Eagle-eyed NEWS readers pointed out a Flock Safety Inc. Automatic License Plate Reader was installed at Grasshopper Point at 89A and Forest Service Road 640. The Coconino County Sheriff’ Office subsequently confirmed they are leasing the camera from the Atlanta, Georgia based company and another was installed on the north entrance of Oak Creek Canyon.
The Coconino County Board of Supervisors as a consent item voted 4-0 with District 5 Supervisor Lena Fowler absent on April 22 to approve 20 new stationary license plate reader cameras, including the two in Oak Creek Canyon. The purchase CCSO Spokesman Jon Paxton said is the first his department has installed.
There are 18 cameras installed under CCSO’s lease in Coconino County: Grasshopper Point, Fairgrounds Road and 89A, two at Townsend-Winona Road and Fire Road 775, Townsend-Winona and Highway 89, Leupp Road and Wrangler Road, Perkinsville Road [North] from Williams and Forest Service 140 the Dogtown Lake area, Perkinsville Road [North] from Williams and Forest Service 9073 located east of Drake, Forest Highway 3 and Forest Service 132, Two at Forest Highway 3 and Stoneman, One at Double A Ranch Road and Forest Service 1242C, one at Double A Ranch Road and Cumberland Road, two near the Tusayan Airport and three at the roundabout in Cameron.
All ALPRS outside of the one on Leupp Road “were installed and became operational between July 30 and Aug. 8,” Paxton wrote and did not have an anticipated day that one will be collecting data.
CCSO data retention policy is to collect the data and store it for 30 days.
“I haven’t been at this that long, and one of the things that I have learned during this about three and a half month period is the valuable tool that this is,” District 3 Supervisor Tammy Ontiveros [R] who represents Uptown and the Chapel area said during the April meeting. “So I just want you to know that I am very supportive of this.”
Prior to the vote District 4 Supervisor Judy Begay [D] cited her concerns of motorists speeding on U.S. Route 89 entering Flagstaff and on U.S. 180 and she hoped CCSO identified locations based on those concerns.
“[ALPR do] not take video. There is no video portion of this. It’s a still image. It does not record traffic violations. It does not check speed. It does not check your registration,” Sedona Police Cmdr. Chris Dowell remind Sedona City Council during its Flock work session on Aug. 13.
“There have been reports that there’s accidents there,” Begay said during the meeting. “So, and if we can get more [in] place out there, somehow [and] get more funding, and I think we’ll get, we can take control of a lot of these things that’s happening.”
The only public outreach cited by CCSO with regards to the cameras was the April board of supervisors meeting and the agency’s website transparency.flocksafety.com/coconino-az-so
The funding source is the Coconino County IT Digital Transformation Funding that covered the $64,627.20 agreement with Flock Group covering installation, software, access to nearby law enforcement cameras and maintenance for the first year and began once the first camera was installed and validated.
Their installation is not in response to any specific crime trend “not that I’m aware of,” Paxton said whereas Ontiveros cited the county’s and “compared to the large geographic area, there are relatively a small number of deputies,” she said.
“It is just something that we felt is a great enhancement for public safety,” Paxton said. “A great example of that would be just the other night Flagstaff PD was able to locate a suspect in a fatality hit and run because of these cameras.”
CCSO does not have data sharing agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or federal agencies. However, it does have in total 95 data sharing agreements including the Arizona Department of Public Safety, seven county sheriff’s offices in Arizona including Yavapai County, sheriffs in Colorado, New Mexico and California. As well as numerous agreements with local law enforcement agencies including Cottonwood Police Department across Arizona as well as California, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.
“I’ve heard the talk of tracking people, gathering information,” Paxton said. “This is for public safety, storing random information is obviously expensive. That’s not something that we’re doing. This is, for a major crime, Amber Alert, Silver Alert, stuff like that.”
“Essentially how it works is [ALPRs] photograph the back of cars as they drive by,” CCSO Chief Deputy Gerrit Boeck said. “It not only captures the license plate, but any unique identifiers, like, if we have we’re looking for a white vehicle with a bumper sticker on the back or anything we can search the database for that particular information. That’s extremely helpful, because a lot of times we have crimes that occur in the county, where we just have a vague vehicle description. So this will pick up any information with that vehicle description, and we can tie that back to the license plate number. [It] provides our investigators leads to follow up on.”
In order to generate that list of vehicles based on “a vague vehicle description,” ALPRs scan and document every single vehicle that enters its field of view, leading to privacy advocates to cite ALPR programs as mass surveillance.
“I do understand the concerns,” Ontiveros said to the NEWS about ALPRs. “I do believe that the way [CCSO] intends to use these cameras [that] it should not be a violation of [people’s] privacy or civil liberties.”
There are currently no plans for additional Flock cameras in Coconino County and “CCSO has no mobile ALPR’s at this time,” Paxton wrote.
The city of Sedona indefinitely paused its own ALPR program by majority consensus 5-1 with Mayor Scott Jablow dissenting during its Wednesday, Aug. 13 work session and is anticipated to have the citizen ALPR work group as an agenda item during its meeting Tuesday, Sept. 9.
