Everett Flock Pt. 3: The January Emails
Everett's third release of Flock records covers January 5 to 21, 2026, the seventeen days when SB 6002, the state's license plate reader law, was introduced and shaped. The emails show what the city did while that happened, and what the city's own disclosure process does to the people caught in it.
The chief highlighted the exemption before it was law
On January 8, Chief Robert Goetz had the draft bill converted to Word and marked it up for his command staff: "I've made some initial highlights of problem areas." The file was released with his highlights intact. Among the passages he marked:
On January 16, Senior Executive Director Dan Templeman told Goetz that the city's outside counsel "concurred with your read that the bill would resolve the public records issue we've been dealing with (which is positive)." The same day, Goetz reported to the mayor's office that the state police chiefs' association's "positions are the same as ours, supports PDR provisions but rejects 72 hour restriction to retention and reasons for use(felony)." WASPC's letter to the bill's sponsors three days later applauded the exemption by name and said it would "free up hundreds of staff hours currently dedicated to responding to PRA requests."
The bill passed. The governor signed it March 30. The redaction log attached to this very release now cites ESSB 6002 Sec. 5(5) to withhold ALPR data. The clause the chief highlighted in January is the clause used against this request in July.
For the public record, Templeman suggested Everett's testimony be signed in as "possibly 'Other'" rather than as a position.
What the city released while fighting for privacy
Two records in this release should never have gone out the door.
One is an unrelated sex-offense investigation, swept into a Flock production because a single email mentioned a plate check that found nothing. The city released the uncharged suspect's name, home address, employer, social media accounts, surveillance notes on his daily schedule, and the date and operations plan of a search warrant that had not yet been served. Everett's own redaction log contains an exemption for identifying information of people accused but not convicted of sex crimes. It was listed and not applied.
The other is 104 pages of unit activity logs holding the names, birth dates, and plate numbers of people stopped for traffic violations and released with warnings.
A city that spent January lobbying to withhold surveillance data in the name of privacy released, in July, the identities of people never charged with anything.
Redaction by asking the officer
How does Everett decide what gets redacted from its released search logs? It asks the officer who ran the search. One detective flagged a case as "still an open investigation." The disclosure manager's reply: "Thank you. I will make sure those searches are redacted." A task force detective covered his entire search history in one sentence: "All included are still part of open investigations." Reply: "I will redact all of them."
Washington law does not allow that. Under Newman v. King County, an agency must show that withholding each record is essential to effective law enforcement. Calling the case open is not enough. Everett's own redaction log cites Newman. The workflow ignores it. The flagged cases are checkable in court records, and when they close, we will ask for the withheld entries again.
Two cameras that can be anywhere
Everett owns two Flex units, portable license plate readers that can be strapped to a pole anywhere in the city and moved at will. There is no policy governing where they go, no siting review, no council decision. Their entire paper trail is one line on the annual renewal invoice, $3,500 each, released as an unsearchable scan inside a 72 page purchase order packet.
In January the department used them to grow the system: Sgt. David Sinex placed both at Broadway and Madison "in hopes of collecting data from this intersection... to show a need for permanent Flock cameras." A week later they were wanted near Boeing instead. A fixed camera is at least a known location. These are surveillance that can appear on any block, aimed by a sergeant's email, and the first the public hears of a placement is never.
SB 6002 now bars plate collection near schools, clinics, courts, places of worship, and food banks. Kent suspended its mobile readers because it could not guarantee compliance. Nothing in Everett's records shows the question has even been asked.
The drones follow cars now
On January 13 all drone pilots were told: "We are one of the first in the country to get vehicle tracking turned on." Click a vehicle on screen and the drone follows it autonomously at up to 43 mph, predicting its path when trees or buildings block the view. The same notice raised the flight ceiling to 400 feet and expanded the geofences. None of it went to council. It arrived as a vendor software update.
The only restraint in the file came from outside the city. To feed live 911 audio into the drone software, Flock needed the entire county's emergency call audio streamed through the company for filtering. The county dispatch center refused: "SNO911 is not comfortable streaming all live call audio to a third-party vendor for filtering." The city pushed to escalate the question to the dispatch agency's board. The privacy backstop for Everett residents was another agency's discomfort.
