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People power is alive and well in Lane County.
Vocal opposition to the deployment of Flock Safety’s automated license-plate reader cameras clearly contributed to the Eugene and Springfield police departments’ Friday night announcements that they had suspended their contracts with the company.
The campaign by Eugene and Springfield residents serves as a great example of an informed public pushing back against government overreach. Community members organized and advocated, packed city council and police commission meetings and pressed public officials for more transparency about city contracts with Flock.
As this editorial board wrote in October, our opposition to the Eugene Police Department’s use of Flock cameras had little to do with fears about overreach by local law enforcement — although Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner and City Manager Sarah Medary could have tamped down much of the controversy had they been more transparent about the installation of the cameras.
Instead, our objections have centered on a lack of trust in the security of Flock’s cloud-hosted data, and on the Trump administration’s desire to circumvent Oregon and other states’ “sanctuary” laws. Those laws prevent local and state law enforcement from using resources to assist federal immigration enforcement without a court order.
That concern is real and immediate for too many of our neighbors.
More than half of immigrants arrested in recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps had no criminal record (being undocumented in the United States is not in and of itself a federal crime). And Eugene police say the city’s cameras were included in a broad search by federal government agencies of more than 80,000 cameras nationwide, though it’s unclear if local data was accessed.
The Justice Department has published a list of sanctuary jurisdictions, noting the administration’s desire to “eradicate these harmful policies around the country.” We have every reason to believe the federal government will take any step it deems necessary to trample Oregon’s nearly four-decade-old sanctuary law. That would include unlawfully accessing local data, like Flock surveillance footage, to detail and deport undocumented immigrants with no criminal record here in Lane County.
We don’t see the Eugene and Springfield police chiefs’ desire to use the cameras as some Trumpian plot to carry out the administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Nor do we celebrate the loss of an emerging technology that could help meaningfully reduce crimes like retail and automobile theft. Eugene police say the cameras helped catch a murder suspect and were instrumental in apprehending the seven men arrested in connection with a burglary ring targeting Asian American households. But all technologies come with a cost.
License-plate reading software is a promising technology with the potential to free up investigative resources for more serious crimes, and Oregon lawmakers have discussed regulations that could erect safeguards against unlawful data access.
The issue is that Flock, the largest automated license-plate reader system in the country, has repeatedly proved to be an unreliable partner. It has enabled Southern California law enforcement agencies to violate the state’s sanctuary policies more than 100 times this year. It allowed ICE to access Illinois license-plate cameras in violation of its laws. And research by the University of Washington found that multiple law enforcement agencies using Flock cameras across the state either enabled data sharing with U.S. Border Patrol, or had their cameras accessed by Border Patrol without explicit authorization.
Eugene and Springfield are hardly alone in cutting ties with Flock. Last week, the city councils in San Marcos, Texas, and Mountlake Terrace, Washington, voted not to renew their contracts, joining cities like Evanston, Illinois, and Austin, Texas, which have already cut ties, and cities like Syracuse, New York, that are considering it.
We’ll be keeping an eye on whether the state will try to make Eugene and Springfield repay the grants they received last year to install the cameras. Eugene received a $391,000 grant through an Oregon Criminal Justice Commission retail theft reduction program. Springfield received a $93,000 grant through the same program. Neither city should be punished for accepting state funds during the previous presidential administration for technology they couldn’t have foreseen might be abused by a future administration.
We also want to hear more about the “vulnerabilities and limitations” that Eugene police cited in their Friday night statement suspending its contract. Springfield police put out its own statement less than an hour later, citing “information recently brought to the department’s attention regarding Eugene Police Department’s Flock ALPR cameras,” using the acronym for automated license-plate reader technology. The two departments have clearly been discussing the issue, and owe it to the public to come forward soon about the vulnerabilities they discovered, and whether any community members might be affected.
And we’re waiting to hear from Lane County Sheriff Carl Wilkerson, whose agency paid $66,000 to purchase 22 Flock cameras in August. Does the sheriff’s office have the same concerns that Springfield does about the Flock system? Florence also uses several Flock cameras. Will they reconsider in light of the Eugene and Springfield decisions?
Ideally, law enforcement agencies and state policymakers make progress in 2026 toward introducing safeguards that allow police to harness the potential of license-plate reading technology without creating a back door for the federal government to chip away at states’ right to determine the extent of their cooperation with federal law enforcement absent a court order.
Reducing theft is obviously a worthy goal. But how that goal is achieved is important, too. Without a trustworthy partner in the federal government, Eugene and Springfield’s decisions to suspend their contracts with Flock Safety was the only reasonable step to take.