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Sheriff cites data-control and audit gaps as central reason for ending Flock relationship
Summary
Sheriff Aaron Brown told commissioners the county owns LPR cameras but cannot audit or control a private server that stores the data; he described weekly/monthly audits he runs for his staff but said he cannot see what other agencies search in the shared database.
Sheriff Aaron Brown described the core operational concern driving his non-renewal decision: the county's inability to fully control or audit the private backend where Flock stores LPR data. He told commissioners the office audits deputy searches but cannot see the query details performed by other agencies that access the same dataset.
"The data is ours. Those license plates, readers, our ours. However, that data is on a a private server. That server is not ours. That is an issue for me, because I don't have overall control over that server," Brown said. He added that while Flock asserts outside access is restricted and the company provides auditing tools, he cannot independently verify that claim and therefore views the back end as an unresolved risk.
Brown described the office's internal controls: mandatory training for users, required association of searches with criminal cases or dispatch calls, and weekly or monthly audits. Still, he said, "I can see all the agencies that search our database, but I cannot see what they searched." He recommended legislative and technical solutions and is exploring options to host data at a law-enforcement-controlled repository or in-house.
