Policy brief: Would Appelhans or Wyatt bring Flock cameras to Albany County? – The Laramie Reporter

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Neither Sheriff Aaron Appelhans nor his challenger Daron Wyatt plan to surveil Albany County with Flock cameras or other AI-powered license plate readers.
Appelhans and Wyatt are competing for control of the Albany County Sheriff’s Office.
In what has become the community’s most contentious and closely watched race this election cycle, the Democratic incumbent and Republican challenger have butted heads over topics as diverse as preventing suicides in jail and working with ICE. But on the topic of whether the county, under their leadership, would welcome Flock cameras, the candidates have landed on the same position:
They agree Flock has no place in Albany County law enforcement.
The candidates converged on this position via different routes.
Wyatt has not always been opposed to license plate readers. He even said he has seen law enforcement agencies in his native California benefit from the technology.
“I’ve worked for agencies that have them, and they’re a good tool,” he said. “Is it appropriate for us? I don’t think so. I think that any decision that’s made like this [has] got to keep the community in mind. And I think both sides here — whether it’s staunch conservative or staunch liberal — both sides are against it. In a place where they’re overridden with violent crime, [Flock cameras] might be appropriate because they do solve crime. They can’t help solve crime in a place like this, especially when people are against it.”
Wyatt said he also doesn’t trust that the data collected would be used responsibly — largely because, in hundreds of cases across the country, it hasn’t been.
“I’m seeing articles from across the nation … where an officer, a deputy, has used it to track somebody that they’re interested in dating, or where some states are using it to track people who are coming into the state to have abortions, or the data has been shared with the feds to track people with immigration issues and stuff like that,” Wyatt said. “I think it would be a really, really, really hard sell to come in and tell any group here in Laramie that ‘Guess what? We’re getting these cameras.’”
Appelhans said his opposition to Flock boils down to his beliefs about surveillance. He said he’s repeatedly turned down the opportunity to bring the technology to his office.
“I get sales calls and sales pitches and contracts sent to me literally every 90 days trying to install those cameras here in Albany County,” he told a forum audience this summer. “And for the last 3-4 years, I’ve resisted all of those just because I personally believe that that’s not the way to do law enforcement. It’s definitely not the way to do law enforcement here in Albany County. There’s really no need for us to essentially surveil the entire population and everything that you do and collect that data.”
Appelhans said he’s also concerned about the collected data being misused. He added he’s not sure if what Flock is doing is even legal.
“I don’t believe in the mass collection of data,” he told the forum audience. “It really starts to mess with your Fourth Amendment rights, and so a lot of times that tech is [developing] far faster than the law is catching up with it.”
Wyatt pushed back on this point, saying that while he’s opposed to bringing Flock to Albany County, he believes the cameras are legal.
“There is no expectation of privacy in a public place,” he said. “So, it’s not a Fourth Amendment issue. It’s really a data collection issue, and are we going to use it responsibly or not.”
In general, there is no expectation of privacy in public places, where Flock cameras are often placed. And the courts have protected similar data collection efforts by police in the past.
But the legal reality of Flock cameras might be more complicated. The system they’re plugged into creates what one judge referred to as a “digital dragnet,” collecting a wider scope of data about individuals than earlier court decisions envisioned. There is active litigation exploring whether this scope represents a novel violation of the Fourth Amendment.
However that or other legal challenges pan out, neither man running for sheriff plans to install Flock cameras in Albany County or to use them for local law enforcement.
The general election is Nov. 3.
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