MOUNT VERNON, Wash. The six Flock Safety license plate readers used by Mount Vernon police have been covered and turned off following a surprise City Council vote on June 24, an action Mayor Peter Donovan denounced as "circumventing an important public process," Cascadia Daily News reported.
The council voted 4-1 to shut down the cameras after more than six months of community testimony against the technology. Council member Navor Tercero cast the lone no vote, while Melissa Beaton and Mary Hudson were absent. The action was not on the meeting agenda, and the public had no advance notice, though the council can add action items during a meeting, a step generally reserved for emergencies.
At a July 1 public safety committee meeting, Police Chief Dan Christman defended the automated license plate readers, saying the city does not pair them with facial recognition, controls who can see its data and does not target people of color. He pointed to a June 11 homicide in which Flock images of a vehicle helped officers find and arrest a suspect, and said the council's move felt "like a punch in the gut."
Scrutiny of the vendor grew in 2025, when University of Washington Center for Human Rights researchers found federal agencies had accessed some local departments' Flock data, potentially supporting immigration enforcement in violation of state law. Mount Vernon police were not among the departments found to have shared data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to CDN.
Council member Hannah Oliver said the concern was not that local police would misuse the system, but that outside parties, especially federal agencies, could use it to target the city's sizable immigrant population. Council member Andrew Vander Stoep noted that 430 residents signed a petition against Flock, delivered to the council June 24 by a member of the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter.
The fight has since widened. Council member Randy West asked that a resolution censuring Donovan for what he called "personal attacks" be placed on the next agenda, after the mayor used words like "slimy" and "gross" to describe how the abrupt vote made him feel. The council was set to vote on the censure at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 8; it would be a formal reprimand with no tangible consequences. The mayor has no veto power over the Flock decision.