ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Five days after the police department said its 61 Flock Safety license plate readers had stopped reading, two residents say they filmed two of the cameras flashing infrared light as cars passed, and on Thursday asked City Council whether the devices are still capturing images.

The police department says they are not. The cameras are solar-powered and have motion sensors, police spokesperson Tracy Walker said Friday, but they are "no longer recording, capturing, or collecting data." She said Flock's website shows all 61 cameras as decommissioned and that the vendor has validated they are not operational. She did not say which page; the department's public transparency portal does not show the status of individual cameras.

The department has not covered or removed the cameras, Walker said, "because doing so could constitute tampering and create liability under the contractual terms." Flock is to remove them by the end of December.