Surveillance Networks Grow in Casa Grande and Apache Junction
The deployment of automated license plate reader systems continues to expand across Pinal County, with both Casa Grande and Apache Junction police departments reporting successful implementations of Flock Safety cameras. According to the monitoring group Atlas of Surveillance Project, a collaborative effort between the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Casa Grande initially installed Flock cameras in 2022, while Apache Junction has recently implemented its own system.
At the Casa Grande State of the City address on March 5, Councilmember Bob Huddleston highlighted the city’s camera network, stating that “the flock camera system with 22 strategically placed cameras has helped identify 67 stolen vehicles and 18 stolen license plates leading to 33 arrests.” City records show that the Casa Grande City Council approved the acquisition of 14 Flock cameras in September 2022 through Resolution No. 5463 which stated a cost of $44,000 for the first year. The resolution also stated that Flock Safety owns the cameras and the footage.
Apache Junction Reports Crime-Fighting Success
Apache Junction Police Chief Michael Pooley reported similar success during the March 4 city council meeting, noting that in 2024 alone, the department’s Flock system has contributed to “14 arrests, recovered 19 stolen vehicles, six stolen license plates, and a total of just under $400,000 in assets.”
Chief Pooley provided several examples of the system’s effectiveness, including a case involving a stolen vehicle from Mesa where suspects with outstanding warrants were apprehended in possession of heroin, other narcotics, paraphernalia, and burglary tools. The system also helped solve a series of vehicle burglaries in a residential neighborhood.
From Property Crimes to Public Safety Threats
In another case, Pooley described how the system helped locate a vandalism suspect who had spray-painted a resident’s truck and subsequently assaulted an officer during the arrest. Perhaps most notably, he shared an incident where the system potentially prevented violence by alerting officers to the return of a domestic violence suspect.
“We believe [it] possibly saved a life,” said Pooley, explaining a domestic violence situation where a female was assaulted by her fiancé who threatened to harm or kill her. Officers couldn’t locate him until “we had an alert on the flock camera when he came back into town… He was parked across the street from this fiancée’s house with a loaded handgun ready to go visit her.” Pooley noted, “with the use of flock cameras we believe that this helped us find him quickly before he was able to go back to the house.”
Pooley characterized the technology as a “force multiplier” that helps solve crimes and locate missing persons.
Norfolk Lawsuit Raises Constitutional Questions
While Pinal County law enforcement agencies report positive outcomes from their Flock camera implementations, a new lawsuit in Norfolk, Virginia, challenges the constitutionality of such systems. Attorneys from the Institute for Justice (IJ), a nonprofit public interest law firm that litigates cases to protect constitutional rights, have filed a Fourth Amendment challenge against the city’s 172-camera network.
IJ Attorney Robert Frommer describes the Norfolk system as “part of the largest domestic surveillance program in the entire United States,” with cameras that allow authorities “to track the entire driving population.”
Understanding Flock Safety Technology
Founded in 2017, Flock Safety has rapidly expanded its presence across the United States. According to documents in the Norfolk lawsuit, the company now operates in over 5,000 communities across at least 42 states.
When Flock’s cameras capture an image of a car, the software uses machine learning to create what the company calls a “Vehicle Fingerprint.” These features includes information about the vehicle’s color, make, and distinctive features such as bumper stickers or roof racks.
The lawsuit documents describe Flock’s software features including real-time alerts against hotlists, analysis of patterns of movement, flagging repeat visitors to an area, streamlined searches, projection of information onto maps, analysis of vehicles frequently seen in proximity to one another, and generation of lists of vehicles that have visited multiple locations of interest.
Nationwide Surveillance Network Under Scrutiny
According to Institute for Justice (IJ) Attorney Michael Soyfer, all cameras feed into “an unprecedented nationwide database maintained by a tech company called Flock Safety,” which “tracks people’s movements in 5,000 communities across the country for 30 days at a time, and it boasts that it gets something like 1 billion plate reads per month.”
The attorneys argue that the primary constitutional issue involves warrantless surveillance. “The Fourth Amendment was designed out of concern for these things called general warrants, which gave officers in the field the unilateral power, the arbitrary power to invade people’s houses, persons, property, searching for whatever they wanted,” said Frommer. “That was a major cause of the revolution.”
Fourth Amendment Concerns
Frommer contends that “a much simpler way to go about this is just to say, are the police investigating your person and property? And if they are then we’re at least in the Fourth Amendment box, and we can start asking, well, is this the kind of thing we need them to get a warrant before they do?”
This current system as designed is unconstitutional because it’s without a warrant, without any suspicion. It collects all the data of everyone who’s driving.
– Institute for Justice Attorney Robert Frommer
They distinguish this from systems like red light or speed cameras that “only take a picture when it senses a violation of law.”
Technology vs. Constitutional Rights
Soyfer expressed concern about how rapidly changing technology impacts privacy rights. “How does the growth of technology square with the Fourth Amendment, which was obviously designed without any foresight about these sorts of developments?”
The attorneys also cited worries about potential misuse, emphasizing that “what we’ve seen with the privacy model is as technology is advanced, our Fourth Amendment rights have necessarily decreased.” They advocate for a technologically neutral approach that preserves rights regardless of how surveillance methods evolve.
Privacy and Data Security Concerns
The IJ attorneys raised specific examples of potential misuse. “Wichita, Kansas had some issues recently with two officers in departments just outside Wichita using Wichita’s flock data to stalk their exes,” Soyfer noted. They also pointed out that the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s license plate reader vendor was hacked, exposing a large number of images of people’s cars and license plates at the border, which were then made available for sale on the dark web.
Crime Prevention vs. Civil Liberties
The IJ lawsuit challenges the premise that crime prevention justifies such expansive surveillance.
We would probably have very little crime if everyone wore a body camera all day. But we don’t do that! The Framers made a choice: sometimes criminals will get away, but we live in a better society because we don’t live under the eye of government surveillance 24-7 .
– Institute for Justice Attorney Michael Soyfer
A key distinction raised in the lawsuit is that “you can’t escape the flock cameras by following the law. They’re collecting everyone’s movements, whether they’re obeying the law or not.”
Potential Solutions and Alternatives
Frommer suggests a possible constitutional approach would be a system “where the cameras are told to only send images of cars that have been named in a warrant… otherwise, the cameras just leave everybody alone.”
Soyfer questions the cost-benefit of such a limited approach: “Norfolk is paying millions of dollars to flock to maintain these 172 cameras and I question whether that would really be worth it if they were limited to a system where the cameras could only take pictures of the license plates of a smaller list that was pre-approved by a judge who issued a warrant.”
Pinal County’s Approach and Safeguards
While law enforcement in Pinal County continues to demonstrate effective use of the Flock camera systems to solve crimes and protect the public, the Norfolk lawsuit raises important questions about balancing these benefits against constitutional protections.
The Apache Junction Police Department’s transparency portal indicates that its Flock system stores data for 30 days, requires human verification before action on hotlist alerts, and prohibits use for immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment, intimidation, or personal use. The system is also designed to capture only license plates and vehicles, not facial recognition, people, gender, or race.
Looking Ahead
As technology becomes increasingly integrated into public safety strategies—with Chief Pooley describing tools like mobile overt camera trailers, GPS-equipped radios, data management platforms, and drones as “force multipliers”—the constitutional questions raised by the IJ lawsuit may eventually affect how these systems are implemented nationwide.
For now, Pinal County’s law enforcement agencies continue to demonstrate positive outcomes while maintaining policy guardrails, even as broader questions about government surveillance and Fourth Amendment protections make their way through the courts.
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