Council to Review Public Safety Costs Thursday — Flock Adds to the Bill

Hi neighbors,

On Thursday, the Mountlake Terrace City Council will hear a presentation about rising public safety costs. The city’s staff report highlights steep increases across the board—contracts, jail fees, and public records work (especially video redactions). Reviewing body-camera video now requires frame-by-frame review, and records requests are consuming more staff time and dollars than ever. Our indirect public safety costs, “Services and Charges” (dispatch, insurance, fleet, software, etc.), already total $1.6M a year, up 65% from 2024. Public defense jumped from $18,000/month in 2024 to $26,500/month in 2025, with $35,000+/month expected in 2026 due to mandated lower caseloads. Jail and inmate fees are also set to rise in 2026.

Against that backdrop of rising costs, Flock Safety argues their license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are a budget-friendly “force multiplier.” Do more with less. It’s a good slogan. But independent evidence for overall crime reduction is thin, the legal and financial risks are real, and a company that has taken on massive private investment while still not turning a profit is almost certain to raise prices once it tightens its grip on the market.

Flock often points to anecdotes and a company-funded study claiming their cameras reduce crime. They argue their system not only helps solve crimes but actually prevents them. Independent reporting tells a different story.

In San Marino, California—one of Flock’s showcase cities—the company highlighted a “70% drop in burglaries” early on. Yet over the following years, burglaries went back up and overall serious crime stayed flat. Even the local police chief admitted the 70% claim was misleading (Forbes, Feb 29, 2024).

Flock’s marketing leans on selective short-term stats, but the longer-term evidence shows no meaningful reduction in crime.

A resident put it well at a recent meeting:

The city’s annual police reports confirm this. Over the past few years, crime trends have been fairly stable, with some normal fluctuations. Burglaries and domestic violence incidents did increase in 2024, while vehicle thefts—which spiked sharply in 2023—dropped back down, and DUIs trended lower. Violent crimes overall remain relatively low, numbering only a few dozen per year.

The first and second quarter reports for 2025 reinforce this picture: vehicle thefts continued to decline, domestic violence cases dropped compared to the same period in 2024, and overall serious crimes stayed modest. The first half of 2025 suggests Mountlake Terrace remains a relatively safe community, with no evidence of the kind of escalating crime problem that would justify “force multiplying” surveillance cameras.

The staff report is clear: public records and video redactions are already a major cost center. Add Flock, and every scan and search becomes a potential public records request. Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley are already tied up in lawsuits over Flock.

Yes, the city is already locked into the $27,000 first-year payment — and that’s not nothing. In a budget where Services & Charges are climbed 65% between 2024 and 2025, every dollar matters. But knowing what we know now, continuing forward exposes us to far greater risks. For Mountlake Terrace, one lawsuit could easily eclipse that $27,000; at $300 an hour, our contract city attorney would burn through that figure in fewer than 100 hours of billed time.

So to borrow a line from Jessie J’s Price Tag: “It’s not about the money, money, money.” At least not just the upfront cost. But it is about the money when you consider what this system exposes us to — the legal bills, the redaction workload, the lawsuits that are, in the end, all about the money, money, money.

And remember: the $27,000 isn’t the whole story. Flock is a venture-backed startup with a $7.5B valuation and no sustained profitability. Investor pressure almost guarantees price hikes once cities are locked in. In the last couple of years annual fees already rose from about $2,400 per camera to $3,000–$3,500, with add-on costs for “FlockOS.”

When our Services & Charges are already ballooning, adding a private surveillance vendor with rising per-unit costs and a business model built on market capture is just piling on risk.

Given:

…it’s hard to justify adding surveillance tech that solves no real problem and creates new ones.

Thanks for reading,
Dustin