Dear Reader,
We want to wrap up our investigative series on automated license plate readers with a neat little bow — at least until we get more public records requests back — by putting all the public information we used to write it straight into your hands.
If you want to poke around in the data (aka .csv files) or scroll through the county Flock documents yourself, here are the links:
- Spokane County Network Audit: a .csv file with more than 2 million searches made on Spokane County cameras from January 1 to June 23, 2025. This document contains the bulk of the evidence we used to report these stories. (Note: You will likely need a more robust software than Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets for this file. We recommend Rowzero.com)
How you can request more data yourself
You asked us on social media, we’re answering — here’s how you can make your own requests.
Flock cameras watch us, but we can all watch Flock cameras. The data we have so far is for a short period of time with one agency — there are many more public agencies that have this data and many instances where you might want or need to access it. Plus, requesting records of local Flock data can hold these agencies accountable so they can’t continue to operate in the dark.
To make a request, you’ll have to create a log-in to the jurisdiction you’re trying to request information from. Here are the links to the public records requests portals for the local agencies that have Flock cameras:
Next, you’ll need to submit a search. The search that got us the data for this investigation back was:
“Pursuant to the Washington Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:
1. Organization Audit in Flock. The report should include data logged from the period of January 1, 2025, to the date this request is processed. Per Flock’s documentation, the Organization Audit is available within the Insights tab and is defined as searches done within the agency.
2. Network Audit in Flock. The report should include data logged from the period of January 1, 2025, to the date this request is processed. Per Flock’s documentation, the Network Audit is available within the Insights tab and is defined as searches of the organization’s Flock network by any agency in the Flock System.
Please include all search terms used to search the county’s Flock network and the name of the searching agency. In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically. Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.”
We also noted in a later email that we specifically wanted to receive a .csv file and that we were comfortable with the agency doing a blanket redaction on the license plate numbers to get the records back quicker. We currently have an identical request in to the county to get a network audit from June 23 to late November.
Other ideas for documents to request include:
- Communications from local elected officials including the keywords “Flock” “Flock cameras” or “ALPR.”
- Police records associated with case numbers on interesting searches from the network audit
- Photos of your own car taken by Flock cameras or searches made for your plate number (you’ll have to provide your license plate to do this)
For more ideas, check out this link to public records requests relating to Flock that other people have made throughout the country.
The news behind the news
Reporting this series took *a lot* of work, in large part because some of the agencies we queried weren’t very cooperative. Here’s some behind the scenes tidbits on how we got the story:
One day more
On June 23, we requested a network audit of Spokane County Sheriff’s Office’s (SCSO) Flock cameras. On October 23, four months after we placed the request, we received our first installment of records.
That installment was a 100-page .pdf — a file format that’s notoriously difficult to analyze — that included solely search results from January 1, 2025, just the first day in six months worth of requested data.
The records office estimated it would take 30 days to give us another installment of records. We did the math — at that rate, it would have taken a full 15 years to get data for six months of Flock searches.
After a phone call and some emails, we convinced the records office to give us future installments in bigger chunks in a .csv spreadsheet format if they could exclude the entire license plate column from the records. Originally, records staff were having to go through the file with 2 million results to check license plate numbers against open cases because they didn’t want to jeopardize active cases.
We agreed to the compromise, which is why our data doesn’t include the actual license plate numbers being searched.
Maybe in May?
Before each story we published, we asked the SCSO for comment by phone and email. They responded just once, to a phone call in late November from our reporter Aaron Hedge.
On that phone call, Hedge described the national look-up system that allowed a Texas cop to search Spokane County cameras for a woman who’d had an abortion. Sheriff John Nowels had told The Spokesman in October that the national look-up had since been turned off.
“What was the date of that?” Hedge asked on the call. “Is there a good timeframe for that?”
“We’re talking sometime in May,” Nowels said.
In a follow-up call, Hedge told Gregory we had uncovered searches made by law enforcement agencies across the country, including federal agencies, up to June 23, the day we requested records.
How was that possible if national look-up was turned off in May, Hedge asked.
Gregory hedged, saying the May timeframe may have been inaccurate, and some searches could have been made as late as June. Gregory said the sheriff’s office didn’t know the exact date it had turned off the national look-up feature, but he maintained it is turned off now.
After we published the first story in the series, which focused on the alleged abortion case, Gregory took issue with how we quoted the conversation. When the county said cameras were turned off in May, “we were talking timeframe generalities,” Gregory said. He claimed we hadn’t given him enough time to get the information to respond to our questions.
We asked if, when The Spokesman interviewed him a full month earlier, he gave an exact date when national look-up was turned off.
“ No, we were talking again in a portion of a year, an about, an approximation,” Gregory said.
He said he would get us information if given enough time, but he hasn’t responded to any of our subsequent requests for comment or given us an exact date. Nowels recently told KXLY that the national look-up feature was shut off in July, which we have since confirmed through a records request.
It’s unclear why it took two months for the county to find the answer as to when they turned off the feature that let Border Patrol agents directly search our cameras.
It’s also unclear how those searches continued from March to July, if SCSO audits their data every month, as they told KXLY they do.
Committed to transparency and helpfulness
The city of Spokane was much more responsive to our inquiries — possibly because they’re one of the only jurisdictions in the county without Flock cameras.
But we still had a few questions about searches Spokane Police Department (SPD) employees made on Spokane County cameras. The search that seemed most striking, made by an SPD analyst, sought a “suspicious vehicle near protest” between February 4 and March 4, when multiple protests occurred.
SPD spokesperson Daniel Strassenberg sent us the following statement:
“The search was related to an ongoing investigation into a series of incidents at different demonstrations involving criminal activity. Some of these incidents were initially recorded as protests, while others were documented as harassment.
During the investigation, two individuals were identified as suspects in criminal activity associated with these events, and the red Hyundai was believed to be connected to them. As a result, multiple misdemeanor charges, including coercion, harassment, and stalking, were later submitted to the prosecutor’s office for charging consideration for both suspects. The incident report documenting the charging request is 2025-2004169.
Please let us know if you need any additional information or clarification. We are committed to being as transparent and helpful as possible.”
We wanted to know if the suspects whose car was searched had ever been arrested and what happened with their case, so we asked for the incident report or the names of the individuals. Strassenberg pointed us to the city public records portal and gave a case number that ended up being incorrect.
Once we got the correct number from Strassenberg, we put in a new request, but because Spokane public records are notoriously slow, we won’t get that back until January 15 at the earliest.
It’s unclear why SPD couldn’t just give us the information required to follow up on the charging recommendation, but hey, we appreciate that they responded to us at all.
Unanswered questions
Here are the questions we’ve asked the sheriff’s office that we’re still waiting for answers on:
- Was the sheriff’s office aware that Spokane County Flock cameras were searched by a Texas cop looking for an abortion seeker?
- What exactly did Sheriff Nowels mean when he told the Spokesman Flock data was “locked down”?
- How often is the county’s Flock data audited and who performs the audits?
- Have any sheriff deputies been disciplined for misuse of Flock data?
- When did the sheriff turn off national access to Flock data? (This has since been answered via a records request.)
- What is the sheriff doing to make sure Flock data is used responsibly?
- Were you aware that the county Flock network was searched for immigration violations? Do you consider these searches to be violations of the Keep Washington Working Act?
- Were you aware that federal agencies had access at least until June 23 to search the county Flock network?
- Did you ever enable direct, 1:1 sharing of your network with U.S. Border Patrol?
- In SCSO training materials, it says that searches that are left blank or include only “investigation” as the search reason are improper uses of Flock. There were dozens from your officers made with some form of “investigation” used as the reason for the search, and no case number given. What are your plans to curb this kind of usage?
- According to the public transparency portal, policy also prohibits searches for “traffic enforcement.” We found searches from your deputies with the sole reason given as “TRAFFIC.” Is that an allowable use?
- The public transparency portal also says data is retained for only 30 days, but we found dozens of examples of deputies searching for hits on days that occurred sometimes 8 months earlier. How would they be searching Flock for data reaching that far back if records are only maintained for 30 days?
- You told the Spokesman that SCSO doesn’t do searches for outside agencies. We found searches made by SCSO employees for “DEA load vehicle” “ATF Idaho,” and “usms fugitive.” Would you call those searches made by outside agencies? Why were those searches made?
- What are the potential consequences for an employee consistently improperly searching Flock?
- How many cases have you solved because of Flock specifically, not just RTCC tech in general?
- [When inquiring about the information removed from the public transparency portal over the summer, with photos attached of the removal.]
- Were you aware of these removals?
- Why were these pieces removed? Is SCSO trying to hide from residents what it’s doing with Flock?
- Does SCSO plan to add these items back? If so, when?
We will update this story if the sheriff’s office responds.
For information on this investigative series and why we reporting it, click here.
