Hi neighbors,
At the September 4 Council meeting, Mountlake Terrace leaders will proclaim two important observances:
Hispanic & Latino Heritage Month (Sept. 15–Oct. 15) — recognizing “the resilience and determination of the Hispanic community” and noting that more than 17% of our population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.
Welcoming Week (Sept. 12–21) — affirming that Mountlake Terrace will “continue to choose connection, courage, and love over division, fear, and hate” and striving to eliminate “any form of actual or perceived discrimination.”
Both proclamations are good and worth celebrating. Welcoming Week, in particular, is a meaningful initiative with a lot of thought, collaboration, and planning behind it, and I don’t want to diminish that. But the timing is hard to miss. These words come just as the city is preparing to install Flock ALPR cameras — and just as more revelations come out about Flock sharing data with federal agencies involved in immigration enforcement, backtracking on its promises, and showing time and again that it can’t be trusted.
No proclamation will protect our immigrant neighbors if their data ends up in federal hands.
So here’s the contradiction: on one hand, we’re declaring that Mountlake Terrace is welcoming and inclusive. On the other, we’re adopting surveillance tools that put immigrant neighbors at risk.
I don’t think that’s the kind of city most of us want to be.
The best step is still to cancel the contract before the cameras are installed, even if it means absorbing the first year’s cost. If Council doesn’t do that, then at the very least we need a real system of oversight. The Community Policing Advisory Committee still technically exists by ordinance, though it hasn’t met in years. Bringing it back, with new commissioners and a clear scope, would give residents a voice in monitoring Flock and any future public safety tools.
Canceling now would be the strongest statement of our values. Short of that, the council needs to prove they mean what they say in these proclamations by creating genuine, public oversight. For now, we’re waiting on city staff to bring oversight back to the Council agenda. When that happens, the Council will need to make some decisions about what oversight will look like and whether they’re willing to back up their welcoming words with real action.
Thanks for reading,
Dustin