Several Oak Park trustees weighed in on the village’s participation in a nationwide license plate reader network, saying they want the village’s cameras turned off.
Trustees Brian Straw and Jenna Leving Jacobson both told Oak Park Chief Shatonya Johnson that they want the police department to shut off the village’s license plate readers, which are run through a contract with the Flock Safety corporation. The trustees’ comments came during a discussion of the department’s annual report, which touched on how the cameras have been used in Oak Park over the last year.
Straw and Leving Jacobson both cited concerns over how the data collected in Oak Park could be used to aid immigration enforcement investigations in violation of the village’s sanctuary city ordinance and Illinois state law, as well as their distrust of Flock Safety as a company.
In a memo from Johnson to the village manager, department heads and the village board, she acknowledged the department’s Flock data had been tapped last January by south suburban Palos Heights in an immigration related case.
And the village’s Citizens’ Police Oversight Committee complained in a May report that it was not receiving all of the Flock data it wanted from the police department and that the body wants a say in how the program will proceed.
“It would make sense to have a further conversation around Flock in light of everything that has been happening nationally, not because of anything that the Oak Park Police Department has done,” Straw said. “I continue to have concerns around Flock and I would like us to have a further conversation around whether there is any true accountability to be had, whether there is any true security to any of that data and I think based on everything I have seen I have concerns that there is not. I would like to see us turn off the Flock cameras, because I do know that there have been some instances where they have been useful, but I do not know that the limited data I have seen regarding their usefulness outweighs concerns around privacy and the fact that it is now a possibility for the federal government to get access to sort of a live stream of data of who is moving through the community.”
Illinois state law bans license plate reader data from being used in investigations related to a person’s immigration status or investigations into if a person has had an abortion. Searches of Oak Park data on those grounds would also violate village sanctuary ordinances.
The discussion of the tech follows a memo written by Johnson about the Flock cameras that was distributed to Village Manager Kevin Jackson, all of the village’s departmental leaders and the village trustees. The memo included information on steps the Oak Park police department has taken to limit the access other agencies have to local data and a detailed overview of the program itself. Out-of-state agencies now must obtain permission from Chief Johnson to search Oak Park’s Flock data, according to the memo.
The memo also reported that the early stages of an audit of the license plate reader program confirmed that Oak Park data had been tapped on at least one occasion for immigration enforcement. Early work on the program audit found that last January Palos Heights Police had conducted 28 statewide Flock searches that included Oak Park data and had listed the reason for the searches as an investigation into “immigrations violation,” according to the memo.
The memo was drafted in the interest of transparency, village spokesperson Dan Yopchick told Wednesday Journal.
“First,” Yopchick said, “to respond to concerns about potential violations involving use of Flock technology in other Illinois jurisdictions. Second, to provide information for the board on how the Oak Park Police Department protects the data in accordance with local and state requirements.”
A vote on the cameras continued use may come as soon as the Aug. 5 board meeting, Leving-Jacobson said at last week’s meeting. Yopchick said that no agenda for that meeting has been finalized.
“The village recognizes there is strong public interest in the use of Flock technology and the broader conversations happening across Illinois. At this time, no formal decision has been made, and any future discussion or action would ultimately be at the discretion of the village board,” Yopchick said.
Last year, trustees voted by a margin of four to three to renew the village’s contract with Flock Safety for another year. Straw, along with Trustee Chibuike Enyia and former Trustee Susan Buchanan voted against renewing the contract.
The Flock Automated License Plate readers “capture an image of a vehicle’s license plate, read the image using software, compare the plate number read against databases containing vehicles of interest, and, ultimately, alert an officer when the system has captured the license plate of a vehicle of interest,” according to the village. The technology also allows law enforcement to search a nationwide database for surveillance data on vehicles of interest.
In 2024, the company’s CEO Garrett Langley told a podcaster that he believed the company’s technology would eliminate all crime in America in 10 years. The company’s technology is already in place in more than 4,000 communities.
Local leaders adopted the cameras hoping it’d help police solve violent crimes and vehicle thefts and keep the police department up to date with law enforcement standard practices.
Oak Park has 8 license plate readers, six of which are situated within two blocks of the village’s eastern border with Chicago. The cameras recorded images of over 400,000 vehicles in the last 30 days, according to the village’s Flock data portal.
According to the department’s annual report, Oak Park police received nearly 30,000 total alerts from the Flock cameras in 2024, mostly in connection with suspected stolen plates. The department received 1,728 Flock alerts related to suspected stolen vehicles, 81 related to suspected missing persons and 33 related to suspected violent persons.
The department said it leaned on information gathered by the cameras over the course of investigations into several violent incidents, including an investigation that led to the arrest of two men for a string of armed robberies last September, according to the report.
That was the only case the report identified where Flock insights led directly to arrests, but the cameras provided other information on important cases. Examples of this identified in the report include the investigation into the murder of Scott Robinson, a 34-year-old Chicago man shot and killed near the intersections of Ridgeland Avenue and Roosevelt Road last November.
According to the report, Flock cameras identified the car used by the suspects in the killing as stolen and tracked where it maneuvered through the village prior to the shooting. The stolen car was later recovered by authorities in Chicago, but no arrests have been made on murder charges related to Robinson’s slaying.
The police department provides data regarding all stops and any approved felony related searches to Oak Park’s Citizens’ Police Oversight Committee, according to the department.
Last May, that committee submitted a report to the village board and in the report, the volunteer advisory body said that they want the police to provide them with more information describing how Flock cameras have led to arrests before the committee will recommend the cameras’ effectiveness to the village board.
“Despite repeated requests by CPOC for evidence of ‘successful investigative outcomes’ to illustrate the value of Flock Safety ALPR for this use, OPPD remains unwilling to provide such data,” CPOC wrote in the report.” “Consequently, there is no evidence whatsoever that Flock Safety ALPRs have played a meaningful role in any Oak Park crime investigation since their installation in 2022. With a total of two stops and approximately 2.1 investigative searches per day over this reporting period, it is clear that no statistically significant crime prevention or resolution is realized by using the Flock Safety ALPR System here in Oak Park. Because OPPD is unwilling to share downstream crime outcome data with CPOC, it is impossible to gauge any actual benefit of Flock Safety ALPRs, especially when compared to real-life evidence of ALPR system misuse and mounting privacy concerns nationwide.”
Prior to the trustees’ comments on the matter last week, Johnson addressed public commentors who had told the board that they wanted an end to the village’s partnership with the surveillance tech company.
“I want to say clearly that I heard you all and I understand the concerns,” she said. “But I want to also ensure the community that the police department is working closely with the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, with our legal team and with Flock Safety so that we can address these issues and my only request tonight is your continuous patience and support as we work through these issues.”
One commentor, who identified herself as a nurse practitioner, said she believes the cameras are keeping local migrants from seeking healthcare and other essential services for fear that driving by a Flock camera could lead to their deportation.
Leving Jacobson, who also works as a part-time Spanish instructor at Dominican University and as a translator in medical settings, said she’s seen that play out in Oak Park. She can’t support the village doing business with the company for those reasons, she said.
“I think if we are just going to be a sanctuary community for anyone, we can’t continue to use the Flock cameras,” she said. “Our patients are not showing up for their appointments, they are missing tests and refills and people are telling me that won’t go to church anymore and families are planning not to send their children to school in the fall. A large percentage of my students are Latinx and the no-show and absences in that area of my life has gone up tremendously since the inauguration in January. The sphere of terror and violence which I only anticipate will increase given the new budget that was passed in D.C., anything that we are doing that can facilitate that I don’t want to be a part of. I cannot support public funds going to a company, going to a business that can help facilitate that kind of terror.’
Last month, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office said it was investigating Flock Safety over alleged illegal searches by out-of-state law enforcement of data produced from Illinois license plate readers. The searches under scrutiny by the office include an alleged inquiry by Texas law enforcement through the Mount Prospect police department’s database into the whereabouts of a Texas woman investigators believed had an abortion, as well as searches connected to immigration enforcement cases.
Secretary of State Alex Giannoulias told reporters last month the state believed that 46 different law enforcement agencies from around the country had made illegal searches of Illinois Flock Safety datasets.
Langley wrote a blog post saying the company had taken steps to make sure all law enforcement searches of Illinois license plate reader data comply with state law and that it had banned 47 agencies from accessing Illinois camera data after an internal audit. Flock Safety also maintains that the search into the Texas woman didn’t violate state law because it was a missing person investigation where no criminal charges were being sought.
The company’s cameras are also the subject of a federal lawsuit filed in Virginia, in which a civil liberties organization is arguing that the company’s surveillance violates the constitution.
