# 2026-05 Fayetteville PD ALPR FOIA Response On 2026-05-19 a public-records requester filed an Arkansas FOIA request — the standard four-item ALPR template, naming Flock Safety and Axon among the vendors of interest — assigned `PD-2026-1484`. FPD's first response the same day was a single sentence: it "does not own or operate automatic license plate readers (ALPR) of any kind." After the requester filed a clarification, FPD's 2026-05-21 response disclosed that "Fayetteville has performed trial and evaluation of ALPR in the past," answered that no FPD personnel hold external ALPR-search credentials, called the asset-forfeiture item "Moot," and attached 42 documents. An interim message from a staffer, "Willie," explained the agency had "lost access to all administration, data, hotlists, and logs" when its Axon ALPR trial ended. On 2026-05-22, FPD's Records Division declared `PD-2026-1484` complete and stated that no records had been sent via Axon's Evidence.com platform — a statement that conflicts with the Department's own 2026-05-21 completion notice. > [!contradiction] FPD's two closing messages conflict on Axon Evidence.com > The Department's transmittal of the production and its closeout of the request give incompatible accounts of whether Axon's Evidence.com platform was a route for responsive records. > > **2026-05-21**, the second "Completed" notice transmitting the 42-document production (Gmail thread `19e4b63c1e936364`): > > "If you requested certain documents and it is not found at the link, check your junk/spam folders for any emails from Axon (evidence.com)." > > **2026-05-22**, the "Request Fulfilled" closeout from the FPD Records Division (Ashley Archer; Gmail thread `19e4faa3ea9d3745`): > > "All items pertaining to your records request, PD-2026-1484, were uploaded into the 'Response Docs' inside JustFOIA. We did not send any records via Evidence.com." > > The first message directs the requester to Axon (evidence.com) as a place responsive records might be found; the second — which declares the request complete — states that none were sent by that route. **The City Attorney's office (Senior Assistant City Attorney Blake Pennington) reconciled the two messages on 2026-05-22 14:45**: the evidence.com line is a generic boilerplate auto-message sent to every police-related FOIA requester, intended to surface body/dashcam footage that FPD delivers through Axon Evidence; FPD does not use Evidence.com for non-bodycam records, so a request such as this one would never receive evidence.com mail (Gmail thread `19e4fcf6fc1e4b4e`). Pennington also stated that "those are all of the records that exist." The explanation reconciles the message-level inconsistency between the two FPD communications. It does not, on its own, address whether responsive ALPR records — administration data, hot lists, and audit logs from the [[Axon Fleet 3 ALPR Trial]] — existed on the Axon platform during the trial. Per FPD's own 2026-05-21 interim message, the agency "lost access to all administration, data, hotlists, and logs" when the trial ended; whether such records ever existed on the vendor's platform, and the Department's position on whether vendor-held trial records are public records subject to the Arkansas FOIA, are the substantive questions raised in Joshua's completeness appeal and not directly engaged by Pennington's reply. That substantive question is the subject of [[Vendor-Controlled ALPR Trial Data]]. ## Sources - [[_overview]] — the full correspondence trace and the response-versus-record analysis. FOIA threads: filing `19e3d8fd12e2d744`, confirmation `19e40abd6804b380`, first response `19e4218090e193b1`, clarification `19e4225de372083f`, interim message `19e4b04db749769f`, second response `19e4b63c1e936364`, closeout `19e4faa3ea9d3745`, completeness appeal and City Attorney reply `19e4fcf6fc1e4b4e`. ## Significance The agency's first response is narrowly defensible — FPD never purchased an ALPR system and the [[Axon Fleet 3 ALPR Trial]] had ended 26 days earlier — but it was a one-sentence answer to a request that named both vendors and asked for procurement records and communications. The documents FPD itself produced two days later show a Mayor-signed trial agreement, a ~10-week operational trial, and an active [[Flock Safety Procurement Courtship]] still live that week. The clarification response disclosed the Axon trial; it did not mention the Flock procurement, though the produced documents contain it. The episode is the wiki's anchor case for the gap between a literally accurate FOIA denial and the records the agency holds. The 2026-05-22 closeout briefly compounded that gap with an internal message-level inconsistency; the City Attorney's office explained the inconsistency on the same day as a boilerplate-auto-message artifact, but the substantive question raised in Joshua's completeness appeal — whether the Axon trial's platform-generated records ever existed on the vendor platform, and whether vendor-held trial records are public records subject to the Arkansas FOIA — was not directly engaged by the reply and remains on the open-questions list of [[Vendor-Controlled ALPR Trial Data]].