SCOTTSDALE, AZ — Scottsdale Police Chief Joe LeDuc is defending the department's use of Flock license-plate reader technology ahead of a city council review.
“I think our city would be less safe. I think that we would solve less crimes,” he told ABC15.
He sat down for an exclusive interview ahead of Tuesday’s city council discussion as public scrutiny of the technology has grown alongside a national debate over privacy. He says he welcomes the discussion and calls Flock “probably one of the most important tools we have in law enforcement.”
“The conversation about Flock and privacy is a valid conversation that we should be having, unquestionably,” he said.
We're all about Scottsdale — the schools, the neighborhoods, the businesses, the decisions being made at City Hall and in the community that affect your daily life.
Connect with your community by joining the Your Scottsdale News Facebook Group!
LeDuc says one of the biggest challenges is misinformation about how the system works.
He say one of the myths he hears is that Flock is a “mass surveillance tool.”
“That's not how it's used in Scottsdale,” he said. “We have policies strictly against it.”
Scottsdale currently has 85 Flock cameras throughout the city.
He said the Flock cameras take photographs of a license plates on the back of vehicles. That information is loaded into a large cloud, and that data is only accessed for criminal-justice purposes.
He says Flock does not have facial recognition. It doesn’t photograph passengers and cannot follow a vehicle around in real time.
The chief said the cameras have helped investigators solve murders, recover hundreds of stolen vehicles and locate missing people. Just this year alone, he credits Flock technology with helping locate five vulnerable adults.
In one recent case, a man suffering from memory issues was found wandering in the summer heat. Officers used Flock to pinpoint the last location of his vehicle and found him.
Police also credit the camera network with helping them track a suspect accused of violent crimes in multiple states. He was arrested at Scottsdale Fashion Square in 2024 after the camera network located his vehicle driving south on Scottsdale Road.
“When you’re trying to solve a crime, it’s usually our first lead,” he said.
Facing growing concern from residents, Scottsdale city leaders say they are developing additional safeguards, including an independent audit of the system.
They also intend to write an ordinance that would make it a criminal penalty if Flock data is intentionally misused.
Quarterly audits of the system – which LeDuc said are actually conducted more frequently in practice — have so far revealed no misconduct, he said.
The police department retains Flock data for 185 days — approximately 6 months — a figure aligned with Arizona State Library retention schedules for non-evidentiary materials. LeDuc said he is open to reducing that time. But he added the six-month retention suits Scottsdale’s unique demographics, which include large numbers of winter visitors.
He said if that timeframe was shortened and someone left the city in May and came back in October to find their home burglarized, police wouldn’t have Flock data to try and pull up leads.
Access to Scottsdale's Flock data is currently limited to local law enforcement agencies in Arizona that sign an attestation affirming they have robust policies that match Scottsdale’s and will use the data only for lawful purposes.
"Criminals don't know boundaries," LeDuc said. "People who are doing bad acts — or even, like I said, vulnerable adults — they pass borders, so we have to be able to freely share it, at least with our local partners in law enforcement."
Scottsdale's five-year Flock contract does not expire until 2028, but the city council could vote not to renew it as early as June 30, 2027.
LeDuc said he believes the city can have both privacy and Flock technology.
He said with more information about what the technology does and doesn’t do, “I think most would be very satisfied.”
