Yavapai County

On 19 August 2026 the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors turned down two of its Sheriff’s Office’s requests. Item 20 was “an agreement with Ekin Traffic Solutions Inc. for a 12-month Smart Patrol Technology Program providing three (3) Ekin Patrol G2 mobile Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) and video units, in the amount of $39,348.00”. Item 22 was “an agreement with LeadsOnline, LLC for a NightHawk Subscription Services Agreement providing investigative intelligence tools to the Criminal Investigations Bureau, in the amount of $13,847.88”. The agenda records both as Denied.

Sedona Red Rock News reported that the Board “unanimously rejected contracts for three Ekin Patrol automated license plate readers”. The paper quotes the agenda on what the second contract does: “a platform that fuses multiple data sources — including call records, GPS data, social media, and license plate recognition hits — to build actionable investigative leads”.

Both items had been on the consent agenda, the block of routine business a board passes in one vote without discussion. The paper reports that the Chairman and Vice Chairwoman pulled them off it in the days before the meeting, and that “Seven residents spoke against the readers during the public comment period”. Vice Chairwoman Nikki Check is quoted on what the contracts left out: “who are our authorized users or partners that could also utilize the technology or the data, and what internal policies do we have in place?”

Sheriff David Rhodes is quoted explaining the request: “We were attempting to increase the number of cars from six to nine that had ALPR on them.” By the Sheriff’s account, six patrol cars already carry them.

$2 million for an intelligence center, nine months earlier

On 5 November 2025 the same Board approved, as item 9 of its consent agenda, an increase to the Sheriff’s Office budget “in the amount of $2,000,000.00 and an offsetting reduction in the Board of Supervisors, Budget Capacity - Grants Fund revenue and expenditure budgets to operate a Criminal Information Intelligence Analysis Coordination Center (SB1735 118-30)”. The agenda records the outcome in one line at the top of the block: “ALL ITEMS ON THE CONSENT AGENDA WERE UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF ITEM NO. 11.” Item 9 was not the exception.

Three more Sheriff’s items in the same block came from the same state bill: $500,000 for a “Satellite Communications Pilot Program”, $600,000 for school safety, and $950,000 to a new fund whose purpose the item does not state. Four items, $4.05 million, one motion.

The agenda does not say what the coordination center gathers, who may query it, how long it keeps what it holds, or which agencies it coordinates with. Sedona Red Rock News reported after the August vote that the Sheriff and the Board “still see a role for APLRs in YCSO’s Criminal Information Intelligence Analysis Coordination Center”, and quotes the Sheriff saying he supports plate readers there “but with guardrails”.

So the readers that drew seven residents to the microphone cost $39,348 and were denied. The center they were meant to feed was funded at fifty times that, in one motion, with no discussion recorded, and its record is a single sentence inside a list of routine business.

The plate readers it already has

The Board approved the first ones on 7 June 2023, unanimously, as part of its consent agenda: an agreement with Vigilant Solutions for $74,620.59 “for the purchase of License Plate Readers”, bought under a co-operative purchase agreement held by the Houston-Galveston Area Council in Texas.

A co-operative agreement lets a county buy from a contract another government has already put out to tender. It is lawful and common. It also means the competitive bidding for this county’s plate readers was run in Texas, and the Board’s vote was the one local step.

The community map shows 110 devices in this county, and unusually for Arizona, most of them name who runs them. Thirty one are attributed to Prescott police and thirty one to Prescott Valley police. Those are city departments, and their purchases are not in this Board’s record.

$3.24 million of Axon on one agenda

On 19 June 2024 the Board approved two five year agreements with Axon, both taking effect on 1 July: $681,222.70 for the jail district, and $2,560,247.88 for the Sheriff, which also ended the county’s existing Axon contract. Both passed unanimously on the consent agenda, the block of routine items a board approves in one vote.

In January 2026 Pima County’s Board took a $45 million Axon amendment off its agenda without approving it. Yavapai’s two went through with the rest of the consent agenda.

A 1992 contract, still in use

On the same day the Board approved, again on consent, an agreement with Motorola for $44,178.92 of software “under the 1992 Spillman Agreement”. Spillman makes police records and dispatch software and is now owned by Motorola Solutions. Greenlee, Pima and Gila counties’ records show Spillman in use too.

A contract signed thirty two years earlier was still the one this county bought police software under. Nobody has to decide to stay with one supplier for a generation. It follows from renewing the arrangement already in place, one agenda item at a time.

Border money, 200 miles from the border

In March 2026 the Board approved a $1,880,769.65 allocation from the Arizona Department of Public Safety under the Local Border Support Program. Yavapai County is in central Arizona, about 200 miles from the Mexican border. Cochise County, which is on the border, has an agreement under the same program for $1,924,858.19, and Yavapai’s is within $45,000 of it. Nine Arizona counties in this project’s reading hold agreements under that program, and seven of the nine are not on the Mexican border.

Nothing about that is unlawful. The program’s terms cover drug trafficking and human smuggling, which do not stop at a county line.

What the Board did not buy

In 254 agendas covering 2020 to 2026, all of which we could read, we found no cell site simulator, no facial recognition and no gunshot detection.

We did not find the phrase “real time crime center” either, and that absence is worth stating carefully rather than counting. The county funded a Criminal Information Intelligence Analysis Coordination Center at $2 million and the item says nothing about what runs inside it. A name that is not in the record is not the same as a capability that is not there.

Where this leaves a resident

The August meeting shows what a resident can do here. By the paper’s account, the plate reader contracts were on the consent agenda, two members pulled them off it, residents spoke, and the Board voted them down. Watching the consent agenda is how an item like that gets noticed in time.

The county’s own meetings pages are unread, so we have not confirmed from them when the Board meets or how to sign up to speak. The agendas themselves are public, and the Clerk of the Board can tell you how.