A community forum about Flock Safety automatic license plate reader cameras Sept. 10 aimed to give officials a chance to address community concerns. 

The meeting followed weeks of controversy surrounding the cameras, with the Summit County Sheriff’s Office having eight of its cameras cut down and deciding to institute a pause on its use of the technology last month while the Breckenridge Police Department chief stood by her department’s use of the cameras.

Event organizer Jacob Deneault collected questions from the community before the forum and distilled them into eight “priority questions” with a few more specific questions in each category. Deneault’s slideshow also had five questions to focus on “if time gets tight,” and he turned to those questions early into the hour-long forum as audience members started to interject with their own.

Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons and Breckenridge Police chief Dawn Layman attended the forum, and FitzSimons invited Flock representatives as well.

How Summit got Flock cameras, location and field of view

The first question asked who decided to put Flock cameras in Summit County, when that decision was made and why there was no public input. FitzSimons said his office got cameras about two years ago through a federal grant. He said the grant request was specifically for Flock cameras and there was no public approval process because the cameras are a law enforcement tool, which agencies typically obtain on their own without public input.

Josh Hyman, a customer success manager with Flock, said that the company working with a new law enforcement agency is a collaborative process. He said agencies often have certain issues they want to address with the cameras, like increasing stolen vehicle recoveries. According to prior Summit Daily reporting, when the Sheriff’s Office received its federal grant, a main goal of having the cameras was to help combat drug and human trafficking along the Interstate 70 corridor.

An audience member spoke up and asked about the location of the cameras, saying some of the placements seem “stupid.” Hyman said jurisdictions decide placements in different ways, but they rarely get community input on them. FitzSimons said that data about where calls for service come from in Summit County factored into the placement of his office’s cameras. He said the placement also took into account main arteries in and out of the county and available land.

Audience members asked about a specific camera in Breckenridge which several said seems to be pointed at a bus stop. Layman walked to the front of the room with a photo she said shows what Breckenridge police see from that camera — a zoomed-in photo of the back of a car. An audience member asked if the camera captures a wider field of view and the Flock software crops it, or if the camera hardware is zoomed in to the view Layman showed. Hyman said the zoom is a hardware limitation, so the camera does not have any wider field of view, in part because it helps with the solar-powered camera’s battery life.

Layman encouraged members of the public to check the Breckenridge Police Department website and read through the frequently asked questions about license plate readers. She also said she will give a presentation about the technology to the Breckenridge Town Council at a future meeting.

Ted Slaughter, a Blue River Board of Trustees member, spoke up during the meeting to say he believes a Sheriff’s Office operated Flock camera sits within the town limits of Blue River. He said the Sheriff’s Office did not consult Blue River’s Town Council or police department before placing the camera. 

FitzSimons disagreed with Slaughter, saying it is in unincorporated Summit County. Based on the location of the camera in question shown on DeFlock.org and on Google Maps streetview, it is at the northeast corner of Colorado Highway 9 and Lakeshore Loop. Google Maps and the Summit County parcel viewer show that corner to be within the town limits of Blue River.

Legality of license plate readers

An audience member interjected, saying they believe the most important issue with the cameras is whether using them without a warrant is legal. The questions sparked some back-and-forth between audience members and Bia Campbell, a Flock public affairs manager who had been in the audience until she responded to questions about legality.

Campbell said there have been around 60 court rulings across the country that have found that license plate readers do not violate constitutional rights. An audience member argued that a 2026 Supreme Court decision in Chatrie v. United States, which found that geofence searches by law enforcement require a warrant, should make Flock’s license plate reader system illegal. Campbell said Flock’s system does not include geofence searches, meaning the ruling is not relevant to the company.

“The Supreme Court has not decided on the constitutionality of (license plate reader) technology,” Campbell said. “If at such a point in time the Supreme Court were to decide that (license plate readers) are in violation, then Flock would obviously abide by that decision.”

Audience members and Deneault questioned whether Flock’s system qualifies as “surveillance,” and Campbell said it does not because the cameras only show the location of cars at specific times they pass by, not where they go or what they do between when they drive by the same or a different camera. Some in the audience voiced their disapproval of Campbell’s description of surveillance.

Anger toward Flock representatives and questions about camera use

As Deneault and others tried to move the conversation to the next question on the “if time gets tight” slide, one audience member said they did not want to hear answers from Flock representatives because they are not part of the Summit County community. Others in the audience echoed the sentiment, and FitzSimons said he invited the representatives because they have expert knowledge of the technology.

Flock representatives have attended council meetings and community forums across the country, and in one case, the Oshkosh City Council in Wisconsin canceled a Flock contract one day after approving an extension because it and the city’s police department believed a Flock representative lied to the council the night the extension was approved.

The criticism of the Flock representatives drew some yelling from the audience, but once the room settled down, one audience member asked FitzSimons if Flock cameras could be used to justify searching the car of someone from out-of-state who frequently visits Summit County. They referenced a case where Wisconsin police used Flock cameras to establish that a man often went to Michigan, where marijuana is legal, before returning to Wisconsin, where it is not. His travel was part of the probable cause justification to search the man’s car for marijuana, according to 404 Media.

FitzSimons said he could not comment on that case because he did not know specific details. Audience members were not happy with the response and repeatedly asked FitzSimons about the case.

In response to similar questions about how cameras can be used, FitzSimons said that, before the 30-day pause his office instituted at the end of last month, it had been sharing data with agencies nationwide. Because of Colorado law, though, federal agencies cannot access Flock data from Colorado, and neither can any immigration-related searches, he said. Layman said her department’s cameras are still operational and share data with around 70 agencies in Colorado.

Path toward the removal of Flock cameras

At several points throughout the meeting, audience members asked how the community could move toward the removal of Flock cameras. FitzSimons said the Summit Board of County Commissioners work session discussion on the cameras, his office’s 30-day pause and the community forum were all part of the process for he and his staff to review the topic.

In a written statement Sept. 11, FitzSimons stated he appreciated everyone who attended the forum and would like to have another meeting with the community before he makes a decision on how to move forward with license plate readers. He wrote that, before making a decision, he wants to hear from those in the community who “support the technology and believe it contributes to public safety.”

“As Sheriff, my responsibility is to make decisions based on what I believe is best for the entire Summit County community, not any one group or perspective,” FitzSimons wrote.

No future meeting has been scheduled, he added, but anyone who wants to give their perspective about Flock cameras can contact his office at SheriffInfo@summitcountyco.gov. He wrote that he wants to hear from people on all sides of the issue before making a decision “that affects our entire community.”