Like the Centralia Police Department, leaders of two other law enforcement agencies in the county remain confident that their Flock Safety camera systems will remain a useful tool even under new state regulations.
After much debate in the state Legislature over a bill to regulate automated license plate reader (ALPR) camera use, Gov. Bob Ferguson signed Senate Bill 6002 on Monday, March 30. The bill put in place new rules around the use of license plate readers, including limiting how long photos from the system could be kept on record.
Police chiefs in Chehalis and Napavine said the changes in the state regulations have had little impact on their own Flock Safety camera systems and how they use them.
Some law enforcement agencies in the state have warned the regulations have made the ALPRs less effective, even going so far as to shut them off.
Napavine Police Chief John Brockmueller is closer to paying for more of the cameras than shutting down the ones he already has.
“I'm going to try to keep the three I got, and hopefully I can convince the council to get a couple more if I decide that we can use them,” Brockmueller said, “which I think we could.”
Three local law enforcement agencies in Lewis County are using stationary ALPR cameras offered and maintained by Flock Safety — the most well known company offering the technology.
According to Chehalis Police Chief Randy Kaut, the Chehalis Police Department currently leases 15 Flock Safety cameras, which are placed and maintained around Chehalis city limits. Kaut said the city committed to the system after seeing it in practice during a probationary period with the Centralia Police Department in 2023 under former Centralia Police Chief Stacy Denham, who is now Chehalis city manager.
Kaut said the new state law meant his agency had to make some minor policy changes and relocate one of its 15 cameras after it was decided it was too close to a church, which are among a list of protected sites under the new law. Otherwise, most of the necessary changes — like a shorter retention period for photos taken by the cameras and requiring officers to enter in the reasons for using the system — were implemented by Flock Safety.
Kaut was originally worried that the agency would no longer be able to enter a license plate number into its own system and receive notice when the plate was spotted. The agency often uses the function to find stolen cars or investigate felony crimes, such as burglaries.
The final version of the bill didn't end up impacting that specific use and agencies can, in theory, still use that specific function of the Flock system, with some extra caveats. That being said, Kaut said Chehalis won’t use the function for the time being. New regulations require agencies to review their watch lists every 24 hours.
Kaut conceded that the rule makes sense on the surface, making sure vehicles aren’t tracked longer than necessary. But the Chehalis Police Department, a relatively small agency, does not have the staff to review its list every 24 hours seven days a week, so the tool will be on pause until the agency can find a way to comply.
“At this point, we're not entering our own license plates into the system until we determine if we can effectively meet this requirement,” Kaut said.
Kaut, similarly to his counterpart in Centralia, Chief Andy Caldwell, lamented some of the changes and that other agencies were turning off their systems, but appeared for the most part optimistic.
“This could have been a lot worse,” he said.
Also like Caldwell, Kaut compared the push to regulate the systems to a now defunct state law that barred law enforcement from engaging in high speed pursuits. But Kaut said this time things came out more balanced.
“I think that they are starting to realize that, you know, going to the nth degree on some of these bills is not productive and it really hampers our job,” Kaut said. “So I'm, I think we, for the most part, we can do what we need to do with the changes to the bill.”
The Napavine Police Department is the third and final law enforcement agency in the county to operate its own Flock camera system. The city pays to lease just three of the cameras. Napavine hasn't had any issues with cameras near newly protected sites, unlike Centralia and Chehalis, which have both had to relocate or remove at least one camera.
Brockmueller said his department mostly uses the system to track down stolen cars, a practice that is still permitted under the new regulations. State law now bars law enforcement from using ALPR cameras for enforcing misdemeanors, but gross misdemeanors and felonies are still fair game.
The new law also provided one major benefit to law enforcement agencies. It exempted license plate photos from public records requests. The public can still request audits and other data about the system, but they can no longer acquire the photos themselves. The change appears to be a major benefit, especially for small agencies that struggle just with having enough staff to respond to the requests.
For previous reporting by The Chronicle on Flock Safety cameras in Lewis County, visit https://tinyurl.com/v9vzx99n.
