Eight cameras that have been recording license plates in Oak Park for the last three years are coming down.
On Aug. 5, the Oak Park Village Board voted 5-2 to terminate the village’s contract with Flock Safety, an Atlanta based company that manufactures the automated cameras that read license plates. The cameras were turned off Aug. 6.
Oak Park was halfway through a two year contract extension that paid Flock $30,000 a year for the eight cameras, which were mostly located within a couple blocks of the village’s boundary with Chicago. The cameras were first installed in Oak Park in 2022 and also are used in other communities.
Opponents of the Flock cameras have said the license plate information photographed by the cameras can be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and used to find people to deport, and that states that outlaw abortion can use information gathered by the cameras to prosecute women who might come to Illinois to get an abortion.
Many activists in Oak Park have consistently opposed the cameras and called for their removal. Their pleas became more urgent this year after Donald Trump became president and ICE began aggressively ramping up deportations with little to no due process of those who the administration claims are not legally entitled to be in the United States.
“At a time when the federal government is making overreaching attacks on norms, institutions, civil rights and due process and the rule of law, Oak Park should not be spending taxpayer funds on a technology that can easily be abused to advance a universal system of authoritarian style surveillance and control,” said John Slocum, the executive director of Refugee Council USA, in a public comment before the vote.
Voting to terminate the Flock contract were village Trustees Jenna Leving Jacobson, Chibuike Enyia, Brian Straw, Derek Eder and a reluctant Village President Vicki Scaman. Village Board members Jim Taglia and Corey Wesley voted against terminating the contract with Flock. Instead Taglia and Wesley supported a motion to turn off the cameras for 90 days to give the village more time to study the issue. That motion was defeated by a vote of 4 to 3 as Scaman joined Taglia and Wesley in supporting the motion.
“Searches were run on our data related to immigration enforcement,” Straw said before the vote.
Although state law and Oak Park ordinances prohibit sharing of license plate camera data with federal immigration authorities and states trying to enforce abortion laws, baiduhai reported in June that Texas law enforcement authorities performed a nationwide search of 83,000 license plate reader cameras in the search for a Texas woman who had a self-administered abortion. On its website, Flock stated that the Texas search was performed because the woman’s family feared that she had run away after the self-administered abortion and the search of the camera data was done only in response to a request by the woman’s family to locate her, and that no charges were ever brought against the woman.
In January, according to a memo sent by Oak Park village manager Kevin Jackson, Palos Heights police conducted 28 searches of license plate reader camera data and listed the reason for the search as “immigrations violation.” Jackson wrote that an internal review by the Oak Park Police Department has not identified any agencies that specifically searched the Oak Park camera data.
Before the vote Straw disputed the notion that more study was needed.
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“This has been a conversation and a process that has been going on for five years,” Straw said. “This is not a new conversation; this is not a new thing.”
Taglia and Wesley implored the board to listen to Oak Park police Chief Shatonya Johnson, who told the board last month the cameras were a useful tool. A report prepared by the Oak Park police Department last month cited five cases in 2024 when the cameras were helpful in investigations but only two of those cases, one of which involved an armed robbery and the other a stolen vehicle, resulted in arrests.
Wesley said while he had concerns about the cameras he wanted the police to have more of an opportunity to weigh in.
After the vote the police chief gave a terse response when asked by a reporter for her reaction to the vote to get rid of the cameras.
“I support the board’s decision and the police department will operate accordingly,” Johnson said as she and the rest of the top Oak Park Police brass left the meeting.
After the vote Taglia referred to the police department’s support for the cameras.
“I’m sure they’re not happy,” Taglia said. “I’m sure they would like to see a better relationship with this board.”
Before the vote Taglia pointed out that many neighboring suburbs have surveillance cameras like the Flock cameras, mentioning Cicero, Berwyn, Maywood, River Forest and Forest Park. After the vote Eder said after word gets out about Oak Park’s decision to get rid of the cameras perhaps those communities might follow suit. But Scaman didn’t think that was likely.
“No community is going to watch this meeting and learn anything,” Scaman said.
An emotional Scaman, who appeared at one point to wipe away a tear, decried the process that led to vote to get rid of the cameras.
“This feels icky,” said Scaman adding that everyone’s mind was made up before the meeting
Scaman said the Village Board could have had a study session before the vote and received more input from village staff.
“We all kind of failed in bringing forward this discussion in a more productive way,” Scaman said.
Some board members said they worried Flock might misuse the data, with Leving Jacobson calling the firm “untrustworthy.”
Straw agreed.
“I do not trust Flock,” Straw said. “I do not tend to believe that aggregating this kind of data in a corporation who can then turn around and at their discretion sell or give away that data is a good thing.”
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Straw and Enyia said the vote to get rid of the cameras was not a sign of disrespect towards the police department. Straw added that he thought the Oak Park Police Department was the best police department in the state.
Ultimately Scaman said she concluded that the cameras were not right for Oak Park.
“Maybe Flock is not for us,” Scaman said. “I’m conceding that at this point. I just don’t like how we got here, at all.”
But Eder was not disappointed with the process or the result.
“I am not sad about the conversation we’re having tonight, Shaw said. “I am not sad about the outcome we’re having tonight because this is what democracy looks like.”
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.