At least nine Nebraska counties and cities have used opioid settlement funds – money meant to be used to help the state and its residents recover from the opioid crisis – to buy controversial surveillance technology and other law enforcement tools.

Harlan County’s board gave $15,000 to the county Sheriff’s Office for Flock cameras.

Valley County spent $27,000 on nine Flock cameras of its own. 

Police departments in Dakota County, Madison County and Thurston County purchased new police dogs, supplies and training.

The source of those funds: national settlements with manufacturers, pharmacies and distributors of opioids, totaling more than $50 billion. Nebraska has started receiving payments that will eventually add up to more than $150 million over an 18-year period.

The historic settlements are intended to address the opioid crisis by preventing further harm and providing services to people who are impacted by opioid use. But the Flatwater Free Press found a series of purchases by law enforcement agencies across Nebraska using settlement dollars that experts said don’t fit the spirit of the settlements.

Flatwater, in partnership with students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications, filed public records requests related to opioid settlement spending from all 93 Nebraska counties, along with 16 cities and six behavioral health regions.

Documents showed that counties and cities have spent at least $88,800 of opioid settlement funds on uses related to law enforcement, including the automated license plate readers, SWAT team training and equipment like gas mask holders and THC detection pouches. 

Experts say the money should be used for programs that abate the opioid crisis: treatment centers, naloxone distribution and housing for people in recovery, for example.

“It’s money that’s designed to make sure that this never happens again and that we can provide desperately needed services to people who are directly impacted by the opioid crisis today,” said Brandon Marshall, professor of epidemiology at Brown University School of Public Health.

The funds are being distributed across every state in the country as a result of nationwide legal settlements in 2021 and 2022 between state attorneys general and opioid manufacturers and distributors, including Johnson & Johnson, Walmart and Walgreens.

In Nebraska, 85% of opioid settlement funds go into the state’s Opioid Recovery Fund, managed by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. That fund is set up to distribute money to individual programs through formal grant processes and to Nebraska’s behavioral health regions.

The other 15% is being paid directly to Nebraska counties and 16 largest cities, based on population. 

Once settlement money reaches the county and city budgets, there is little oversight tracking how it’s spent.

Contracting With Flock

Harlan and Valley counties have spent more than $40,000 combined on contracts with Flock Safety, a company that makes automatic license plate reader cameras.

Valley County has faced backlash from residents about Flock, and a city within the county recently voted unanimously to ban the cameras. But the county thus far has kept its other cameras. 

Each of the nine cameras that Valley County bought cost $3,000. Flock charged another $10,000 in installation and upgrade fees, which was paid from the Sheriff’s Office’s budget rather than opioid settlement funds.

Valley County Sheriff David Scheideler said Flock cameras are a justified use of opioid funds because they can be used to track vehicles used for illegal drug trafficking. 

It’s hard to say if the cameras have prevented drug trafficking yet, Scheideler said, but his office is building ongoing cases.

Documents show that Harlan County’s contract with Flock for $15,000 was paid entirely with opioid settlement funds. 

Harlan County Sheriff Jesse Langley said he didn’t ask the Harlan County Board of Supervisors to use opioid settlement funds on the contract, but he did present multiple scenarios where Flock cameras could be used, including for drug trafficking interdiction. 

“I presented a contract to the board for the Flock cameras,” Langley said. “However, the board made the suggestion of where to spend the money, and they made the suggestion of the opioid recovery fund.” 

Members of the Harlan County Board of Supervisors did not respond to requests for comment.

Flatwater Free Press also reached out to four other sheriff’s offices who spent settlement money, and they did not respond. Nebraska State Patrol deferred questions about law enforcement uses of opioid settlement funds to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The cameras have been a positive for Harlan County, Langley said. His deputies have used them to support cases, but only when they had developed probable cause. 

Researchers have seen no evidence suggesting that public surveillance supports any public health role in preventing opioid-related harm, said Tyler Varisco, director of the University of Texas’s Pharmacy Addictions Research & Medicine Program.

“It’s difficult to believe that Flock or other technology would even be useful even in preventing the sale of opioids,” Varisco said. “I can’t think of a potential role for surveillance technology in this area.”

Nebraska’s Attorney General’s Office, which led Nebraska’s part in the national opioid lawsuits, specifies that funds “received by any municipality or county must be used for abatement purposes as defined by the agreements.”

The settlement agreements outlined a guide for allowable opioid remediation uses in a document called Exhibit E, said Mary Ann Borgeson, Douglas County commissioner and vice chairperson of the Nebraska Opioid Remediation Advisory Committee.

Recommended uses of opioid funds for law enforcement include education for first responders handling drugs, awareness training about medication-assisted treatment like methadone, supporting co-responder programs for substance use-related 911 calls and naloxone training for first responders.

Borgeson said she was surprised that law enforcement agencies had purchased Flock cameras with settlement funds, and she doubts that fits into the settlement’s uses.

“Of course, the more I learn about Flock cameras, the less I am supportive of them,” Borgeson said. “But with opioid monies, I don’t see where that falls under an approved use of funds under Exhibit E.”

Though the advisory committee oversees and provides recommendations to DHHS and Nebraska’s behavioral health regions, Borgeson said, it has no authority or oversight of the direct payments to cities and counties. 

Other Law Enforcement Uses

Flatwater found that the City of Beatrice spent almost $3,000 from its opioid settlement funds on SWAT training and related travel expenses for police officers in 2025. 

Police Chief Jay Murphy said in an email that the department determined the training to be within the scope of opioid settlement guidelines because it “partly had to do with the dangers of drugs during search warrants and raids.”

Murphy said Beatrice is still determining how to best use the rest of the opioid settlement funds it has received so far – more than $95,000.

Multiple agencies have used opioid settlement funds to purchase K-9s and related accessories. Dakota County spent $11,500 out of the settlement funds and had a $2,000 match from a foundation. Thurston County spent about $21,000 on a K-9, vet exam, supplies, equipment and two weeks of training with associated lodging and meal reimbursements. 

Borgeson also questions how K-9s fit in the settlement guidelines.

“The (behavioral health) regions have been utilizing it more for prevention, treatment and programs, which I think are a much better useful use of the funds,” Borgeson said.

Behavioral Health Region 4 also allocated $10,000 of funds to the Madison County sheriff for a K-9. Madison County had sent its opioid settlement funds to its behavioral health region, which provides services for substance use disorders.

The settlement funds are meant to help people impacted by opioids, said Patrick Habecker, a professor with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Rural Drug Addiction Research Center. He doesn’t see a direct line between that goal and these uses of the funds. 

In several other states, Marshall said, there are examples of counties and sheriffs using funds for Flock cameras, other surveillance technologies and K-9s.

“I would argue that that is not in the spirit of the agreement,” Marshall said.

Louisiana allocates 20% of the funding off the top to their county sheriffs in their settlement agreement, Marshall said. The sheriffs’ spending is “all over the map,” with some investing in treatment in jails and others purchasing law enforcement equipment.

The spending records show that other municipalities in Nebraska have spent smaller sums of opioid settlement funds on equipment including THC detection pouches, a leg holster for a gas mask and a Zoom Workplace Pro subscription for the probation office. 

“Looking at these funds which were literally paid for with the deaths of millions of people as a source of funding for a department to go and buy whatever they need, it’s irresponsible. It’s frustrating,” said Varisco, the opioid use disorder researcher at UT.

Pawnee County and the City of Fremont used opioid settlement funds for other first responders, purchasing supplies and emergency medications including naloxone for ambulances. Fremont’s fire department also paid for paramedic training for four people, documents show.

In many states where counties and municipalities have leeway over spending decisions, Varisco said, they use funds in a way that best supports the needs of the county, which is often funding for law enforcement, rather than looking for ways to support public health.

The people reviewing proposals at the county and city level are often not public health experts, or experts in addiction, Varisco said. They’re responsive to the things they know, and usually what they know is a law enforcement-oriented approach to addiction.

Tobacco settlements in the ’80s and ’90s were handled similarly, Varisco said, with funds distributed downstream by states and “frittered away” by counties and cities.

Experts said that transparency on funding decisions and spending is important because the money is a chance to prevent more lives lost to opioids. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 800,000 people in the U.S. died from opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2023.

“We shouldn’t have to do open records requests to find out how billions of dollars in opioid settlement funds are being dispersed and allocated and used … because these dollars are really owed to the families that have lost loved ones due to the opioid crisis,” Varisco said. “And they deserve to know where the money is being spent and they deserve to provide feedback on how it is being used.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/nebraska-law-enforcement-agencies-using-opioid-settlement-money-on-surveillance-technology-tools/