To the Editor:

On April 6, the City Council voted to keep St. Louis Park’s Flock license plate cameras running, with new limits: quarterly audits, denied immigration-purpose requests, and a promise of independent, non-police review. Ward 2 Councilmember Jim Engelking called the privacy answers “reassuring.” I appreciate that our council members made strides in starting the process of data privacy.

However, I want to raise the question that April 6 never answered: What will these cameras cost St. Louis Park over the next 10-15 years?

Set aside whether the cameras are the right answer. Even a perfectly effective system carries a bill that outlives the subscription — data storage, records-request staff, access-log reviews, retention compliance, cybersecurity, policy administration, and the legal exposure that follows any misuse claim.

Here is the part that should give every budget-minded resident pause: the safeguards the Council adopted on April 6 are not free. Quarterly audits take staff time. Independent reviewers cost money. Public-education efforts, records responses, and oversight all recur every year — whether or not the cameras ever solve a crime. Maintenance, updates, service calls, and software updates add to the cost. The Council voted to take on these obligations without, as far as the public record shows, a single dollar figure attached.

Comparable cities hint at the scale.

Prior Lake pays Flock $3,000 per camera each year, but the subscription is the cheap part. The expensive part is the decade of administration, oversight, and legal risk that comes after.

And that risk is not hypothetical. A deactivated Border Patrol account ran searches on this network in May 2025, and a Flock software bug let an out-of state drug task force search for “ICE detainer” last October. These are exactly the incidents cities answer for in records requests, audits, and sometimes court.

So I ask the Council one thing: Before any renewal or expansion of this contract, publish a full 15-year lifecycle cost — equipment, subscription, staff time, audits, independent review, legal risk, and records compliance, all of it. Residents deserve to see the total commitment, not just the annual sticker price.

Drake Burke
St. Louis Park

Published in the St. Louis Park + Hopkins Sun Sailor on July 2, 2026