EXPOSED: A Mother Jones Investigation Finds That Multiple Police Departments Across The Country Are Using Opioid Crisis Settlement Money, Which Is Meant To Help Struggling Communities, To Instead Buy Flock Surveillance Cameras 🤯
A bombshell Mother Jones investigation found that police departments across the country are using opioid crisis settlement money, originally intended to help communities devastated by the epidemic, to instead fund Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance cameras, according to Futurism. The publication identified 19 agencies across ten different states that spent nearly $1 million combined in opioid settlement funds on ALPR systems from companies including Flock and Axon, though Mother Jones notes that figure is almost certainly an undercount given the scale of the broader trend. The pipeline works like this: after major pharmaceutical companies agreed to pay a combined $50 billion for their role in fueling the opioid crisis, state agencies tasked with distributing those funds decided police departments would be an efficient recipient, and law enforcement agencies, which already claim one of the largest shares of municipal budgets nationally, pitched themselves as capable of using the money to buy new equipment and crack down on drug dealers.
The problem, as Futurism notes, is that license plate readers have repeatedly proven far more useful for surveilling and harassing ordinary civilians than for meaningfully fighting crime, and they’re arguably one of the least suited tools imaginable for actually addressing opioid addiction. Robyn Oster, director of policy at the Partnership to End Addiction, explained the scale mismatch to Mother Jones: “While $50 billion may seem like a lot of funds, once it’s divided up over 18 years and thousands of localities, a lot of places really aren’t getting that much, particularly given the scope of the crisis.” She added plainly: “Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”
Rather than funding state-run rehab clinics or harm reduction campaigns, that settlement money is instead being funneled into AI surveillance infrastructure that, in practice, tends to catch people for minor infractions like legally purchasing marijuana or picking up small amounts of cash, rather than dismantling the systems actually driving the opioid epidemic. Oster summarized the core issue bluntly: “It’s just really not the way to make the most impact in addressing addiction.”
ORIGINAL MOTHER JONES ARTICLE: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/police-opioid-funding-flock-alpr-camera-surveillance-tech/