A volunteer organization in Yakima is urging city leaders to turn off Flock Safety license plate reading cameras, which the Yakima Police Department has been using since 2022.

Concerns about the use of these surveillance cameras in immigration operations are growing across Washington state and nationwide.

Central Washington Resistance handed a petition to the Yakima City Council on Tuesday, asking the city to turn off its Flock cameras. They want the city to build a policy around how the cameras and the data collected from them are used. The petition has more than 550 signatures.

“In October, we learned this data has actually been accessed by immigration enforcement, which is directly against city policy and Yakima Police Department policy,” said Brian Korst, a Central Washington Resistance organizer.

A report released by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) in October showed that Yakima is one of at least eight Washington law enforcement agencies that “appear to have enabled 1:1 sharing of their Flock Network with Border Patrol at some point during 2025.”

According to the report, the Benton County Sheriff’s Office and the police departments of Wenatchee, Richland, Sunnyside, Arlington, Auburn and Lakewood appear to have enabled that sharing.

That UWCHR report says that U.S. Border Patrol’s network access was ‘’effectively opening the ‘’front door’’ for searches potentially related to civil immigration enforcement activities.”

The push to turn off the cameras in Yakima comes after a Washington judge recently ruled that images captured by those cameras are public record. It was in a case unrelated to immigration involving the cities of Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley on the west side of the state. The case has drawn attention to the cameras and people’s privacy rights.

Korst believes the ruling could open the door to the misuse of Flock camera data.

“There’s no control over the information. We don’t believe necessarily that the Flock cameras should be disconnected permanently or just destroyed,” Korst said. “What we’re asking for is a pause in the usage of these Flock cameras so the city can really come up with a better policy.”

Skamania County Sheriff’s Office to stop using controversial Flock cameras

Yakima Police Chief Shawn Boyle said the department has 87 Flock cameras within the city limits. He explained that the cameras are used to identify driver’s license plates and, in general, to combat crime.

“They identify the license plates and the type of model of vehicle, and they’ve been very instrumental in identifying people for criminal activity used in investigations regarding multiple violent crimes, through shoplifts, recovering runaways, recovering people that are missing, et cetera,” he said.

YPD’s website states prohibited uses for the cameras are: “Immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment or intimidation, usage based solely on a protected class (i.e. race, sex, religion), Personal use.”

“The Yakima Police Department follows the Keep Washington Working policy, the state law, and we adhere to the policies that we have as an organization. And we are not using it [Flock cameras] for similar immigration enforcement,” said Boyle.

According to the latest Yakima Police Department Public Flock Report from September 2025, the cameras assisted in 42 arrests and helped to recover 12 vehicles.

But Boyle said his department is sharing only with agencies in Washington state and that the police department is not sharing Flock cameras’ data with federal agencies.

Still, the department’s Flock transparency portal shows that among the organizations with granted access are the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the federal law enforcement arm of the United Postal Service, and police departments in other states. Boyle said there were settings that may have caused the release of data in the past.

“I checked with my lieutenant, who runs the program, and we were adhering to the recommendations … to be able to make sure that we’re not sharing our data,” he said.

Regarding the public records ruling, Boyle said individuals who request data captured by Flock cameras must also comply with the department’s policy. That policy requires “an individual to be a member of the police department and a valid reason, and is stored indefinitely,” according to the department’s Flock transparency website.

Johanna Bejarano is a reporter with Northwest Public Broadcasting. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/11/22/yakima-organization-turn-off-flock-cameras/