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Residents press Fort Collins to 'deflock' license‑plate cameras and limit ICE practices; police chief promises work session
Summary
Residents raised privacy and civil‑liberties concerns about Flock Safety license‑plate reader cameras and urged the council to cancel the contract; others asked the city to restrict ICE agents from wearing nonmedical masks and require ID/body cameras. Police Chief Swoboda pledged response protocols and said staff will present on Flock cameras in two weeks.
Residents at the Feb. 3 Fort Collins City Council meeting urged the council to halt or renegotiate the city’s contract with Flock Safety and pressed the police department to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and to require clearer identification for ICE agents.
Ryan Burns, a District 3 resident, warned that frequent software and UI changes by the Flock contractor can undermine the auditability of logs and urged caution about the system’s evolving terms. “These cameras are creating a searchable database of the members of the Fort Collins community,” Neil (a resident who spoke later) said, asking the council to consider removing the cameras from public spaces.
Esraiah Steyer dramatized the privacy risks by describing the kind of data the cameras can collect and by recounting hypothetical surveillance of council members’ daily movements: “You can learn a lot about a person just by following them around for a month,” he said, arguing the technology normalizes pervasive tracking.
Several commenters also tied Flock concerns to immigration enforcement. Multiple residents asked the city to adopt a resolution limiting local cooperation with ICE and to prohibit nonmedical face coverings by ICE agents operating in the city; John James, a Fort Collins physician, asked that agents show government IDs and wear body cameras.
Council member Papayandi asked Police Chief Swoboda to speak to how Fort Collins Police Services plans to respond to possible ICE operations. Chief Swoboda said local law draws a “bright line” on immigration: local police do not ask about immigration status and do not cooperate on immigration matters; he said officers will respond to calls for service with body‑worn cameras on and focus on de‑escalation and protecting people. “Our officers are gonna be having their body cameras on,” he said.
Chief Swoboda acknowledged uncertainty about how large, coordinated federal actions would proceed and emphasized that responses depend on the circumstances, but he committed to present the department’s approach to Flock cameras and related concerns at a council work session scheduled for Feb. 24.
No immediate action to cancel or modify the Flock contract occurred on Feb. 3. Several council members and staff said the questions raised would be addressed in the upcoming work session; residents asked for clearer answers about data retention, who has access to the data, and whether vendors can alter footage ownership and retention terms without local approval.
