When a city decides it doesn’t like its license plate camera contract, it can simply stop paying the company. But what if a new city government later signs a similar contract with a different vendor? Tempe, Arizona, decided to address that possibility too.
The city stopped operating its Flock Safety cameras in August 2026. Then, on October 15, the City Council voted 6–1 to adopt an ordinance restricting city departments from using automated license plate reader systems. This was more than ending a contract. It was an attempt to set rules for what the city itself could do next.
What changed when Tempe passed the ordinance?
At its September 24 meeting, Tempe’s City Council considered a proposal to restrict city use of license plate readers. The Council approved Ordinance O2026.46 on October 15. The meeting record shows a 6–1 vote, with Vice Mayor Arlene Chin opposed.
The Arizona State Press reported that Tempe was the first Arizona municipality to adopt this approach. The city had already shut off its own Flock program, so the October vote wasn’t the moment the cameras first stopped collecting data. The vote was about future city purchases, subscriptions and access.
Under the measure, Tempe municipal agencies generally cannot acquire, operate, subscribe to or directly search automated license plate reader systems, subject to the ordinance’s exceptions. That makes it harder for a department to end one vendor contract and quietly replace it with a similar service.
But here’s an important limit: a city ordinance doesn’t automatically govern every camera that happens to sit inside city boundaries. Arizona State University, for example, operates independently of Tempe’s municipal purchasing decisions. The same basic distinction can apply to privately run systems.
So can Tempe police ever receive plate information?
Yes, in some circumstances. And that’s where the argument became more complicated. The final measure allows particular forms of cooperation with outside agencies, including specified multiagency investigations and lawful court processes.
KJZZ reported on an exception involving information gathered by another agency without a Tempe officer asking that agency to run a license plate search. Critics said that could leave an opening for information from systems the city had decided not to use itself.
An October report discussing an earlier city attorney memorandum examined how the exact wording of a request might affect whether outside data could be received. That detail matters because ‘we didn’t search the system ourselves’ doesn’t always settle whether a department is making use of the information.
At the same time, investigations don’t stop at city limits. A police department may need to cooperate with a neighboring agency while looking for a missing child or following a vehicle involved in a serious crime. The exceptions were part of an effort to preserve that cooperation.
The hard question is where to draw the line. Can officers receive an unsolicited lead? What counts as requesting a search? And who checks whether the exception was used properly? Those are real questions even after an ordinance passes.
Didn’t everyone on the Council agree?
No. Vice Mayor Arlene Chin, the dissenting vote, shared privacy concerns but worried the restriction was too broad and could deprive police of an effective tool. KJZZ’s council coverage describes that disagreement. Supporters believed the revised exceptions preserved enough investigative cooperation.
Police in many communities use license plate readers to help locate stolen vehicles, find missing people and track vehicles associated with serious cases. Those are legitimate reasons to value the technology. But they don’t tell us whether any particular city needs a permanent searchable record of everyone’s ordinary trips.
A camera can also make records of cars that aren’t connected to a crime. If those records are stored or shared, policies need to cover not only who may search them but how misuse is detected and corrected.
Does the law mean every license plate camera in Tempe is gone?
No. It regulates Tempe’s municipal agencies, not every university, business or other government office inside the city. You shouldn’t assume a roadside camera is owned by City Hall simply because it is located in Tempe.
The October ordinance also doesn’t answer every implementation question. When do all its provisions take effect? What happens to information collected before the city shut off its Flock program? How will the department document cooperation with outside agencies? Those details deserve follow up.
Our Austin coverage offers a useful comparison. Austin stopped its own Flock program yet still had to consider access to information held by other agencies. Tempe went further by writing a restriction into city law. Both cases show why stopping camera collection and limiting later data access are different tasks.
What should residents take from Tempe’s decision?
The biggest change wasn’t a camera being unplugged. It was the city telling its own departments that they couldn’t simply restart the same technology through a new contract. The exceptions are part of that decision too, and how officials use them will determine what the ordinance means in everyday practice.
For a resident, the simplest questions remain useful: Which cameras are actually covered? Can police still receive information from another network? And where can people read the rules and see whether they’re followed?
For a different approach, see how Denver kept license plate readers but changed companies and cut its camera plan in half. The two cities show that ending a Flock contract can lead to very different decisions about what happens next.
Sources
City of Tempe, September 24, 2026: City Council agenda for the proposed ordinance; October 15, 2026 City Council meeting record: Ordinance O2026.46 approved 6–1; Arizona State Press, October 16, 2026: passage, scope and debate; KJZZ, October 16, 2026: exceptions and Council’s differing views; The Auto Wire, October 20, 2026: examination of city attorney memorandum and request-language issue.