Steamboat Police Kill Flock License Plate Cameras After Privacy Backlash

Steamboat Springs —Six cameras. Sixty-five agencies. One very expensive mistake.

On paper, the deal looked like a steal. Steamboat Springs Police Department (SSPD) didn’t just buy body cams and tasers from Axon; they got two fixed automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras for free. It was a bonus, a perk, a "while we’re at it" add-on to a 10-year contract.

In practice, it turned out to be a privacy grenade with the pin pulled.

As of Thursday, Sept. 3, those cameras are officially dead. They aren’t collecting data. They aren’t sending anything anywhere. But getting them to that state required a public shouting match, a hasty order from Police Chief Mark Beckett, and a lot of plastic bags.

Let’s do the math on how we got here.

Beckett told the City Council this week that the "overwhelming consensus" from the community was opposition. He wasn’t talking about a few angry emails. He was referring to a packed, tense town hall where neighbors questioned who owns the data, where it goes, and whether it’s being used for anything other than catching stolen cars.

The data itself is the kicker. For context, these weren’t isolated, standalone devices. They were plugged into a network shared by approximately 65 Colorado agencies. That means a license plate scanned in Steamboat could theoretically be cross-referenced with data from a sheriff’s office, a police department, or a state agency using the same Flock platform.

Beckett admitted his department had received positive feedback — mostly letters — but the noise from the town hall drowned it out. So, on Aug. 26, he ordered the software shut down. The next morning, Police Operations Commander Greg Griffin, whom Beckett called the department’s "Flock expert," cut the cord. He disabled all network access, severing the link between Steamboat and those 65 agencies.

It wasn’t just Steamboat. The Routt County Sheriff’s Office ended its Flock contract on Sept. 2. Even the town of Hayden jumped on the bandwagon. Their council didn’t just tell Police Chief Scott Scurlock to turn the cameras off; they told him to bag them. Plastic bags. Over the lenses. To make sure, absolutely, no data was slipping through.

Now, Steamboat is in limbo. The cameras are dark, but the contract isn’t canceled yet. Beckett says Flock is overwhelmed with customer service requests, apparently, everyone else is trying to kill their cameras, too - and warned him to expect delays.

Meanwhile, the new 10-year deal with Axon is locked in. And remember those two "free" ALPR cameras Axon included? Beckett says the department told them to hold off on installing them.

So, the practical bottom line for locals: The cameras are off, but the infrastructure is still there. The data pipeline is severed, but the hardware is sitting in the streets, bagged or dark, waiting for a decision on whether to rip them out or keep them in cold storage. And because the Axon contract is signed, sealed, and delivered, the next time the city wants to look at license plates, it’s going to be through Axon’s lens, not Flock’s. The vendor changed, but the surveillance didn’t disappear. It just switched brands.