The Enumclaw City Council has approved a contract with Flock Safety and utilizing automatic license plate readers during its Aug. 25 meeting.

The vote on the contract went as expected, with Council members Corre Koopman Frazier, Jan Martinell, Chance LaFleur, Thomas Sauvageau, and Anthony Wright approving the contract, and Council members Bobby Martinez and Chris Gruner opposing it.

Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) do exactly what they say on the tin — they automatically take photos of license plates that pass the stationary cameras along a roadside with the purpose of aiding law enforcement. The cameras also collect data on the make, model, and color of the car, as well as if there’s any damage or alterations.

Those photos are stored in database and, if a vehicle is suspected of being involved in a crime, law enforcement can search the database using a description of the car. Officers can receive information on where the car has been as it has passed cameras and live “hits” for its current position.

Enumclaw Police Department Chief Tim Floyd has said using these cameras will be like having police officers on duty all day, every day, and will help his department track down leads more easily and arrest suspects faster. Floyd also said the cameras will help in cases of AMBER and Silver alerts.

Enumclaw is now only one of a few cities in South King County that does not utilize Flock Safety’s ALPRs. Nearby parts of Pierce County and even Yakima County over Cayuse Pass also use the database.

This means if Enumclaw becomes a part of the Flock Safety system, not only will the cameras installed inside city limit alert the EPD to suspect locations, but the department could also receive alerts from cameras in different cities, if a crime is deemed important enough.

The EPD could also receive “hits” on suspects sought by other police departments if a serious enough crime was committed.

If photo of a vehicle is not flagged as being possibly involved in a crime within 30 days of the photo being taken, it is hard deleted and cannot be recovered, Flock Safety has said.

“If there is no legitimate law enforcement reason to view a photo… law enforcement will never even see it before it gets deleted,” a council agenda bill memo reads.

Overall, more than 5,000 jurisdictions across the nation are contracted with Flock Safety. According to Floyd, some cities have seen crime reduced by up to 70% after cameras were installed.

The cost of using the ALRPS starts at $30,000 for the first year for eight cameras, plus installation, and $24,000 moving forward.

The cameras are expected to be placed on SR 410, 167, and 169, taking photos of all cars coming in and leaving the city on those routes.

THE CONTRACT

Enumclaw is expected to start using the ALPRs on a trial basis for 60 days for no charge, and if the city decides not to contract with Flock Safety, the equipment would be removed for free.

But if the city does contract with Flock Safety, here are a couple of details amongst the legal mumbo jumbo.

First, Enumclaw would own all the data that is collected.

However, Flock Safety can utilize this data for other purposes, like training machine-learning algorithms, so long as it “anonymizes” the data and scrubs any identifying features from the image.

Flock cannot sell data collected by these ALPRs, anonymized or no.

And while photos are generally deleted after 30 days, the EPD can formally request that Flock Safety stops the automatic deletion of requested records.

POLICY SAFEGUARDS

Prior to bringing a Flock Safety contract to council, elected officials approved an ALPR policy regarding the police department’s usage of the tech.

One is that each officer gets a unique user ID and all searches require case number logging. This will allow the department to track which officer searches what during quarterly audits. Audits will be conducted by Operations Commanders Tony Ryan and Josh Hong.

Additionally, officers are prohibited from accessing the Flock database on their personal devices.

The policy also bans the use of ALPRs for any sort of civil infraction enforcement (the cameras don’t track speeding) or private third-party sharing.

Finally, while data collected is not available to public review due to the possibility of revealing confidential information, an online “transparency portal” will be created for the public to see which agencies the EPD shares information with; how long the department retain data; and how many license plates read, searches performed, and hits received in the previous 30 days.

An example of the portal can be viewed at transparency.flocksafety.com/puyallup-wa-pd.