The Lane County Sheriff’s has joined Eugene and Springfield in choosing to end its contract with Flock Safety on Dec. 10.

After Eugene and Springfield installed Automated License Plate Reader cameras earlier this year, two smaller communities west of Eugene: Veneta and Junction City, began their own discussions about ALPR technology.

ALPR cameras take photographs of passing cars, bicyclists and pedestrians and use AI to interpret those photographs, allowing police departments to search for vehicles by license plate as well as vehicle type, color and features. Georgia-based Flock Safety is the national leader in such cameras.

In the sheriff’s office announcement, the agency cited Eugene and Springfield dropping their Flock contracts, which would reduce the utility of sheriff’s office cameras because the agency wouldn’t have the ability to share data with the cities. The sheriff’s office left open the possibility of pursuing ALPR cameras from another vendor in the future.

With the sheriff’s office pulling back from Flock Safety, so does Veneta, while in Junction City the ALPR conversation continued at its most recent city council meeting.

At a Nov. 24 Veneta City Council meeting, staff from the Lane County Sheriff’s Office presented a proposal to place Flock cameras at the intersection of Territorial Highway and Highway 126.

Veneta does not have its own police department, instead it contracts with the sheriff’s office. The cameras in Veneta would have been part of the sheriff’s office’s proposed network of 22 cameras at high-traffic areas in Lane County.

Sheriff Carl Wilkerson told councilors Flock cameras would speed up investigations and help officers. Residents at the meeting raised privacy concerns.

Following a discussion, two city councilors said they opposed the cameras, one said he supported them, and the remaining councilor and the mayor said they wanted more information.

Cameras in Veneta won’t happen until at least the 2026 legislative session, where the state will likely pass new regulation on ALPR cameras, because the sheriff’s office said it would wait for those rules before deploying cameras with another ALPR vendor.

Junction City’s Council has discussed possibly installing ALPR cameras in that city. Councilors heard presentations from a Flock Safety representative Sept. 9, and from Axon, another ALPR vendor on Oct. 28.

Junction City police already use Axon ALPR cameras in their cars, Police Chief Mark Waddell said. A new contract, if approved, would be for fixed cameras like the ones installed in Eugene and Springfield.

On Dec. 9, Waddell presented a draft ALPR policy, which would guide JCPD’s use of the technology, to City Council. He described the policy as Junction City police “getting it all ready to go” if and when the city pursues fixed ALPR cameras which wouldn’t be for “a few months,” at least.