Gunnison law enforcement cancels contract with Flock Group

Effective Sept. 30, the Gunnison Police Department (GPD) and the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office (GCSO) suspended their use of the license plate reading system through Flock Group, Inc. The cameras will be removed in the next 15-20 days.

​Flock Group, a public safety and mass surveillance technology company, has been used in Gunnison County since 2023, when the City Council and Gunnison County partnered to authorize an intergovernmental agreement to place five automated license plate readers (ALPRs) across the town of Gunnison. Two cameras are located on the east and west sides of Highway 50 a couple of miles outside of town, one outside of McDonald’s, one right as you’re leaving West on 50, and one just north of town. There were no Flock cameras installed near or in Crested Butte or Almont.

​These cameras were put in place with the hope of helping with AMBER alerts and missing children, and identifying Silver Alerts for seniors with dementia or other memory problems. However, their primary use is automated license plate recognition and vehicle-tracking camera networks.

​It became a widely debated subject this year among community members, commissioners, and the police department when worries about mass surveillance and data privacy became a concern nationwide. There have been instances of Flock being used for harm across the country, including an instance where a Kentucky police officer used Flock data over 2,000 times to stalk his ex-girlfriend.

​County Commissioner Liz Smith’s main concern is that local ownership of data doesn’t necessarily prevent Flock from using it to create its own datasets or to use it for commercial purposes under the company’s terms. She also expressed worry that ALPR data could reveal and map people’s movements over time and across jurisdictions, potentially making information about the community accessible across a broader data network.

Smith reported that the contract cancellation came up as a consent-agenda item at a County Commissioner regular meeting in early September, where she pulled it from the consent agenda to ask how the county planned to handle the equipment after cancellation. There have been past experiences in other counties where no-longer-active user accounts are still collecting data through the cameras. Smith feels strongly that the community should have more input before another ALPR contract is put into place.

“It is important to know where the community is on these things,” said Smith. “It affects how they’re engaging with local government, law enforcement, and potentially larger pooled data networks that make our community information available to people outside the state.”

​Public and nationwide concern is why Sheriff Adam Murdie and Police Chief Sam Costello decided to cancel their contract with Flock Group. Gunnison law enforcement has been looking into canceling the contract for about six weeks now. After attending a quarterly statewide meeting with many of the state’s sheriffs and Flock representatives, Murdie and Costello saw how this software was affecting relationships between law enforcement and the community and ultimately decided to cancel the contract.

“When a company is throwing us under the bus like that, I’m done with them,” said Murdie. “And that’s what was happening with Flock.”

Though public concern and controversy were the reason Gunnison terminated their Flock contract, Murdie reassures that there was no foul play within the GPD or GCSO. He acknowledged that there is uncertainty about what data companies might do with their data. Still, the County’s use was solely to read license plates on public roads and to assist law enforcement with Silver Alerts, locating stolen vehicles, and identifying people with outstanding warrants. He estimated that the system assisted in locating four or five Silver Alert cases, and also assisted in an arrest involving a sex offender from Pennsylvania.

Chief Costello cleared up confusion about a traffic stop that occurred on Sunday, Sept. 27, stating that the ALPR had falsely recognized a license plate, leading the county to believe the vehicle had been stolen. This was due to a semi-rare occurrence with ALPR cameras involving certain letters or numbers, such as difficulty differentiating an X from a K.

​Officer Chester Morris pulled over the car, which he believed to be stolen, and decided to conduct a felony stop. Within one minute of the stop, Morris and two deputies who had come to assist him had determined that the vehicle was not stolen, and the individuals were immediately released. GPD is conducting an internal review of the incident, consistent with policy. GPD will reserve its conclusions and any related actions until the review is complete.

“When a situation like this occurs, we have to really ask ourselves if using the cameras is really worth it,” said Costello. “The decision to cancel the contract was already in the works, but this kind of solidified it for us.”

A non-renewal letter was sent to Flock Group, and the County is planning to remove all five cameras within the next 15-20 days. GPD and GCSO will not be seeking another camera system and will return to prior practices.