Police chief updates Steamboat City Council on decommissioning Flock cameras

Steamboat Springs Police Chief Mark Beckett updated City Council this week on the process of removing Flock cameras and automated license plate readers from the city. As of Thursday, Sept. 3, the cameras have officially been decommissioned and are not collecting data. The Tuesday update came two weeks after a packed, often tense public forum where Beckett defended automated license plate reader technology as community members questioned privacy risks, data-sharing issues and potential misuse. The following day, Beckett ordered all six SSPD-contracted Flock cameras within city limits to be deactivated immediately. On Wednesday, Sept. 2, the Routt County Sheriff’s Office released a similar announcement, noting it would end its contract with Flock and was in the process of deactivating RCSO-contracted Flock cameras in the county. The town of Hayden followed suit after the Town Council’s regular meeting on Thursday, Sept. 3, where councilors directed Police Chief Scott Scurlock to not only deactivate the cameras, but cover them with plastic bags to ensure data collection cannot occur. At the Steamboat Springs City Council’s Tuesday work session, Beckett said that while his department has received positive feedback on the use of Flock cameras — mostly through letters — the “overwhelming consensus” from community members “was opposition.” Beckett said he took public feedback from the August town hall, brought it back to other law enforcement agency heads, met with City Manager Tom Leeson and Council President Steve Muntean, and ultimately directed department personnel to cease all use of the software on Aug. 26. The following morning, Police Operations Commander Greg Griffin, who the chief called the department’s “Flock expert,” disabled all network access, eliminating access both to and from the approximately 65 Colorado agencies utilizing that network, said Beckett. The only account left in place was that of Griffin’s for auditing purposes. As of Thursday, Sept. 3, Griffin’s account also was deactivated. Now, Steamboat police are waiting on Flock to process the department’s request to formally cancel the contract. “They also let us know that there was an overwhelming customer service demand for the deactivation of their product and gave us a heads-up that there was going to be a delay,” said Beckett. The chief went on to talk about the department’s contract with Axon, a public safety technology company and Flock Safety competitor, with whom Steamboat Springs Police Department contracts for body cameras, dash cameras, tasers and the interview room at the Combined Law Enforcement Building. He said the department “very recently” entered into a 10-year contract with Axon for those products, some of which, like the body cameras, are required by the state. Axon had included two free, fixed automated license plate reader cameras within the contract. Beckett said at the time, department personnel told Axon to hold off on the installation of the cameras until after the Aug. 25 community meeting. After the town hall, Steamboat police contacted Axon and asked them to remove the language regarding the two automated license plate cameras from the contract. “To be clear, those cameras have not been installed and will not be installed,” said Beckett. “Community safety remains our top priority,” said Beckett. “This tool is a great tool, but no tool is worth jeopardizing the trust of the community.” “One of the things I love most about this community is that we have that trust and we can have the kind of dialogue we had two weeks ago,” he continued. “It was tough to sit up here for two hours, but also valuable, and I think it meant a lot to the community.” “As we move forward, I want to be really clear: there are no plans for any ALPR fixed cameras anywhere in the community,” Beckett added. “We have no plans to do that anywhere in the near future, period.” He clarified that if conversations evolve over time and automated license plate cameras re-enter the picture, it may be considered “in the distant future.” “I think there’s going to be an opportunity in the coming year or so to look at case law and see how this plays out on the national level, so we’re just hitting the pause button like most other agencies are — in our neck of the woods, anyway,” said Beckett. Ultimately, he said the department heard loud and clear the significance of transparency with their decision-making and will take that into account going forward. Councilor Dave Barnes asked Beckett whether he had any statistics on the frequency with which the department initiated searches outside of the Routt County database, to which Beckett said he did not. He explained that while Steamboat police could query the roughly 65 aforementioned agencies within the Colorado network, and vice-versa, what those agencies could not see were “hotlists” — lists created internally for wanted vehicles. Only the Routt County Sheriff’s Office and Hayden police could access Steamboat Springs Police Department hotlist data. Flock also offered to the department a “national lookup” option, a different query system that allows participating agencies to query a national system, of which the Steamboat police opted out of in October 2025, said Beckett. Barnes asked whether Beckett if he believes Flock is being transparent about how it shares information. “We used it pretty effectively for a few years, and it really wasn’t until the national scrutiny came along — really during some of the immigration issues that were arising across the country — that people really started looking closely,” said the police chief. “So we started looking more closely, and I think we just got a little bit ahead of the curve with it,” he continued. “They’ve never not answered a question when we’ve asked.” Beckett acknowledged that while there is automated license plat reader technology out there with much narrower data-sharing capabilities, he would like to see how events unfold on the national level and in the judicial system. “If anything goes to the Supreme Court, that would really be the bright-line test for us,” he said. “There’s no rush.” Councilor Bryan Swintek asked about the timeline around getting the cameras physically taken down, versus just deactivated, to which Beckett responded that it currently remains uncertain. “Consider the fact that the entire state of Florida just revoked their licenses for Flock cameras, and you’re talking about 130,000 cameras across the country,” said Beckett. “It’s going to take some time.” Council President Steve Muntean asked what changes the department can make to offset the benefits that law enforcement officials are losing from deactivating Flock cameras. Beckett answered with an anecdote. “When I was a young patrol officer, we would spend a lot of our shift driving around, running license plates on the computers in our cars,” he said. “If a plate came up as ‘stolen’ or ‘wanted,’ we would take action.” “That’s where we are again,” he said. “ALPR was a game-changer that evolved very quickly. And I don’t know that anyone is saying we’re done with it, but I think we need to talk about the responsible way to use it.” Win Dermody, longtime community member and four-year volunteer with Steamboat Springs police, said during the public comment period that he would “stake his reputation” on the character of Steamboat Springs Police officers. Local residents Bill Pass and Steve Young requested that the cameras be covered with plastic bags, similar to the Hayden Town Council’s direction to Scurlock. Beckett said he believes bagging the cameras could be construed as the city “tampering” with the cameras, potentially opening themselves up to liability. Assistant City Attorney Jennifer Bock, attending in the absence of City Attorney Dan Foote, agreed and said she could not recommend such action. “Would we be liable if a member of the public were to put stickers on these cameras or bag them?” asked Swintek. “I would not say so,” said Bock, though Beckett clarified that doing so could be considered a criminal offense.