Resident urges county to pause Flock Safety license‑plate reader trial and publish agreements

During the March 3 public‑comment period, James Simmons, a Watertown resident, asked the commission to reconsider a reported 60‑day trial with Flock Safety, the vendor of automated license‑plate reader systems.

Simmons told the board he learned of a 60‑day agreement the sheriff’s office had signed to test Flock cameras and license‑plate readers in vehicles. He said Flock’s documentation indicates the system takes multiple images of passing vehicles to create a "vehicle fingerprint" that can include color, stickers and other visual features beyond license plates and that those records are stored in a cloud database searchable by users with credentials. "It creates what the system calls ... a vehicle fingerprint," Simmons said, and he quoted from vendor documentation describing free‑text searches such as "white sports car with a racing stripe." Simmons said those capabilities raise privacy and security risks and asked that any documentation between the county, the sheriff’s department and Flock Safety be made publicly available. He also asked that any decision to move to a larger contractual agreement be brought before the board in a public hearing.

The public comment in the record did not include a response from the sheriff or other county staff, and commissioners did not take action immediately following the comment. Simmons said he had real‑world examples where misuse occurred and asked the board to reconsider the trial or make contract documents public; the record shows no follow-up vote or motion at the March 3 meeting.