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Pierce County Sheriff | License plate readers

Roughly two hundred Axon dashboard readers on patrol cars, deactivated the morning after Washington's ALPR statute took effect, because mobile readers could not be kept out of the places the law bars.

At a glance

The system
Approximately 200 automated license plate readers, Axon dashboard cameras mounted on most deputies' patrol cars (Seattle Times reporting) [1]
The end
Deactivated Tuesday 31 March 2026, the morning after ESSB 6002 (RCW 10.130) took effect [1]
The stated reason
"the way the law is written, we don't have the technology to just turn them off and on every time we're driving through a school zone or by a hospital" (office spokesperson, via the Seattle Times) [1]
What the law bars
Collection at or immediately around schools, courts, food banks, places of worship, and facilities handling immigration matters or protected health care; the statute draws no separate rule for mobile readers [2]
County records of the shutdown
none readable to us. The county's website refuses our requests, so the deactivation is press-reported and its paper trail is in the drafted records request [1]

How it happened

  1. Context

    The statute takes effect

    RCW 10.130 makes ALPR use unlawful except as the chapter provides, bars collection at protected locations, caps retention at 21 days, and requires registration with the Attorney General within 180 days. [2]

  2. Context

    The readers go dark

    The Sheriff's Office deactivates its estimated 200 in-car readers, saying it cannot ensure the mobile devices avoid collecting data near the barred locations. Sheriff Keith Swank is reported as a vocal opponent of the legislation; the office's spokesperson frames the shutdown as a compliance decision about technology the office would prefer to keep using. [1]

Ended by operation of law

Pierce County’s plate readers went dark on 31 March 2026, the morning after Washington’s ALPR statute took effect. The office’s stated problem was structural: its readers are Axon dashboard cameras on moving patrol cars, the statute bars collection at and immediately around schools, courts, food banks, places of worship, and immigration and protected-health-care facilities, and the law draws no separate rule for mobile readers. A camera that drives past a school collects at a school. The office concluded it could not ensure compliance and switched the system off, roughly two hundred readers at once.

This is the second plate reader program in this site’s coverage to end in 2026, and the contrast with the first is the useful part. Josephine County, Oregon’s sheriff ended a Flock contract saying much of the county was not willing to accept the technology; the community’s consent was the operative fact. Here the operative fact is the statute: the sheriff is reported as one of the law’s most vocal opponents, the office’s spokesperson described the technology as something it would prefer to keep, and the system ended anyway. What a legislature writes about where collection may happen decided what two hundred cameras do.

What we cannot read

Everything county-controlled about this system sits behind a website that refuses our requests, so this page rests on the Seattle Times’ reporting, carried by half a dozen outlets, and on the statute itself. The records request asks for the paper: the deactivation direction, the Axon agreement, the pre-shutdown policy, the data’s disposition, and any registration filed with the Attorney General, whose statewide registration list is the clean way to watch for this system’s return.

On the map

The community has mapped 244 devices of this type in the county on OpenStreetMap. These are community reports: the vendor and operator of each point are unverified, and none is confirmed to belong to this system. See them on the map →

Street names from reverse geocoding — © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

What we do not know

What you can do

Show up

Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have not yet confirmed where each of them meets in Pierce County.

What we have documented in Pierce County →

Protect yourself

Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.

Surveillance Self-Defense →

Sources

  1. 1.
    "Pierce County, Wash., Sheriff Shutters License Plate Readers", Catalina Gaitán, The Seattle Times, syndicated by Government Technology, 1 April 2026 · News · · accessed
  2. 2.
    Revised Code of Washington, chapter 10.130, Washington State Legislature · Law · · accessed

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