I finally have some clarity on why Taos County (as opposed to the town) does not have automated license plate readers up and running, despite the commission approving 20 of them from SoundThinking last October. A public records request for County E911 Governance Board documents regarding ALPRs revealed this from the November 17, 2025, meeting minutes (emphasis mine):
Discussion, Consideration, and Approval - Sound Thinking LPR program:
[Taos Central Communications] Director [Roberto] Zaragoza proposed the purchase of the implementation of a License Plate Reader Program that would cover all areas of the county as information data available to each of the participating agencies of the [Joint Powers Agreement]. The board posed questions about the company, Sound Thinking, that made the proposal for the LPR program. The board did not feel comfortable moving forward with a Sound Thinking LPR product when the Town of Taos has an active LPR program through Flock Safety. Director Zaragoza informed the board that the Town of Taos had never extended any desire to provide data to Taos Central Dispatch for potential utilization of our public safety partners. The board recommended pursuing a Flock Safety system to coordinate with the LPR cameras already in use by the Town of Taos. The item was requested to be tabled. The Town of Taos made a motion to table, second to table by Village of Questa, motion to table for a future meeting passed.
This was very revealing in two ways for me:
That the Town of Taos was not providing data to central dispatch is interesting and something worth exploring. Was this a governance issue, a technical one, a relationship issue, or something else?
That the lack of data-sharing led the board to favor Flock over SoundThinking, despite it already receiving approval by the commission.
On the latter, I don't think County Sheriff Steve Miera, who is up for reelection unopposed this November, is interested in Flock. At the very least, he expressed skepticism of the company at the Taos News candidate's forum on April 27 (link goes to timestamp). He said:
We're looking into LPR's, countywide license plate readers, but before moving or taking that step, we're doing our research. We're finding out the flaws that are are within the Flock system. There's currently several lawsuits throughout the state against agencies that are using the Flock system and those are the safeguards that I want to make sure that are in place. I don't want to expose the county or the community to those kinds of issues. Currently, we're looking at [SoundThinking's] PlateRanger and the thing is, no system is is perfect but the thing is having those policies and procedures in place, the adequate training, those safeguards I think would, I believe, would mitigate those issues that several agencies currently are facing.
Flock or Not
This brings up an important part of the movement to rid cities of Flock. DeFlock is a strong brand, but it is not meant to rid the streets of Flock cameras, only for them to be replaced by another company’s ALPRs but without the nonstop public relations scandals. The movement is freedom from mass surveillance, which has been creeping into our lives over the last 25 years as technology becomes more omnipresent and with the growing ability to conduct behavioral predictions.
I like to think of DeFlock as a genericized brand for the whole movement. We should not be looking to create MuteSoundThinkingTaos.org or AxeAxonTaos.com next.
Questions? Reach out to me, Zach Behrens, at [email protected].