De-Flock Mesa County will hold a public protest on Sunday, September 27 at 10:30 a.m. at Spring Valley Park to protest mass surveillance cameras currently being used by the City of Grand Junction and Mesa County. The cameras have been sold to communities as a way to increase public safety and reduce crime, but they have become much more than that.
ALPR cameras quietly track, log and share information about the appearance and movements of thousands of vehicles belonging to law-abiding area residents, without law enforcement agencies first having to obtain a warrant. They also play a big part in efforts by private security technology companies to build a nationwide mass surveillance system and massive database of the movements of ordinary citizens.
The Institute for Justice tracks incidents of misuse of the cameras and has identified about 200 incidents of abuse of the databases the cameras generate, mostly by law enforcement employees. In one incident, a Texas deputy accessed a system of about 83,000 mass surveillance cameras to track a woman whose partner alleged she had performed a self-administered abortion. Other incidents show law enforcement officers using the system to stalk and track romantic partners.
The Grand Junction Police Department operates around 30 Automatic License Plate Reading (ALPR) cameras, nine of which are manufactured by Flock. As of July 2025 the Mesa County Sheriff’s Department (MCSO) was using 11 Flock cameras, plus another 15 ALPR cameras manufactured by Motorola and more cameras that the MCSO operates in partnerships with private businesses. Beyond just reading license plates, these cameras use computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to catalogue vehicles’ make, model, color, bumper stickers and other unique identifying characteristics like dents, roof racks or missing hubcaps. Newer cameras can even zoom in on and track human figures.
Civil liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) say these are not normal traffic cameras. They are far more invasive, and the databases they generate amount to illegal searches. They are urging communities to reject these creepy cameras.
Putting the De-Flock Mesa County protest details — Sunday 9/27 at 10:30 a.m. at Spring Valley Park — in one post makes it much easier for neighbors to show up without chasing scattered flyers. Mass ALPR camera pushback needs that kind of clear logistics.
Clear logistics for the Spring Valley Park gather on the 27th — 10:30 a.m. is easy to plan around. Local pushback on mass Flock-style cameras deserves this kind of plain notice rather than only social posts.
I did not realize ALPR cameras log the movements of so many ordinary vehicles without any warrant. The Institute for Justice count of around 200 documented misuse incidents is a sobering number for a tool sold purely as crime prevention.
The detail that ALPR cameras log ordinary drivers’ movements without a warrant is the part most people never hear about. Good to see a local group in Grand Junction pushing back in public.
I had no idea Grand Junction already runs around 30 plate-reading cameras, nine of them Flock. The examples of officers using the database to track partners show why a warrant requirement matters so much here.
I would imagine that the cameras are already capable of and being used for facial recognition and what that could entail. The abuse by police officers does bothers me, but not as much as ICE, NSA, DOJ and other agencies using the cameras to track and round up those not bowing down to das Fuhrer.