You might not have noticed the pole-mounted black cameras on the roadside, but if you’ve driven through Ogden, Provo, or West Valley City, they may have photographed your license plate and logged your vehicle.
Technology company Flock Safety makes these automatic license plate readers, and roughly 30 Utah cities, counties and police departments used them in 2025.
The cameras are used for surveillance. They photograph passing vehicles and store the images for a set period of time, allowing law enforcement to search for vehicles involved in crimes or be notified when certain ones are spotted.
But as local governments in places like Santa Cruz, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Flagstaff, Arizona, cancel their Flock contracts over privacy concerns, Ogden residents have questioned the police department’s use of automatic license plate readers at the city council and on social media.
During a Jan. 20 presentation to the council, Ogden Police Chief Jake Sube labelled the cameras as a game-changer.
“It is solving crimes we never would have even had any opportunity to investigate,” he said.
Sube said automatic license plate readers have been key in investigations of various high-level crimes, including the recent kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl.
“ALPRs were instrumental and critical in apprehending that suspect and recovering the child safely,” Sube told the council. “Literally, the ALPR hit was within half a block of where the suspect vehicle was located at a hotel in Colorado.”
Ogden signed its first contract with Flock in 2021. The police department considered vendors for more than two years, according to a 2020 note to the city council. The city is Utah’s biggest spender on Flock Safety, according to Transparent Utah vendor data. In 2025, Ogden paid $123,000 to Flock Safety. The next highest payers were Wayne County at $95,100 and Provo at $75,406. The vast majority of Ogden’s funding for the technology comes from grants, according to Sube.
The Salt Lake City Council recently paused a plan to expand the use of license plate readers. The city does not use Flock but instead uses similar Motorola Vigilant cameras.
Ogden’s policy is posted online, in accordance with state law. But Sube said the city is stricter than what state law requires and what their written policy describes.
For one thing, the department can only access data for 30 days, well under Utah’s nine-month retention limit, he said. Officers also cannot search on their own, Sube said; they must contact a sergeant or the Area Tactical Analysis Center to run an inquiry. They must also include a case number and crime type in every search.
The city does not participate in Flock’s National Lookup, which would allow Ogden police to access data from participating agencies in exchange for sharing their own. Instead, Ogden shares with the other 30 or so other entities in Utah that use Flock, Sube said.
The cameras are designed to capture rear license plates and vehicle details, Sube told the council, but they do not capture occupants of vehicles. If a pedestrian is caught on camera, there’s no way to search for that person. There’s no live monitoring.
To Chad Marlow, who focuses on privacy, surveillance and technology at the American Civil Liberties Union, nothing in Ogden’s practices makes him think the department wants to cause harm.
“The fact that they're not using the national lookup tool is a good thing, but that's a decision that they could change tomorrow,” he said.
But he views the Flock automatic license plate readers as overkill for the city’s stated uses.
“If you're only planning to drive five miles an hour, why do you buy a Ferrari?” he said. “And it's the same thing here, like, if they're just planning to use ALPRs locally with local departments, why did they contract with the biggest nationwide ALPR system?”
Marlow said the city’s 30-day retention policy, which is standard practice for Flock, would be illegal in the strictest states. New Hampshire allows retention for three minutes in most cases, while Maine limits it to 21 days.
“If your use of ALPRs is to immediately find out if a car is of interest — you know, it's on a hot list, it's stolen, its insurance isn't up to date, it's been used in a felony — you can ascertain that in a matter of seconds,” he said.
Holding data for 30 days allows more time for outside searches. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have asked local agencies for access to records in states such as Washington and Virginia.
Agencies beyond those Ogden shares data with, including the federal government, can request specific data, but access is not guaranteed, Sube said. The FBI, for instance, requested license plate reads from Ogden in their 2021 search for missing woman Gabby Petito, whose last Instagram post was taken in Ogden.
There is a possibility that an outside agency could access information that Ogden does not want to share by requesting it from a partner agency. But Sube would not take that lightly.
“If an agency reached out to us and we denied it, whether it was a federal or local, or state entity, and we denied it, and then they went to another agency, I would have serious issue with that,” he said.
Marlow noted federal agencies could still access data with a warrant or administrative subpoena.
There are 41 Flock cameras in Ogden, including one mobile unit that moves around to follow crime trends. Eight are within Business Depot Ogden and paid for in part by the depot’s owners. The remaining 32 are located within the city’s Project Safe Neighborhoods zone, which runs roughly from 12th Street to 40th Street between Washington Avenue and Monroe Boulevard.
The city designated the zone as an area to partner with the federal government to crack down on violent crime and repeat offenses, Sube said. It includes the city’s lowest-income census tract and does not include its wealthiest areas.
That’s a red flag for Marlow.
“If they are overwhelmingly deciding to put these cameras in low-income communities and communities of color, then they're not using these cameras to watch the residents of the city,” he said. “They're using these cameras to watch certain residents of the city.”
Sube, for his part, wants to expand.
“I'd love to add more. Hundred percent,” he said. “I would love to have more ALPRs across all neighborhoods, all in and outs, accesses of the city.”
The vast majority of funding for the cameras comes from U.S. Department of Justice Project Safe Neighborhoods grants, according to Sube. The city is limited in where it can use those funds.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
