ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Police Chief Tarrick McGuire told a city commission Thursday night that he has stopped sharing Alexandria's license plate reader data with law enforcement agencies that hold 287(g) agreements with federal immigration authorities, confirming a change that appeared on the department's public Flock transparency portal over the weekend.
"I no longer share with law enforcement agencies that have signed 287s," McGuire said. "It's not a political issue for me. It's an issue when I get asked the question, chief, how can you ensure that these things are not going on."
He said he made the decision after talking with community members over the past week and with City Manager James Parajon. "I made that executive decision," he said.
McGuire was joined by members of his command staff, including his chief of staff and Assistant Chiefs Jason North and Tina Laguna.
The Alexandria Brief reported Tuesday that 11 agencies had come off Alexandria's Flock Safety sharing list between Friday and Tuesday, and that every one of them held a 287(g) task force agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The department did not respond to questions about the removals at the time.
McGuire drew a distinction between the versions of the federal program, noting that some sheriff's offices sign agreements covering their jails while others cover immigration enforcement in the field. Every agency removed from Alexandria's list held the second kind, ICE's task force model, which deputizes officers to enforce immigration law during routine patrol. The one 287(g) participant still listed, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, holds the narrower warrant service officer agreement.
An offer, and an ask
The chief spent much of the 50-minute session — nearly twice the 30 minutes allotted — soliciting the commission's input, and committed to returning before the department changes vendors.
"Before we move on to a different vendor, I do want to come back and hear you all's feedback on what you think those safeguards should be," he said. He asked members to send the list of five to 10 priorities to his chief of staff within about a week, and said he would raise them directly with vendors the department is evaluating.
Commissioner Steve Davidson told McGuire the commission had raised concerns about the technology in 2023 and found a previous police administration unreceptive.
"I'm pleased that you're coming to us for input," Davidson said. He said the table was "loaded with people who have that kind of IT and data management expertise, who can look at some of these agreements that we get ourselves into and identify the pitfalls."
Davidson also argued that the public debate has conflated the technology with the vendor. "There's nothing inherently wrong" with law enforcement using surveillance technology, he said; the concern is how data is collected, handled and controlled.
McGuire said he wants to develop a governance policy covering all department technology rather than license plate readers alone.
The contract terms
Commissioner Ben McGinnis told the chief that the city procured Flock through a third party and that the contract incorporates the company's terms of service and end user license agreement by reference.
McGinnis said Flock has changed those terms several times in the past six months without notice to Alexandria and without the city having any say, beyond the option to exit the contract.
Sharing his screen, he displayed the section of Flock's terms governing data use. It states that all right, title and interest in customer data belong to and are retained by the customer, and that Flock will not sell it. It then adds: "Customer hereby grants to Flock a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide license to (a) use and disclose Customer Data to provide the Flock Services; and (b) use Customer Data to support and improve Flock's products and services."
McGinnis said the company has stated publicly that it uses the data to train machine learning models. The clause shown on screen does not say that.
"Working with Flock specifically comes at a significant cost to all of us," McGinnis said.
Flock's chief executive wrote in an August post announcing changes to the company's products that customers own their data and decide who can access it, and said the company would publish a plain-English explanation of its contract. Alexandria's own transparency portal says the data is owned by the Police Department and is never sold to third parties. The Brief reported this month that some of the language on that portal is Flock's default template text rather than the department's own.
A city information technology staff member said the city updated its procurement language in August to address data security and third-party terms more explicitly, citing vendors adding AI features with new terms attached.
McGinnis attempted to put forward a written resolution outlining procurement principles. Chair Rhonda Syler ruled it could not be taken up, saying it was not on the agenda, could not be voted on at the meeting where it was introduced, and that procurement is outside the commission's scope. She said it could be scheduled for a future month. Secretary Brandon Mosoriak noted the body issues recommendations rather than resolutions.
The commission's bylaws, adopted in June, describe it as advisory with no decision-making or regulatory authority, and provide for formal recommendations approved by a majority vote at a public meeting. They also adopt Robert's Rules of Order, subject to the City Clerk's rules of decorum. The bylaws do not address whether an item must appear on a published agenda before the commission can act on it; they require a two-meeting process only for amendments to the bylaws themselves.
The commission's June minutes record a unanimous vote "to ensure that there is a vote at the next meeting on Ben's motion to suggest that the City cancel their contract with Flock." No such item appeared on Thursday's agenda.
McGuire did not give a timeline for selecting a vendor, and was not asked what share of the department's searches its monthly audit reviews. The Brief has put that question to APD three times since Aug. 14 without an answer.
What a search count means
McGuire also offered an explanation for a figure the department gave The Alexandria Brief this month, when it said participating Virginia agencies had conducted roughly 500,000 searches of the statewide network over the past year.
A single query by one officer, he said, runs against every partner agency's cameras. "If we share with 150 agencies, that officer runs one query, it will show up as running it through all of those agencies. So that one query is not one query, it's 150 queries."
He also offered a sense of scale, prefacing it by telling the commission to correct him if he was wrong. Over the past year, he said, on the order of 121 million vehicles have driven through the city, and less than one hundredth of one percent have been queried by Alexandria police in connection with a criminal case. The department has not published either figure, and neither could be verified.
Audits and oversight
McGuire repeated that the department's audits have found clerical errors but no malicious misuse — a position he has stated to council and in writing to the Brief — and described the search interface as requiring an offense category from a dropdown menu and a case or call number before a query will run.
"I have a difference of opinion on what misuse is," he said, describing malicious misuse as an officer tracking a former partner. "I believe you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I don't believe that you should be a police officer."
He said the department is working with Robin Engel of Ohio State University, whom he engaged last year to examine traffic stops and use of force, to review license plate reader data independently. McGuire first named Engel to City Council on Sept. 8.
McGinnis suggested the department publish a trailing 12-month audit report that cryptographically hashes plate numbers and usernames, then aggregates how many times a given user queried a given plate — a format he said would reveal patterns of stalking without exposing personal data.
McGuire asked the commission for its view on using AI tools in auditing. "It's a coarse filter, but you still need human review," Davidson said.
The case for the cameras
McGuire cited two investigations he said would not have been solved without technology: a stabbing of an unhoused man on the street earlier this week, in which an arrest followed within 24 hours, and the prosecution of a former District of Columbia police officer in a series of rapes across the region.
He rejected the idea that the city must choose between the two. "We can have strong governance and we can ensure that we're protecting the Constitution," he said.
The annual legislative package
The commission also took up its annual legislative package, a separate agenda item in which city boards recommend proposals for the General Assembly. Members compile suggestions each year; city staff then decide which ones move forward to City Council, and not all do.
One proposal, offered after McGuire had left, would have asked the state to ban geofence warrants, including those involving automated license plate readers, and to shield companies that refuse to process what the proposal called unconstitutional general warrants.
Members debated whether a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision had already settled the question by requiring a warrant, and whether the language would sweep in routine uses such as stolen vehicle and Amber Alert notifications. One member said a blanket state ban on a category of judicially approved warrants did not pass muster with him. The motion failed.
Other proposals advanced, including strengthening Virginia's consumer data protection law, regulating data brokers, requiring affirmative consent for data collection and creating a state data protection authority. One member said Virginia's existing privacy law is enforceable only by the attorney general, with no right of action for residents, class actions or localities.
Public comment
A resident who identified herself as Rebecca urged the commission to recommend data minimization practices to council, saying independent estimates suggest the overwhelming majority of license plate reads are never connected to a crime.
The Commission on Information Technology met Thursday at the Lee Center and by Zoom. The meeting was open to the public. The Alexandria Brief attended virtually.
Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips and feedback to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
© 2026 Alexandria News, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.
