In his recent article defending Prescott’s use of Flock Safety surveillance technology,
Prescott City Manager Dallin Kimble compares concerns about Automated License Plate
Readers to the public’s early skepticism of police radar. It is an interesting analogy, but it
misses a fundamental distinction: radar measures a vehicle’s speed at a moment in time.
Flock creates a searchable database record of where ordinary citizens have traveled.

There is also an important fact missing from his argument: crime in Prescott was already
declining before Flock arrived, even as Prescott’s population was increasing. That decline
was due in large part to the hard work of the Prescott Police Department, which was
keeping our community safe long before Flock cameras appeared. Prescott was becoming
safer on a per-capita basis before these cameras were installed. We should be careful
about crediting a surveillance system installed in 2023 for a downward crime trend already
well underway.

And this is no longer simply about license-plate readers.

Prescott’s surveillance infrastructure goes well beyond ALPRs. There are three Condor PTZ
cameras at Courthouse Plaza alone, and those are not the only Condor cameras in the city.
These sophisticated pan-tilt-zoom cameras have capabilities far beyond photographing
license plates, including live video and AI-assisted detection and tracking of people.

Yet neither City Manager Kimble nor Interim Police Chief Brambila acknowledges these
Condor cameras in an article intended to reassure residents about the limits of Prescott’s
surveillance technology. Residents are told what the system supposedly doesn’t do, while
these more capable video cameras are left out entirely.

That omission matters. Residents deserve to know how many Condor cameras have been
deployed, where they are located, what they collect, what technologies are enabled, who
has access, and whether they can detect or collect information associated with nearby
mobile devices.

You cannot ask the public for trust while leaving some of the most powerful surveillance
technologies out of the conversation.

Nor should Prescott residents simply be asked to trust Flock Safety. In Dunwoody, Georgia,
public records revealed that Flock employees, including a company Vice President, viewed
live and recorded camera feeds through the city’s Flock network 1,063 times between 2023
and April 2026. The system included private live-video cameras integrated into the police
network at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta. Flock employees accessed
cameras covering children’s gymnastics, swimming, a women’s fitness center, and a
preschool/daycare areas A Flock Vice President personally accessed a camera labeled

“Gymnastics.” These accesses were unrelated to criminal investigations and broke Flock’s
own rules.

Flock’s CEO subsequently apologized to the Jewish Community Center for the company’s
“poor judgement.” The incident illustrates precisely why assurances about how
surveillance technology is supposed to be used are not enough.

There is also the question of what happens to the enormous amount of data these systems
generate. Flock’s own May 2026 price list offers Nova (Flock’s A.I.) data and intelligence
products for sale at substantial annual prices, and Flock says License Plate Reader data is
among the data sources supplied through Nova. Its May 2026 partner price list documents
Nova as a separately priced data and intelligence product.

That doesn’t mean Prescott’s ALPR data is being sold. But it demonstrates why residents
should ask where ALPR data can flow, how it can be combined with other information, who
can access it, and what commercial products are being built around these databases.
When the same private company operating the surveillance infrastructure sells intelligence
products incorporating LPR data, and its employees have accessed sensitive private video
feeds for purposes unrelated to criminal investigations, “trust us” is simply not an
adequate privacy policy.

Perhaps the biggest problem with City Manager Kimble’s argument is his request that
Prescott residents trust the City to police itself. Prescott’s own records show why that trust
has been damaged. An email from former Police Chief Amy Bonney shows that, after the
Flock contract had been signed, she recommended delaying a City Council study session
until the cameras were installed, officers trained, and the 60-day trial had produced
“success stories” to present. The Interim City Manager agreed. The cameras were installed
in 2023, while the first City Council study session did not occur until January 2026.

Now we’re being asked to trust the safeguards surrounding a surveillance system whose
public discussion was deliberately postponed for nearly three years after it began
operating.

Contrast that with the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors, which recently voted 5-0
against two proposed surveillance measures. The Board deserves credit for recognizing
that expanded government surveillance requires serious scrutiny, public discussion and
compelling justification, before deployment.

Prescott was safe before Flock, well below the national average. Crime was already
declining despite a growing population. Surveillance technology here in Prescott, Prescott
Valley and Chino Valley goes far beyond simple license-plate readers. The public deserved
to know about these systems before they were installed, not years afterward.

This isn’t about whether we support our police. Of course we do, and their success in
reducing crime before Flock is evidence of why we do.

It’s about whether our local government should build an increasingly powerful surveillance
network first, tell the public later, omit significant parts when defending it, and then ask us
to trust that it won’t be abused.

Finally, while the current City Manager and Interim Police Chief ask us to trust them, what
protects us tomorrow? City managers and police chiefs change. Technology changes. And
the laws governing these rapidly evolving technologies are woefully behind their
deployment and capabilities. Without enforceable limits, what prevents future officials
from dramatically expanding surveillance or adopting even more intrusive technologies?
Our privacy should be protected by strong laws and binding safeguards, not dependent
upon who happens to be in office or another government promise to “trust us.”

Steve Hunyar
Anne Marie DiCarlo