Durango residents are angry about Flock Safety cameras that have been deployed around the city and are calling for Durango Police Department to cancel its contracts and take the cameras down.
Residents took to City Hall on Tuesday to directly address City Council. Their concerns were focused on privacy violations, the potential for abuse and government overreach – including information-sharing with federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Some residents are concerned Flock cameras were recently installed on the Fort Lewis College campus.
Flock Safety is a surveillance technology startup company founded in 2017. It is best known for its controversial artificial intelligence “license plate reader” cameras that automatically and indiscriminately photograph every vehicle that passes. Those photos, paired with time stamps and location data, are immediately uploaded to a cloud-based Amazon Web Services network searchable by police departments across the country.
The surveillance network spans over 5,000 law enforcement agencies in more than 6,000 communities across 49 states, according to Flock Safety.
In the last 30 days as of Friday, 21 Flock Safety cameras installed in Durango have detected 1,357 “hotlist hits,” or vehicles flagged by a law enforcement agency, out of 119,942 vehicles detected, according to the city of Durango’s transparency portal with information provided by Flock Safety.
DPD quietly contracted with Flock Safety in 2023 and deployed its initial set of cameras last year. The only mention of Flock cameras to City Council The Durango Herald could identify was a one-minute presentation by Police Chief Brice Current during an October 2024 study session.
DPD has since entered into an additional contract for a mobile camera trailer. Current said the city presently has 13 stationary cameras and eight cameras on a trailer.
The city’s contracts, which are renewable on a two-year basis, total $169,050.
Current said the Flock cameras don’t bother innocent people and the cameras contribute to precise and preventive policing.
Concerned residents aren’t buying it.
Durango resident Ben Peters said DPD shared Flock camera data with 60 other agencies that have 287(g) agreements with ICE. In other words, data captured by Flock cameras in Durango was distributed to 60 other law enforcement agencies across the country that act on behalf of or otherwise cooperate with ICE.
Peters filed a records request with DPD and received a list of 603 agencies the police department shared its Flock data with over the past year. Sixty of those agencies are stated by the Department of Homeland Security to have 287(g) agreements with ICE, he said.
He also received a Flock search audit containing the names of DPD officers who performed searches; the total networks and devices searched; and the date, time and time frame of each search ranging from November 2024 to October 2025.
The audit contained 5,858 search entries. Notably missing from the logs, Peters said, were search criteria – license plate numbers or descriptions of vehicles or other content – and the officers’ stated reasons for the searches.
Peters provided the DPD documents to the Herald.
Current said DPD eliminated network sharing with the 60 agencies affiliated with ICE after Peters brought the matter to the department’s attention.
“Immigration enforcement is explicitly listed as prohibited and the system logs and audits all access,” Current said. “There’s no evidence that Durango PD or Flock has provided Durango’s camera data to ICE.”
He said he will immediately cut a department out of DPD’s shared network if he discovers it is working with ICE.
Peters said he had collected 947 signatures as of Friday – some handwritten and others on Change.org – on a petition calling to end DPD’s contract with Flock Safety.
On Tuesday, resident Emily Riggs urged City Council to terminate DPD’s Flock Safety contract, and “rather than following this federal trend of mass policing and surveillance to invest funds instead into the livelihood of our community members.”
She said there is minimal research showing Flock cameras reduce crime rates, while extensive research shows a correlation between crime and lack of housing, and the city should prioritize funding on affordable housing efforts.
She said Flock cameras have been used to track women seeking abortions across state lines and there are several reported incidents of law enforcement officers using Flock data to track and stalk women.
'Had an abortion, search for female’
404 Media reported in May an officer from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas searched Flock’s national network for a woman whose family reportedly said she self-administered an abortion.
The officer’s recorded reason for his search was, “had an abortion, search for female,” 404 Media reported.
Johnson County Sheriff Adam King told 404 Media the family was concerned the woman would “bleed to death” and the intent was to locate her and transport her to a hospital.
“We weren’t trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion,” he said. “It was about her safety.”
The state of Texas has a decades-long history of restricting abortion access. In 2021, the Lone Star State made national headlines after its passage of Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy and allows private individuals to sue health care providers and seek a court order to block a patient’s abortion, as described by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.
In 2022, Texas passed another law that “prohibits abortions in nearly all circumstances” without exception for cases of rape or incest, according to the Texas State Law Library.
404 Media reported the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office did not successfully locate the woman using the Flock network, and later contacted the woman and confirmed she was OK.
“La Plata County is unfortunately very incredibly familiar with law enforcement staff taking advantage of invasive technology for their own personal benefits,” she said.
She was likely referring to Ed Aber, former La Plata County Sheriff’s Office jail commander, who was charged in July with 117 counts of invasion of privacy and one count of official misconduct for allegedly using his position of power to watch strip-search videos of female inmates for his own sexual gratification.
Riggs and other residents questioned Current’s assurances that DPD’s Flock data is safe and secure, scrutinizing the language in Flock Safety’s contract.
According to the master services agreement between DPD and Flock Safety, obtained by the Herald in a records request, DPD owns the images and data captured by Flock cameras, which is automatically deleted in 30 days unless it is flagged for investigative purposes.
Within the 30-day retention period, however, Flock Safety may provide those images and data to other law enforcement agencies, government officials and third parties if, at minimum, Flock has “a good faith belief” that a request for the material is valid.
Another section in the agreement grants Flock Safety the right to “access, share, view, record, duplicate, store, save, reproduce, modify, display, and distribute” data for a period longer than the 30-day retention period.
Resident Elli Morris said she isn’t sure Flock Safety is a reputable company.
She recited a haiku to City Council that drew laughter from attendees:
Bikes and peds only
So what you Flock’n us for?
On the river trail
Current said public safety and privacy don’t need to be mutually exclusive and DPD has policies in place to ensure Flock tech is used responsibly.
He listed a number of Durango cases Flock cameras played a role in closing:
- A suspect who intended to kidnap a random male student from Fort Lewis College was stopped on his way to the college after his vehicle was detected by a Flock camera.
- A Flock camera caught footage of a vehicle assault in Town Plaza that resulted in a victim’s legs and pelvis being crushed.
- The arrest of Benjamin Smith – a former Escalante Middle School teacher arrested last year and federally indicted on 48 counts of coercion and enticement of a minor and possession of sexually explicit images of children – was initiated by a Flock camera flag, Current said.
He said he shares residents’ concerns about immigration enforcement and the feds overreaching, but DPD’s policies, its contract with Flock Safety and other vendors, and state law “meet that head-on by prohibiting any sharing of data with ICE and Border Patrol.”
“You know who turns over data to the federal agencies? Apple, Samsung, Google – and we never know about it. The same thing with Verizon, T-Mobile and more,” he said. “Our local license plate recognition use protocol has far more protections than those companies will ever give us.”
Peters said Current’s argument is disingenuous.
“Every individual can opt into terms and conditions on their mobile device, and nobody gets to opt in to whether they want to be tracked by the Flock system or not,” he said.
Residents were caught off guard on Tuesday when Current provided a presentation to City Council about Flock cameras. The presentation, which wasn’t on the meeting agenda and was instead brought up under an item called “city manager updates,” allowed Current to take the floor for about 40 minutes and featured a question-and-answer session between councilors and Current.
Residents, on the other hand, were required to wait more than an hour after that to make their comments during a public comment period designated for matters not up for consideration on the meeting agenda.
Peters said residents are fighting an uphill battle to inform councilors of their concerns, and allowing Current to get the first word in influenced them and makes it harder for residents to communicate their concerns and be taken seriously.
A city news release summarizing Tuesday’s Flock Safety presentation said the cameras “have the ability to read license plate numbers of individuals who have already committed a crime or have shown the intent to commit a crime.”
That got under Peters’ skin.
“That’s a false statement. It collects location information of every vehicle seen by the cameras for at a minimum of 30 days, and it is a searchable location history of every vehicle,” he said. “I can’t believe that. I honestly can’t believe that.”
Mayor Gilda Yazzie suggested that the people concerned about Flock cameras have warrants and fear getting arrested.
Councilor Jessika Loyer asked for a regular public report on Flock usage – how many times it is used, how many successful case clearances it results in, and how many times an internal audit is flagged for a DPD policy violation.
She suggested concerned residents are elevating misinformation that is scaring people.
Councilor Shirley Gonzales said she doesn’t see what sets Flock cameras apart from other surveillance cameras that have been around for decades.
Current told the Herald in an interview the Flock system has saved lives by notifying police of dangerous people entering the community. And he also has options to strengthen policies and Flock audits to ensure a safe and transparent system for Durango.
“My job as the chief is to continue to listen to the public, continue to make modifications, continue to leverage technology – because there’s going to be more technology too – and we need to be transparent with the public and the council and police the values of the community,” he said.
In interviews with the Herald, councilors admitted their understanding of Flock Safety is limited, but they trust data is in good hands with DPD. They also said more discussion is warranted.
“If you have an understanding of how sophisticated and pervasive the system is, it makes people uncomfortable. And in talking to people around Durango, they’re not comfortable with this,” Peters said. “They’re not comfortable with the data-sharing, they’re not comfortable with the fact that everybody is being tracked – even if they’re not under reasonable suspicion.
“These are not things that are popular. I think that they’ve been glossed over or omitted to avoid a really frank and open conversation about what the true nature of the system actually is.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
