Virginia study finds plate-reader cameras clustered in Black, low-income areas

What happened

Local governments in Virginia are under growing pressure to end contracts for automated license plate readers, the AI-assisted cameras best known from the company Flock Safety, The Appeal reported in a story by Mike Ludwig, co-published with Truthout. According to The Appeal, Henrico County police announced on October 6 that they would end the county’s Flock contract after residents raised what the county called “legitimate concerns about Flock Safety.” The Appeal also reported that Richmond Mayor Danny Avula has said the city will end its Flock contract, though he did not rule out using license plate readers from another company.

Residents pushing for change point to a study by researchers at Christopher Newport University, published in January 2026, The Appeal reported. The team used camera locations that a federal judge ordered police to release in November 2025, as part of a privacy lawsuit filed by two Norfolk residents. In all nine cities of the Hampton Roads region, police were more likely to install the cameras in majority Black census tracts. According to The Appeal, about 80 percent of majority Black tracts had at least one camera, compared with fewer than 40 percent of majority white tracts. The study found a similar pattern in low-income areas and concluded that the placements follow historic redlining and segregation. Study co-author Steven Keener told Truthout that the cameras around Norfolk State University, the region’s only public HBCU, “completely encircle the campus.”

Norfolk’s commonwealth’s attorney, Ramin Fatehi, called the readers a “precision tool” for solving car thefts, missing persons cases and homicides, The Appeal reported. He said that in one homicide case police used them to find a suspect instead of pulling over dozens of drivers who fit a description. He told Truthout that people’s worries about technology are reasonable: “They are right, but they picked the wrong target.” Fatehi pointed to a state law that took effect July 1, 2025, which limits storage of the data to 21 days unless police have “reasonable suspicion” of a crime. Keener argues the law has no teeth because violations are only misdemeanors. According to The Appeal, a Virginia State Crime Commission report published in early 2026 found dozens of violations, including at least 21 agencies sharing data out of state or with the federal government outside permitted investigations. When the study came out, WHRO reported that local law enforcement officials said the placement reflects crime rates, not race or income.

Several questions are still open, according to The Appeal. Richmond has not released its camera locations and cites the risk of vandalism. Keener said he knows of no other place where police have released such data. The Appeal also cited reporting that questions how much the cameras improve case clearance rates, and said some state lawmakers plan proposals to tighten the law or ban police use of the readers.

Our reflection

Think about a freshman at Norfolk State. If the study is right, she cannot drive onto her own campus without her car being logged. She did nothing to earn that. The lines that put the cameras there were drawn before she was born, the same lines that once decided who could get a mortgage. The cost is quiet. It is a low hum of being watched on the way to class, and again on the drive to your grandmother’s house. Many of the young people we walk with learned that hum early, long before anyone told them its history.

The first person in Scripture to give God a name was an enslaved Egyptian woman running from mistreatment. Hagar called him “the God who sees me,” and she meant it as rescue, because his seeing came with mercy. Jesus sees the same way. In Jericho he stopped under a sycamore tree, looked up at a man who had grown rich squeezing his neighbors, and called Zacchaeus by name. That look did what no ledger could. Zacchaeus gave half of what he owned to the poor and paid back four times what he had taken. There is a kind of watching that builds a case against you. Christ’s watching comes to your house for dinner.

Be honest about your own heart here. Most of us feel no alarm about a camera until it points at our street, and some part of us is glad for safety bought with somebody else’s privacy. Jesus said what defiles us comes from inside, and that is where this starts. Fatehi’s point deserves a fair hearing too: no grieving family wants detectives with fewer ways to solve a murder. Micah asks for justice and mercy together. That means the case gets solved and a whole neighborhood is not treated as a suspect.

This story also shows that things can change. Two residents went to court, and a map that had been kept secret became public. After that, a county board listened to its residents, and a state commission checked the agencies’ work and published what it found. Any council can be asked plain questions: where the cameras are, who chose the spots, how long the data is kept, who else can search it, and what the audits found. Asking those questions is ordinary citizenship. Real safety still comes from people, like the violence interrupter who knows the block and the mentor who keeps showing up after release.

This week, find out what your city or county has bought. Bring those questions to a council meeting. Pray for the families living under the cameras and for the officers using them, and then go to the neighborhoods those cameras watch and show up there as a neighbor.

She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me."

Genesis 16:13

Source: The Appeal, “In Virginia, Racism and Redlining Are Fueling a Flock Camera Backlash”