Blaine County

Volunteers have mapped 28 devices in Blaine County and every one of them is a license plate reader with Flock Safety recorded as the manufacturer. None of them names an operator.

Four agencies put them there. Two of the four asked their city council for the money in public, in writing, with the price on the page. The county’s own agency does not appear in the Board of County Commissioners’ published record at all, and the fourth is a city whose record we have not read.

We read the Blaine County Board of County Commissioners’ agendas, packets and minutes from January 2022 to September 2026, the Hailey City Council’s record from 2019, the Bellevue Common Council’s from 2023 and the Ketchum City Council’s 2026 agendas and packets. That is 1,725 documents.

The Sheriff’s cameras

The Blaine County Sheriff’s Office runs plate readers and describes searching them in its own press releases: once in an aggravated assault investigation in July 2026, naming the Highway 75 and Elkhorn traffic light, and once in a wildfire investigation the same month, alongside a homeowner’s private camera footage.

Across 788 published documents of the Board of County Commissioners, covering four and a half years, the words Flock, ALPR, automated license plate and surveillance do not appear. The only plate reader sentence in that record belongs to a transportation department representative, telling the Board in July 2025 that his agency was working with law enforcement to expand plate reader installations. The Sheriff’s plate readers sets out what the county record does and does not hold.

Hailey’s three cameras

The Hailey City Council adopted a master services agreement with Flock Group, Inc. on 22 September 2025, for three cameras at $3,500 each a year. The vote was four to nothing, and the minutes record a council member raising the vendor’s data license terms before voting yes. The department’s first audit came ten months later, and the chief told the Council there is no policy on sharing the data with agencies in other states. Hailey’s plate readers has the staff report, the vote and the audit.

Bellevue’s two cameras

The Bellevue Common Council passed Resolution 25-11 on 24 March 2025, five votes to nothing, capping the cost at $7,300 in one fiscal year and $6,000 in the next. The Marshal’s written plate reader policy was printed in the packet before the vote. He audits searches every 30 days, which is more often than state law requires, and prints the numbers for the Council every month. Bellevue’s plate readers has the resolution, the policy and the counters.

Sun Valley and Ketchum

The EFF Atlas of Surveillance records five plate readers at the Sun Valley Police Department. No City of Sun Valley record has been read for this project, so what they cost, who approved them and what policy governs them are unread here.

Ketchum has had its own police department only since 3 August 2026, after the City Council voted in April to end a seventeen year policing contract with the Sheriff’s Office. The city told a resident in writing in July 2026 that it has no Flock cameras.

What Idaho law requires

Since 1 July 2025, Idaho Code 49-1432 has limited law enforcement use of plate readers to investigating felony or misdemeanor crimes, traffic accidents, and searches for missing or endangered persons. It bars their use to enforce traffic infractions unrelated to an accident. It requires every access to be logged with the user’s identity, the date, the time and the purpose, requires training for every authorized user, and requires each agency to audit those logs twice a year. Misuse is subject to discipline, administrative penalties and criminal prosecution.

Of the four agencies operating cameras here, one publishes a written policy, one had done a single audit as of July 2026, and two are unread by us.