Routt County Sheriff to cancel Flock contract after records show local cameras were included in 8 million searches

Database of Flock audit logs obtained by the Bugle include nearly 1,300 searches that accessed local cameras made for reasons like “ICE” and “Immigration.”

The Routt County Sheriff’s Office intends to cancel its contract with Flock Safety after audit logs showed the local network of cameras was included in millions of searches made by at least 3,000 different law enforcement agencies since 2025. 

The audit logs, obtained by the Yampa Valley Bugle in a public records request filed in July, detail more than eight million searches that included Routt County Flock Cameras from Jan. 1, 2025 to Aug 17, 2026. That equates to roughly a search every six and a half seconds.

While the Sheriff’s Office believed it only agreed to share Flock data with other law enforcement agencies in Colorado, the search logs revealed broad access for those outside the state.

The revelation is only the latest issue that Routt County Sheriff Doug Scherar has had with Flock Safety. He told the Bugle on Monday that he now intends to cancel the contract. The move comes after the Steamboat Springs Police Department announced it would cancel its Flock contract last week amid growing scrutiny on the company across the country. 

“I trust the technology,” Scherar said, referring to automatic license plate readers. “Right now, I just don’t trust Flock.”

In August alone, more than 2,500 law enforcement agencies across the country included Routt County’s network in searches. Searches come from agencies starting with every letter of the alphabet, from the Sheriff’s Office in Ada County, Idaho to the Police Department in Zephyrhills, Florida.

Scherar said when Staff Sgt. John Daschle noticed vast numbers of searches from agencies outside of Colorado while compiling the Bugle’s request, he reached out to Flock to ask why that was happening.

Flock informed Daschle that the Sheriff’s Office was opted in to the company’s National Lookup network. This allows law enforcement across the country to search for full license plate numbers among Flock networks also opted into the program and is the reason for the vast majority of searches. 

“I’m not passing the blame on Flock for us not knowing about that backdoor license plate search, but we didn’t know until John started working on that audit,” Scherar said. “We thought we had everything outside of Colorado disabled, and we were still seeing searches from outside of Colorado.”

Scherar said they have since opted out of that system. Steamboat Springs Police disabled out-of-state sharing in October 2025, according to Mike Lane, the city’s marketing and communications manager.

The Bugle identified nearly 1,300 of the searches that claimed they were related to immigration enforcement actions between January and August of last year. None of those searches were made by Routt County Deputies, rather, the searches included Routt County's network among those it seached.

The audit logs show the majority of these searches included some form of “ICE” or “ERO” as the reason for the search, acronyms for two key federal law enforcement groups conducting immigration enforcement actions. Other searches simply stated some variation of “immigration” as the reason.

More than 50 law enforcement agencies across the country, including two Federal task forces, made the searches, logs show. These searches often reached more than 6,000 different Flock networks, with just one of them being the Routt County Sheriff’s network of six cameras. 

Scherar said Flock assured him last year that their system would be updated to ensure Colorado-based agencies were following a new state law prohibiting local governments from sharing data with federal immigration authorities. Searches related to ICE do drop off in records after August of last year.

Scherar said he planned to meet with the county attorney on Tuesday to “find out the most effective way to cancel our contract.” 

“There are not many Sheriff’s in the state of Colorado that are still supportive of Flock, the company,” Scherar said. “I still believe the [License Plate Reader] technology is a good, useful tool, but the lack of transparency with Flock … is very concerning for us.” 

Free Flock cameras

According to a copy of Routt County’s contract obtained by the Bugle, former Sheriff Garrett Wiggins signed an agreement with Flock in July 2022 to install the cameras in Routt County. That deal ordered 13 cameras in total. Scherar said six were for the sheriff’s office and seven for Steamboat police.

In September 2022, Wiggins included a funding request for Flock cameras in his budget presentation to Routt County Commissioners, who at the time expressed reservations over privacy and public sentiment, even speculating that some residents might vandalize cameras if they were to be installed, according to meeting recordings.  

While funding for the cameras was not included in the 2023 budget, Routt County got the cameras anyway after Flock agreed to let them use the cameras for free until they were fully set up, Scherar said. Records from the sheriff’s office show the first cameras were installed in February of 2023. 

Scherar then asked to fund Flock in his 2024 budget request, which was eventually included in the 2024 budget approved by commissioners. The county paid $18,800 for the cameras in 2024, and $18,050 in 2025. Another $18,050 is budgeted for this year. 

The city opted not to move forward after the initial trial period at the time, Scherar said. Scherar said Flock initially tried to charge Routt County for the city's seven cameras too, adding that it took more than a year to get correct billing for just six cameras. 

“It took a long time for Flock to get their stuff together and specify that Routt County only has six cameras,” Scherar said. “That was the beginning of my frustrations.” 

Steamboat Springs City Council approved its Flock cameras as part of a supplemental budget appropriation in August and September of last year. Council approved it as part of the consent agenda on Aug. 19 and without discussion on second reading at its Sept. 2 meeting.

A search every 6.5 seconds

Records detail more than eight million searches that included the Routt County network since the start of 2025, with about three million coming from the first half of 2026.

The Bugle obtained the search logs through a records request originally filed July 29. On Aug. 17, the Bugle agreed to pay $870 for the sheriff’s office to locate and redact the records, eventually receiving 40 spreadsheets detailing both searches by Routt County Sheriff’s Deputies, and the broader search logs.

On average, 396,000 searches have included the sheriff’s network each month in 2026. Those searches are coming from an average of 2,960 different agencies each month, according to a review of searches.

Searches were conducted by sheriffs in the respective Johnson County in six different states, university police on more than a dozen college campuses and from departments in Red Oak, Texas; Red Springs, North Carolina and Redford Township, Mississippi, to name a handful.

These searches are often hitting thousands of camera networks across the country at once, not just cameras in Routt County. Agencies searching for a plate may include Routt County’s cameras in their searches regardless of whether the vehicle being investigated was ever believed to be anywhere near the county.

Scherar said National Lookup searches require a full license plate, whereas his deputies have the ability to search with a partial plate or vehicle descriptions. These searches are also more limited in what they return, he said, and would require reaching out to the agency that owns the camera if there were a hit on the plate entered.

To date, Scherar said the sheriff’s office has never had another law enforcement agency reach out about a hit related to a National Lookup search.

Freelance Editor Alec Berg contributed to the editing of this piece.