Unsurveilled East Valley
Seven municipalities and roughly 1.5 million people, densely covered by mapped license plate readers. Decisions made in one East Valley city set the template for its neighbours — which is why we work the region rather than any single town.
Why the region, not one town
The East Valley is not seven unrelated cities. It is a continuous suburban corridor where people cross three or four municipal boundaries on an ordinary commute, where police departments share data with each other by default, and where councils watch what their neighbours do before voting.
That last part is the whole reason to work regionally. When Chandler ended its program in August 2026, it did not just change Chandler — it gave every council within twenty miles a concrete precedent and a specific set of questions their own chief now has to answer. A campaign confined to one town forfeits that.
It also matches the technology. A reader at a city limit records residents of whichever city is on the other side. There is no such thing as a purely local license plate program.
Where each jurisdiction stands
Sourcing varies a great deal between these, and we mark it rather than smoothing it over. Several entries are honest admissions that we do not yet know.
Chandler — program ended
Announced August 7, 2026 that it will discontinue 40 Flock Safety cameras and not renew the agreement, after a routine audit found unexplained system use that the chief described as potential misuse by someone inside the department. The largest Arizona city to end a Flock partnership. Full decision record · the misuse finding
San Tan Valley — new town, county program winding down
Became Arizona’s 92nd incorporated municipality on July 1, 2026 after voters approved Proposition 495. The Pinal County Sheriff announced in early August that he will not renew his office’s Flock contract when it expires at the end of September 2026, citing Fourth Amendment concerns; roughly 22 of the 45 affected cameras are inside San Tan Valley.
A brand-new council is therefore deciding its surveillance posture at exactly the moment the county program covering its streets ends. Deciding policy before a contract exists is a materially easier task than unwinding one after. Full decision record
Apache Junction — active, with a documented misuse case
An officer used reader technology to locate a family member, telling dispatchers it was a welfare check. He resigned; the chief said he would otherwise have been terminated. Notably, this was caught by two dispatchers’ judgment rather than by any audit or automated control. Full case
We do not yet have the department’s contract, camera count, or retention policy.
Tempe — pilot approved, outcome unconfirmed
The City Council unanimously approved a no-cost 60-day pilot. Tempe shows the densest concentration of mapped readers anywhere in the region. We have not confirmed whether the pilot converted to a paid contract, how many cameras were installed, or what the council was told at its conclusion. Full decision record
Mesa — insufficient information
Mesa is the largest city in the region and appears in reporting as a recipient of neighbouring jurisdictions’ plate data. We have not established its own deployment, vendor, contract, or policy. This is a records-request gap, not a finding.
Gilbert — insufficient information
Readers operated by Gilbert PD appear in the mapped data, but we have not obtained the contract, camera count, retention period, or sharing configuration. Another records-request gap.
Queen Creek — insufficient information
Queen Creek appears in national deployment data as a Flock Safety agency. We have not independently verified the current camera count, contract terms, or data-sharing configuration against primary documents, and we will not repeat figures we have not checked.
What the map shows
Across the region, volunteers have mapped readers from several different vendors — mostly Flock Safety, with the remainder from Motorola Solutions, Liveview Technologies and others, including some operated by private parties rather than by police. Current per-jurisdiction counts are on the Arizona Atlas page and on each dossier, derived from the camera snapshot rather than typed here where they would go stale.
That vendor mix is the practical argument for Warrant Required: a campaign aimed at one company would leave every one of the non-Flock readers running. The current count, and which vendors they belong to, is on the map — counted from the snapshot rather than typed here.
What would help most right now
Public-records requests, in the cities marked “insufficient information” above. Every one of those gaps is closable by a resident with an email account and twenty minutes, and the resources page has the letter to send and the checklist of what to ask for.
If you live in the East Valley and want to close one of these, tell us which city so two people don’t file the same request.