Flock Safety cameras have come to Fort Lewis College in Durango.
While the major focus of residents’ calls at a City Council meeting last week was on Durango Police Department to cancel its Flock contracts and remove cameras around the city, attention was also briefly drawn to FLC’s own Flock cameras.
Nardy Bickel, FLC spokeswoman, told The Durango Herald three Flock cameras were installed on the college campus in September.
FLC faculty and staff were notified after the cameras’ installation in a memo on Sept. 30, provided to the Herald by Bickel, but it appears the student body was never formally alerted to the new surveillance cameras or consulted before the cameras were installed and turned on.
The Herald called FLC Police Department Chief Brett Deming for comment but did not receive a response. The police department referred the Herald to Bickel for more information.
“Because these cameras were installed as part of routine safety infrastructure – similar to upgrading lighting, emergency phones, or locks – the decision followed standard campus safety procedures rather than a community feedback process,” Bickel said in an email.
She said Flock cameras fit in the college’s overall endeavors to “modernize campus safety tools” and the decision was made after incidents such as arson and vehicle theft occurred on the campus over the past several years.
“LPR technology could have significantly supported investigations,” she said.
The internal memo sent to FLC faculty and staff said data captured by the Flock cameras is shared only with “trusted local law enforcement partners”: DPD, La Plata County and Grand Junction Police Department.
A major concern in the local and national dialogue surrounding Flock Safety is the company’s extensive surveillance network in which captured images and data are shared in statewide and nationwide databases.
Flock Safety describes its common cameras as “license plate readers,” which incorporate artificial intelligence to photograph any passing vehicles, recording time and location while identifying license plates and a list of other features ‒ make, model, color, dents, damage and bumper stickers, for example. That information is immediately uploaded to a cloud-based network searchable by law enforcement agencies across the country.
Individual police departments, such as Fort Lewis College Police Department, have the ability to opt in to statewide, nationwide or custom networks and choose whether to share, receive or reciprocate captured camera data.
The Latinx Serving Working Group at FLC said it opposes the college’s contract with Flock Safety in an internal written statement obtained by the Herald.
“Flock raises numerous privacy concerns for all our students, faculty, and staff; however, the Latinx Serving Working Group is particularly concerned with recent reports that Flock camera data in Colorado has been shared with the Department of Homeland Security to aid in the recent acceleration and militarization of deportation procedures,” the statement said.
The statement referred to an American Civil Liberties Union report that Denver’s Flock surveillance system had been accessed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 1,400 times between June 2024 and August 2025.
Colorado law prohibits state and local law enforcement officers from assisting federal agents with immigration enforcement.
“While we understand the safety concerns for students and the desire for a CCTV (closed-circuit television) system on the mesa, we are asking for the Flock cameras to be removed,” the statement said. “We would like to know what an alternative plan might look like that allays concerns for student security, while not putting a vulnerable population at risk.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
