates of Evergreen State College or its MPA program, nonprofit leaders, the Democratic Socialists of America, and those employed in government roles.
It is difficult to break into the leadership circle as it is common for Council Members to vacate their seats before their term ends. This allows the remaining Council Members to select a replacement to hold the position until the next election. This allows the new Council Member to campaign with the advantages of an incumbent.
For some insight into the challenges of running for the Olympia City Council, The Olympia Standard has a timely podcast. It describes a process that is daunting but reflects the reality of Olympia’s political engine and the gauntlet that candidates must navigate.
https://theolympiastandard.com/2025/12/06/141-sarah-destasio-looks-back-at-2025/
Ensuring that all community voices can participate safely and equitably should be a shared goal. Strengthening public trust will depend on both civic leaders and residents fostering an environment where disagreement and debate is not only tolerated, but valued and leveraged for better community outcomes.
Monday, December 8, 2025 Report this