Since ‘de-Flocking,’ Bend Officials Circle a New Vendor for Surveillance Cameras, With No Plans for Public Input

When the Bend City Council voted to turn off its four Flock Safety stationary Automated License Plate Readers on Jan. 7, Bend Police Capt. Brian Beekman said the department would look for an alternate vendor that could provide similar technology in fighting crime.

Several months later, the department is eyeing cameras from Axon, the same leading surveillance company that has provided Bend PD with in-vehicle ALPR cameras, body cameras and tasers since the Council approved the five-year contract in 2022. Tacking on the additional service and hardware wouldn’t involve a new contract — only an amendment of the one already in place. The data would seamlessly sync with systems already in use, City Manager Eric King detailed in a May 1 report to the City Council, reviewed by the Source.

Automated License Plate Readers are AI-powered, scanning and cataloging license plate numbers, along with vehicle make, model and color, which help cops track people who are wanted for crimes. Axon and Bend PD will evaluate two demonstration ALPR units and begin a phased installation of ALPR cameras at entry and exit points in Bend in the coming year, King indicated in his report.

What worries privacy advocates, and at least one city councilor, is that the city manager would make a decision about something so divisive without input from the Council nor the public. Addressing privacy concerns, Gov. Tina Kotek signed Senate Bill 1516 into law on March 31. The new law prohibits Oregon law enforcement agencies from sharing resources, such as data, with federal immigration authorities and set standards for data encryption, among other mandates.

Regarding the new cameras, Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz told the Source in a statement on May 18 that “no decisions have been made and no movement forward has taken place at this time.”

As King detailed in his report, the stationary Axon ALPR cameras would replace the four Flock Safety cameras that had been situated at two intersections of Highway 97 for seven months. Reporting by the Source on May 6 illustrated how federal immigration authorities had violated state sanctuary laws by querying Bend PD’s Flock database 279 times in June 2025, due to a Bend PD user error that left the national lookup option in its default on-setting.

Yet a police department’s stated compliance with Oregon sanctuary laws is not a technological safeguard against federal immigration authorities’ overreach, as the Flock situation demonstrated.

King noted in his report that a recent $19,000 grant from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission would cover some of the costs of re-installing this stationary ALPR technology, with an emphasis on tracking organized retail crime and theft. Yet it’s not clear how much beyond that grant amount the City would pay, nor how extensive the stationary ALPR program would grow to be.

Bend City Councilor Gina Franzosa tells the Source that the City’s decision to deepen its relationship with Axon should be one the Council discusses publicly before voting.

“I think the public’s concern over the Flock cameras suggests that City Council and the police department carefully consider our policy around surveillance cameras,” Franzosa said. “If the police department wishes to move forward, we should have a public discussion and give the public a chance to comment.”

According to City code, the city manager, along with certain other officials, may add up to $250,000 to a preexisting contract that has been approved by the Council, such as the five-year $679,500 contract with Axon. More than 70 Bend PD cruisers have rolled with ALPR-equipped Fleet 3 Camera systems since July 2023.

An Axon Fleet 3 camera, installed in about 70 Bend PD cruisers since summer 2023, offers the same AI-powered license plate scanning capabilities as those stationary ALPR cameras once operated by Flock Safety. Bend City Council voted to shut down Flock cameras Jan. 7, 2026 Credit: Bend Police Department

Neither King nor Mayor Melanie Kebler responded to our inquiry about whether the matter would be put before the City Council, where both councilors and the public could formally weigh in.

While the Flock ALPR program only operated from June 4 to Jan. 7, before councilors shut it down four months early, some might not be aware that at any given time, a dozen ALPR cameras, mounted in Bend PD cruisers, scan license plates all day, every day while officers patrol the streets. The technology automatically uploads plate reads to an Axon-controlled cloud platform while it simultaneously queries plate and vehicle data against that Oregon State Police’s Law Enforcement Data System and the FBI’s National Crime Information Center databases.

Who holds the keys to the City’s ALPR data?

In testimony made during the Feb. 16 Senate Committee Meeting in the Oregon Legislature, Sen. Floyd Prozanski pointed out that Axon doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption, which is a secure communication process where data is encrypted on the sender’s device and only decrypted on the recipient’s device. That thwarts hackers, federal immigration authorities and even vendors from unlocking the data; only the sender and recipient hold the keys. Axon retains access to ALPR cloud data, which it has stated is necessary to offer I.T. troubleshooting services to subscribing agencies.

Yet that access bothers Oregon’s Chief Information Security Officer Ben Gherezgiher, as he wrote in testimony submitted on Feb. 14:

“This means each law enforcement agency service subscriber does not retain encryption keys to their own data.”

In its final articulation, SB 1516 states that captured license plate data must be encrypted using, at minimum, end-to-end encryption. But the legislation doesn’t define the phrase, which may leave a loophole for vendors, such as Axon, to retain their encryption decoder keys.

Jonathan Westmoreland, a local privacy advocate who submitted testimony opposing SB 1516 for its vagueness, says the City should swap its ALPR contract with Axon for a different vendor that will leave the encryption keys in the hands of the City.

“How can you have a law where you’re requiring something where there’s no definition of what you’re requiring,” Westmoreland said. “What good is a bill if the key requirement is left undefined?”

Ky Fireside, a Springfield progressive organizer who was part of Prozanski’s SB 1516 work group, echoed that sentiment to the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

“My biggest concern is that these vendors are going to try and skirt that aspect of the bill,” Fireside said. “That is the most dangerous part, because that requirement was the thing that kept the data out of the hands of these private corporations.”

As per Bend PD’s current ALPR policy, a lieutenant conducts quarterly spot-check audits to ensure the Axon system is functioning properly and not being misused in any way, says Bend PD spokesperson Sheila Miller. Yet those spot checks do not create any records that the Source could review. Additionally, Bend PD doesn’t keep records that provide statistics regarding how many times ALPR was a factor in cases that result in citation or arrest. Accordingly, Axon will begin sending 30-day audits, yet as of press time, Bend PD officials weren’t sure when those audits would begin, what information they would contain, nor what exactly would be provided to the public — as stipulated by SB 1516. At press time, Miller said Bend PD is internally reviewing its new ALPR policy and will likely make it public in the last week of May.

Police officials at the Redmond and Prineville police departments confirmed their use of Axon ALPR cameras. Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office doesn’t use ALPR, says spokesperson Jason Carr. The Sunriver Police Department does and is already onboard with the SB 1516 mandate, publishing monthly ALPR audits online.