When communities treat opioid-remediation dollars as general-purpose public safety money, they risk starving the very interventions that save lives; that tension sits at the heart of Washington Township’s decision to buy police SUVs and license-plate readers with opioid settlement funds.
The Short Version
- Municipal records reviewed by reporters and watchdogs show Washington Township, Gloucester County, used opioid-settlement dollars to buy two Chevrolet Tahoe police SUVs and a network of Flock license-plate readers, totaling roughly $268,000 across vehicles and cameras.
- Those expenditures were paid from the township’s dedicated opioid account and, at one point, matched a state expenditure certification that described “school-based narcotics and education” spending to the penny.
- New Jersey’s rules say opioid-settlement money must fund prevention, treatment, recovery, and other evidence-based opioid strategies; critics argue surveillance cameras and patrol SUVs do not meet that bar.
- The episode illustrates a national pattern: diffuse oversight and broad categories enable local governments to steer settlement funds toward policing rather than directly reducing overdose deaths.
What Washington Township Bought, and How It Booked the Spending
Published reporting identifies a simple paper trail: Washington Township drew from its opioid-settlement account to pay for two 2024 Chevrolet Tahoes for police and for a staged build-out of Flock Group’s automated license-plate reader (ALPR) network. Bill lists and meeting materials cite payments that, taken together, approach $268,000 across vehicles and cameras. Itemized entries show camera purchases and service fees split across months: $35,000 for 10 cameras in April 2025, $7,020 for two more in February 2026, and $17,634.99 tied to five additional units and related services. Watchdog tallies differ on whether renewals and data storage are included, but the core fact pattern—opioid-account outflows to vehicles and Flock contracts—has been consistent in coverage.
One detail drew particular scrutiny: the township’s state expenditure certification reportedly attributed $170,446.70 to a “school-based narcotics and education program” and “drug education,” while records show opioid-account payments of the exact same amount for the Tahoes and the initial cohort of 15 Flock readers. The dollar-for-dollar correspondence raised questions about whether the township’s formal description matched what the money actually bought.
What the Rules Require, and Why These Purchases Are Contested
New Jersey’s framework is clear on first principles: opioid-settlement proceeds must be used for opioid prevention, treatment, recovery, and related evidence-based or evidence-informed strategies; they may not be used for other purposes. State FAQs and oversight guidance echo the settlement agreements’ intent to remediate opioid-use disorder (OUD) and reduce overdose morbidity and mortality, and they emphasize accounting, documentation, and programmatic alignment for each expenditure.
That does not mean any expense touching law enforcement is per se barred. New Jersey allows certain opioid-linked public safety activities—such as pre-arrest diversion, police-assisted treatment referrals, co-responder models with clinicians, overdose response, and first-responder training—when those activities are tethered to recognized OUD remediation strategies. In that narrow context, equipment can be a means to a qualifying program, not an end in itself. But the compliance burden runs the other way: it is the government’s job to show how the purchase directly supports an allowable strategy, not to assume compliance because police are involved.
Are Flock Cameras and Police SUVs Opioid Remediation Tools?
Flock ALPR systems are built for investigative intelligence: they capture plates, time, and location to flag stolen vehicles, wanted suspects, or patterns of movement. They are law-enforcement and surveillance infrastructure. A Rutgers public-health expert put the issue bluntly: ALPRs are not an evidence-based public health intervention for opioid use or overdose prevention. As for SUVs, a vehicle can, in theory, support an approved program—transport for diversion participants, overdose response with peer navigators, or clinician ride-alongs—but absent documentation tying the asset to that program, a patrol purchase looks like ordinary policing, not OUD remediation.
Washington Township’s police chief publicly argued ALPRs would help disrupt addiction-related crime. That claim aligns with a crime-control logic—curbing thefts, drug markets, or trafficking—but it does not, by itself, meet the state’s requirement that expenditures advance evidence-based opioid strategies. Crime control can be a secondary benefit of many public-health efforts; it is not a substitute for them under the settlement’s terms.
The Paperwork Problem: Description Must Match Deployment
Compliance turns on specificity. First, an expenditure needs a clear program theory of change—how, exactly, it reduces overdoses, expands treatment access, or supports recovery. Second, it needs documentation: program plans mapped to the settlement’s approved-use schedule, contracts or MOUs with providers or schools (if claimed as education), performance metrics, and financials that align with the narrative. Where a government labels spending as “school-based drug education,” the records should show the curriculum, delivery, and outcomes. Where it claims “diversion transport,” there should be logs, referrals, and case tracking. In Washington Township’s case, reporters and watchdogs say they could not find records substantiating the labeled education program while finding line items for police equipment in the opioid account—hence the scrutiny.
One fair caveat: public reporting has not published every primary document—underlying invoices, canceled checks, and comprehensive ledgers. But the consistency across multiple outlets and the watchdog analysis, combined with New Jersey’s own guidance, is enough to make the compliance question concrete and not merely theoretical.
Why This Keeps Happening: National Pattern, Local Pressures
Washington Township is not an outlier in facing the pull of public safety budgets. Across the country, as billions flow from opioid settlements, decentralized governance and broad reporting buckets—especially “other”—invite reclassification of routine expenses as remediation. A legislative analysis found that of reported spending through 2024, about 41 percent fell into “other,” a category that often includes law enforcement and mixed-use programs. That ambiguity is fertile ground for disputes: the same vehicle might be described as patrol support, overdose response, or treatment transport, depending on the memo and the moment.
States are responding unevenly. Some, through comptroller or auditor oversight, are pressing for tighter documentation and program fidelity to the settlement’s evidence-based menu; others have explicitly carved out allocations for sheriffs or broad law-enforcement uses, which may satisfy state policy but still drift from best-practice public health. New Jersey’s posture—use funds for OUD strategies, document rigorously, and expect scrutiny—puts the onus squarely on municipalities to substantiate alignment for each dollar.
Washington Township spent opioid settlement funds on license plate cams, police SUVs, according to https://t.co/L0lJyHE8sK investigation https://t.co/AO2ZKFFDkz pic.twitter.com/OC2gEhc4PC
— The Philadelphia Inquirer (@PhillyInquirer) October 9, 2026
What Good Compliance Looks Like—and How Towns Can Course-Correct
Three elements keep governments on solid ground. First, choose interventions with demonstrated impact on OUD: treatment expansion (especially medications for opioid use disorder), recovery housing with clinical supports, harm reduction (naloxone saturation, fentanyl test strips), and justice-health bridges like deflection to treatment with care navigation. Second, tie equipment and staffing to those programs explicitly—policy, training, deployment, and measurement—so a vehicle, software license, or overtime line is traceable to a qualifying strategy. Third, publish the documentation up front: program descriptions, contracts, performance reports, and a reconciliation of the general ledger to the state certification.
Applied to Washington Township, the path is straightforward. If SUVs support a co-responder or deflection unit, the township should produce assignment logs, co-responder protocols, referral counts, and overdose-response records. If ALPRs are claimed to reduce overdoses, the township would need a defensible causal chain tied to recognized strategies—something more rigorous than general crime suppression. Short of that, the settlement framework points to redirecting future spending to interventions with stronger evidence of reducing harm.
Sources:
nypost.com, inquirer.com, nj.com, hoodline.com, opioidaudit.com, reddit.com, nj.gov
