Chandler Council pushes back decision on Flock cameras
Independent Newsmedia/Jason W. Brooks
Caden Carlson speaks during the Chandler City Council’s May 21 meeting. He and dozens of others spoke against a $153,000 extension of a Flock traffic camera system contract. Council decided to postpone its decision to get more information.
A contract extension and consolidation decision on Flock security cameras was pushed back to July 16 by the Chandler City Council during its meeting this week.
Council voted 5-1 to postpone the decision at the end of its 4-hour May 21 regular meeting.
Dozens of Valley residents, mostly from Chandler, spoke out against the Flock company and its program, which has 40 cameras positioned around the city.
Chandler Police want to consolidate a pair of existing contracts and extend them, with a price tag of $153,000, though an exact time term of the extension wasn’t mentioned.
Jason Bondelli of Chandler said he avoids certain parts of the city on purpose, such as near the Chandler Fashion Center, so as not to feed the cameras images of himself and his vehicle more than absolutely necessary.
“This system is one step removed from having a government-installed GPS tracker on your vehicle,” Bondelli said. “No one is asking for this. This will only drive a wedge between the people in power and the rest of us.”
One of the largest crowds at a council meeting was there partly because a citizens’ rights group and others drew attention to it and also due to questions raised by Councilmember O.D. Harris during a May 18 study session. He was the lone “no” vote May 21 on postponing the vote on the extension, saying he was hoping to make a decision to at least suspend the program.
Audience members loudly applauded, interrupted council members and Chandler Police Chief Bryan Chapman, who took questions from council. He and Katie Dauphinais, Flock Safety’s Arizona public affairs manager, and Michelle Denton, the Chandler Police Department’s communications technology manager, also presented on concerns council voiced when all three had presented during the May 18 study session.
The city would use Flock’s city of Tempe contract, which technically expires at the end of September 2027. Tempe officials have also moved to at least partially disengage with Flock.
Public safety agencies across the nation are increasingly turning to high-tech security solutions, particularly automated license plate reader technology, to help with solving and preventing crime, a staff report states.
Chapman sought to clarify several things, including the two detectives who are part of U.S. Marshals task force. He said if ICE or any federal agency wants data from Flock cameras — data that’s owned by the city of Chandler — they need to have a warrant signed by a judge and have specific cases, vehicles or people they’re investigating.
“We have an arrangement in which the marshals are looking for specific violent felons,” Chapman said. “And anyone misusing our proprietary and confidential information will be terminated.”
That wasn’t reassurance enough for Harris or for Councilmember Matt Orlando, who was concerned about data sharing. Dauphinais acknowledged even though there’s an automatic “hard delete” of data after 30 days, the fact it’s stored on Amazon Web Services servers off-site drew skeptical jeers from the crowd.
“I trust our police officers and audit processes to do the right things,” Orlando said, but also, looking at Dauphinais, said, “I don’t know if you can really audit your own data, though.”
Chandler City Manager John Pombier said the Tempe contract calls for quarterly reviews of camera data usage.
Before the May 18 study session, a group calling itself the Party for Socialism & Liberation held a news conference in the City Hall courtyard where group organizers blasted the reputation of Flock and its use of data. Members urged council to vote against the extension and some spoke at the May 21 meeting.
In March 2024, the Chandler Police Department installed 14 fixed-camera devices to pilot the technology. In May 2025, council approved the purchase of 26 additional devices and ongoing standard support for a total of 40 devices.
These cameras use advanced computer technology to capture and compare digital images of license plates, a staff report states.
Chapman and Denton each mentioned statistics about how the cameras have been used to directly enhance public safety.
Denton said the Flock system was chosen using an extensive, competitive bid system by Chandler Police.
At one point in the three-plus-hour discussion, Harris called for the immediate deactivation of all 40 Flock cameras “until some guardrails can be put in place.”
Harris then moved to table the vote on the contract to hold an executive session with Chapman in the near future. Not only was his motion not seconded, it sparked a shouting match involving Harris and Councilmember Christine Ellis that was only resolved after Mayor Kevin Hartke called for what ended up being a 10-minute recess.
Hartke struggled the most with outbursts and profanity as much as probably any meeting in his nearly eight years as mayor.
Early in the presentation, he informed attendees with anti-Flock handheld signs they most lower them for the meeting to continue. That was met with obscene gestures, laughter and verbal objections, with Hartke eventually choosing to ignore the signs.
The live and recorded feed of the meeting used far fewer shots of the speaker podium than usual, instead showing a wide angle that didn’t give signholders as much camera time.
Chapman, having heard several speakers accuse his department of aiming cameras at Hispanic neighborhoods and setting up a camera pointed directly onto the Galveston Elementary School campus, acknowledged that was a Flock camera directed to be focused on the campus by now-former City Manager Josh Wright in 2023.
Chapman said that camera was being removed from the Galveston area as the meeting was occurring.
Council then calmly voted for the delay. It wasn’t immediately clear if any Flock cameras in the city will be removed or deactivated before the July 16 meeting.
Jason W. Brooks News Editor | Chandler Independent
Jason W. Brooks joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in July 2021 as an associate editor. After a year covering Buckeye, he has covered Chandler since the fall of 2022, in addition to assisting the Daily Independent throughout his time at INI.
Education: University of New Mexico, bachelor of arts in journalism and mass communication, print emphasis, English minor.
Random Fact: He and his siblings witnessed a Space Shuttle launch and landing in the same year in person, on opposite coasts.
Hobbies: Karaoke, bicycling and American Sign Language.
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