1. United States
2. Ill.
3. Letter

I am writing to ask you to remove Flock Safety cameras, or any similar automated license plate reader (ALPR) system, from our community, or decline to renew the current contract. I know public safety matters to you, which is why I ask you to weigh this technology against the evidence, not the marketing. These systems have a documented pattern of enabling stalking by the officers who have access to them. The Institute for Justice has tracked at least 26 cases nationwide of police using ALPR data to track romantic partners or people they were personally interested in, and most were only discovered after a victim checked the lookup tool herself. In Milwaukee, one officer searched a woman and her ex-partner 179 times before he was caught. A system that records every car passing a fixed point will be used to track specific people, and the record shows officers doing exactly that. Camera errors have also led to innocent people being detained at gunpoint. The Institute for Justice found at least 27 documented cases since 2018 of drivers pulled over, detained, or jailed because of a misread plate or an outdated hotlist entry, and in nearly two thirds of those cases officers had already drawn their guns before realizing the mistake. In Sherwood, Arkansas, a misread plate led officers to detain a couple at gunpoint while their six week old baby sat alone in the back seat. Local data has also reached federal immigration authorities without public knowledge, even in states where this is against the law. Investigations in California, Illinois, Minnesota, and Oregon have found searches logged with reasons like "ICE" or "CBP" run through local Flock networks, sometimes as informal favors between officers. A lawsuit in San Francisco alleges federal and out of state agencies queried the city's database more than 1.6 million times in seven months. Finally, the company's own effectiveness claims come from a survey it commissioned itself, not independent research. Communities are noticing: 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, including 39 in the first five months of this year alone. I would ask that for: 1. The direct removal of Flock cameras from our community, or decline to renew the contract. 2. If removal isn't immediate, support an independent audit of who has accessed our data and why. 3. Support requiring independent, third party effectiveness review before any future surveillance contract is renewed, with a firm ban on sharing data with federal immigration authorities. Thank you for taking the time to consider this. I would welcome the chance to discuss it further, and I hope you will treat this as the serious public safety and civil liberties issue that it is.