{"id":27495,"date":"2026-11-02T08:51:44","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/02\/policy-brief-would-appelhans-or-wyatt-bring-flock-cameras-to-albany-county-the-laramie-reporter\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T08:51:44","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:51:44","slug":"policy-brief-would-appelhans-or-wyatt-bring-flock-cameras-to-albany-county-the-laramie-reporter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/11\/02\/policy-brief-would-appelhans-or-wyatt-bring-flock-cameras-to-albany-county-the-laramie-reporter\/","title":{"rendered":"Policy brief: Would Appelhans or Wyatt bring Flock cameras to Albany County? – The Laramie Reporter"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was made possible by our generous <\/span>election coverage sponsors<\/a>.<\/span><\/em>
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\u2019s Office.
In what has become the community\u2019s most contentious and closely watched race this election cycle, the Democratic incumbent and Republican challenger have butted heads over topics as diverse as <\/span>preventing suicides<\/a> in jail and <\/span>working with ICE<\/a>. But on the topic of whether the county, under their leadership, would welcome Flock cameras, the candidates have landed on the same position:<\/span>
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.
\u201cI\u2019ve worked for agencies that have them, and they\u2019re a good tool,\u201d he said. \u201cIs it appropriate for us? I don\u2019t think so. I think that any decision that\u2019s made like this [has] got to keep the community in mind. And I think both sides here \u2014 whether it\u2019s staunch conservative or staunch liberal \u2014 both sides are against it. In a place where they\u2019re overridden with violent crime, [Flock cameras] might be appropriate because they do solve crime. They can\u2019t help solve crime in a place like this, especially when people are against it.\u201d
Wyatt said he also doesn\u2019t trust that the data collected would be used responsibly \u2014 largely because, in hundreds of cases across the country, <\/span>it hasn\u2019t been<\/a>.<\/span>
\u201cI\u2019m seeing articles from across the nation \u2026 where an officer, a deputy, has used it to track somebody that they\u2019re 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,\u201d Wyatt said. \u201cI think it would be a really, really, really hard sell to come in and tell any group here in Laramie that \u2018Guess what? We\u2019re getting these cameras.\u2019\u201d
Appelhans said his opposition to Flock boils down to his beliefs about surveillance. He said he\u2019s repeatedly turned down the opportunity to bring the technology to his office.
\u201cI get sales calls and sales pitches and contracts sent to me literally every 90 days trying to install those cameras here in Albany County,\u201d he told a forum audience this summer. \u201cAnd for the last 3-4 years, I\u2019ve resisted all of those just because I personally believe that that\u2019s not the way to do law enforcement. It\u2019s definitely not the way to do law enforcement here in Albany County. There\u2019s really no need for us to essentially surveil the entire population and everything that you do and collect that data.\u201d
Appelhans said he\u2019s also concerned about the collected data being misused. He added he\u2019s not sure if what Flock is doing is even legal.
\u201cI don\u2019t believe in the mass collection of data,\u201d he told the forum audience. \u201cIt 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.\u201d
Wyatt pushed back on this point, saying that while he\u2019s opposed to bringing Flock to Albany County, he believes the cameras are legal.
\u201cThere is no expectation of privacy in a public place,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s not a Fourth Amendment issue. It\u2019s really a data collection issue, and are we going to use it responsibly or not.\u201d
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 <\/span>might be more complicated<\/a>. The system they\u2019re plugged into creates what one judge referred to as a \u201c<\/span>digital dragnet<\/a>,\u201d collecting a wider scope of data about individuals than earlier court decisions envisioned. There is <\/span>active litigation<\/a> exploring whether this scope represents a novel violation of the Fourth Amendment.<\/span>
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.
This story was made possible by the generosity of <\/span>our 2026 Election Coverage Sponsors<\/a>.<\/span><\/em>
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This story was made possible by our generous election coverage sponsors.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\u2019s Office. In what has become the community\u2019s most contentious and closely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}