Coconino County

Twenty plate reader cameras stand on roads in Coconino County. In the first seven months of 2026 they were searched 3,259,997 times by 3,815 law enforcement agencies, according to the Sheriff’s Office’s own audit logs, obtained by Sedona Red Rock News. The paper reports that “Nearly 16,000 times a day, the rural county of Coconino is searched - overwhelmingly by agencies outside of Arizona”, with the Dallas Police Department first at 313,404 searches and the California Highway Patrol second at 299,216.

The Board of Supervisors approved those cameras on 22 April 2025. The item was number 14 on the consent agenda, the block of business the Board’s own notice describes as “routine” and enacts “by a single motion”.

What the Board approved

Consideration and possible action to approve the agreement and addendum with Flock Group to install 20 stationary License Plate Reader (LPR) cameras with software, access to adjacent law enforcement cameras, and maintenance in the amount of $64,627.20 in the first year, which begins upon installation and validation of the first camera.

The searches from Texas and California are not a surprise in the record. They are the point. The staff report attached to that item, over the name of Sheriff Bret Axlund, tells the Board that the technology “will provide us, and more broadly the state and federal partners, with a huge advantage of being able to track and attempt to identify those involved in this type of criminal activity”, and that buying the cameras and software “will allow multiple agencies, including federal partners, to search for national hot list vehicles involved in crime to apprehend and prosecute suspects”.

A resident reading the agenda would have seen one line in a list of routine items. A resident reading the packet would have seen the sharing described as the purpose.

The neighbors’ cameras, priced

The same staff report says: “Officers can search through the cameras that we have installed, as well as nearby privately-owned cameras in neighborhoods to extend our reach and multiply our search capacity.”

That is a line item. The quote sheet lists “FlockOS Community Program - 20 / 160” at $37.50 each for 160, which is $6,000, described as a “Package of 20 Locations OR 160 Connections, whichever occurs first”, with the vendor coordinating “with the Agency on which submissions receive agency-paid connections.”

So a privately owned camera becomes searchable by the Sheriff’s Office through a connection the county pays for, and the county’s record carries the price. If you own a doorbell camera here, the question worth asking is whether it is one of the 160.

A real time crime center, sold as software

The Atlas of Surveillance records no real time crime center in this county, and no agenda item asks the Board to build one. The vendor’s product description, attached to the same agenda, says what the county bought instead. It distinguishes the package “from traditional brick-and-mortar real-time crime centers (RTCCs) and other cloud-based solutions”, and describes it as “scalable and community-powered, offering a versatile, cloud-based RTCC platform”.

A room full of screens is a capital project with a budget line and a ribbon. A subscription is item 14.

The state grant that came first

Two years earlier, on 28 February 2023, the Board considered the Sheriff’s Office applying to the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs for an Anti-Human Trafficking Grant “to combat human trafficking by identification of victims using stationary license plate reader cameras in investigations in the amount of $500,000”.

The cameras the county eventually signed for cost $64,627.20 in their first year. The application two years earlier was for $500,000 of the same technology, under a heading about identifying victims. What came of it is not in the part of the record we can read. Graham County’s plate readers were paid for from a grant from the same state agency.

At the same meeting the Board considered an agreement with the Flagstaff Police Department, the Sheriff’s Office and the Northern Arizona University Police Department “to reconfigure the roles and responsibilities with respect to joint access servers and joint access databases of Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS), for a 5-year term”. Three police agencies, one set of shared databases, on the consent agenda.

Border money, 300 miles from Mexico

On 14 May 2024 the Board took up a Local Border Support Agreement with the Arizona Department of Public Safety worth $1,000,000, with $400,000 transferred to the County Anti-Racketeering Fund for Metro personnel and $75,000 to the County Attorney for prosecutorial expenses. The next item on the same agenda was a BearCat armoured vehicle from Lenco Industries, up to $431,904.00, sole source, “with funding from the Arizona Department of Public Safety Local Border Support Agreement”. In August the Board adjusted the same grant to move $164,956.68 to the City of Flagstaff.

Coconino County’s southern edge is about 300 miles from Mexico. Its northern edge is the Utah line.

Then, on the same April 2025 consent agenda that carried the twenty cameras, item 16 passed $98,500.00 of that border money through to the Williams Police Department, in the county’s own words, “for the purpose of a police vehicle to assist in enforcing Mexico Cartel-related crimes, to include train burglaries, that are occurring in their jurisdiction”.

Nothing here is unlawful and the program’s terms cover trafficking routes, which run inland. What the record shows is the reach: a border-security appropriation funding a city police car in northern Arizona, two items above the cameras that 3,815 agencies now search.

Tasers and body cameras

In May 2020 the Jail District approved 35 conducted energy devices for detention officers at the Flagstaff facility, $86,660. In January 2022 the Board approved 68 more for deputies, $186,151.13. Both were bought through a national purchasing co-operative, which means the competitive bidding happened somewhere else. An earlier packet carries an Axon Flex 2 body camera order totaling $234,928.35.

What the record covers

The county’s website is unread, so this page rests on copies of its agendas and packets held by the Internet Archive: 2,460 documents, of which 1,271 could be read. The rest are scans without a text layer or files the archive truncated, so this page makes no claim about what the county did not buy. Everything above is something the record contains.

Volunteers have mapped 86 devices here, 56 of them plate readers and 65 made by Flock Safety. Fourteen are gunshot detectors, and the Atlas records gunshot detection at the Flagstaff police department, which is a separate government with its own record.

Where this leaves a resident

The Board meets at 10 in the morning at 219 E. Cherry Avenue in Flagstaff, with the room open ten minutes before. There is a Zoom link, a dial-in number and a YouTube stream on the notices we read, which are from 2025, so check the current notice before you go.

You can email boardcomments@coconino.az.gov, and the notice is honest about what that gets you: “Your comment will not be read at the meeting but will be provided to the Board.” Speaking happens at the Call to the Public, after the pledge of allegiance.

Watch the consent agenda. Twenty cameras that 3,815 agencies now search arrived on it as item 14, and the Board’s own rule is that any consent item can be pulled out for separate discussion if somebody asks.