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Caldwell Police | Flock plate readers, and the county's only published rules

The Caldwell Police Department runs Flock Safety plate readers and is the one agency in Canyon County that publishes its policy for them. The policy says reasonable suspicion or probable cause is not required to use the system, and that the data is not open to public review.

At a glance

Policy in force
Policy 428 of the city policy manual, effective and revised 30 January 2024, issued by Chief of Police Rex R. Ingram [1]
Standard to run a search
None. The policy says reasonable suspicion or probable cause is not required before using the system [1]
Retention
Images older than 30 days are automatically purged by the service provider, unless kept as evidence [1]
Who holds the data
The service provider holds it; the policy says the data is the property of the department [1]
Public access
The policy says the data is not open to public review [1]
Query logging
Each query is to be logged against a case, report or incident number, through a password-protected system [1]
Audits
The policy says system audits should be conducted on a regular basis. It sets no interval and names nobody to do them [1]
Sharing
The policy allows release to other authorized and verified law enforcement agencies at any time for legitimate law enforcement purposes [1]
How many cameras, and where
Not stated in the policy or on the department page that publishes it [1] [2]
The original contract, and who approved it
Not found in the council record we read. The council has approved a related agreement, with the Caldwell Housing Authority for reimbursement of Flock cameras, in February 2026 [5]
Whether it continues
In a June 2026 budget workshop the Chief of Police proposed shifting away from Flock and moving to Axon for a package covering cameras, translation and drones. No decision is recorded [6]

How it happened

  1. Deployment

    The policy takes effect

    Policy 428, automated license plate readers, is effective and revised on this date, issued by the Chief of Police. It is published on a city web page alongside the department's drone policy. [1] [2]

  2. Decision

    A Housing Authority agreement, and a resident at the microphone

    The council approves on its consent calendar a resolution authorizing an agreement with the Caldwell Housing Authority for the reimbursement of Flock cameras, item 16 of 25. The roll call is five yes, none against, with one councilmember not voting, having declared at the top of the meeting a conflict of interest on a consent item related to the Housing Authority. Earlier in the same meeting, during audience participation, a resident raised concerns about Flock cameras throughout the city. [5]

  3. Deployment

    The city describes the system in use

    A city press release describes state troopers asking Caldwell officers for help locating a driver who had fled a traffic stop on Interstate 84, the vehicle's plate being entered into the Flock system, and an alert locating the vehicle about an hour later. It is the city's own account of the system operating. [3]

  4. Debate

    A proposal to leave Flock for Axon

    At a budget workshop the Chief of Police reviews the department's budget request and proposes shifting away from Flock and moving to Axon for a total package covering cameras, translation and drones. The notes record discussion of districts and funding. No vote is taken; it is a workshop. [6]

Three agencies read license plates in Canyon County. One of them publishes its rules.

The Caldwell Police Department puts its automated license plate reader policy and its drone policy on a public page on the city website.[2] That is worth saying plainly, because it is rare in this state and it is the exception in this county: neither the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office nor the Nampa Police Department publishes a plate reader policy that we could find, and both of them run readers.

Publishing the policy is what makes the rest of this page possible. Everything below is the department’s own account of what it may do.

What the policy permits

Policy 428 took effect on 30 January 2024, issued by Chief of Police Rex R. Ingram.[1] It describes the technology in ordinary terms: cameras capture an image of a plate, software converts the characters to text, and the text is compared against existing data files, with an audible alert and a note on the user’s screen when there is a match.

The clause that decides how the system is used in practice is in section 428.4: “Reasonable suspicion or probable cause is not required before using an ALPR.”[1] The policy limits use to official and legitimate law enforcement business, requires department-approved training first, and says an officer should verify an alert through the state law enforcement telecommunications system, where practicable, before acting on it alone. What it does not require is a reason to look.

That is not a Caldwell peculiarity. It is how plate reader systems generally work, and writing it down is more honest than leaving it unsaid. It is also the whole of the argument about them: a system that requires no suspicion to run is a system that runs on everybody.

Where the data lives, and for how long

The policy says images older than 30 days are “automatically purged by the service provider” unless someone identifies and retains them as evidence, and that “All ALPR data is retained by the service provider, but is the property of the Caldwell Police Department.”[1]

The service provider is Flock Safety. The department does not name it in the policy, but four of the six documents on the page that publishes the policy are Flock Safety’s own: an FAQ, a myths and facts sheet, a data privacy sheet and a security claims sheet, each carrying the company’s name, phone number and marketing copy.[4] A city press release of 9 March 2026 describes officers entering a plate into the Flock system at the request of state troopers and an alert locating the vehicle about an hour later, which is the city’s own account of the system working.[3]

On what a resident can see of it, the policy is direct: the data “is not open to public review”, because it may contain confidential state telecommunications information.[1]

The safeguards, and the word that carries them

Section 428.6 lists the protections. Access is through a login and password system that records who looked and when. Each query is to be logged against a case number, outside agency report number, incident number or unique suspect identifier. Non-law-enforcement requests go to the Records Manager. Data may be released to other authorized and verified law enforcement agencies at any time for legitimate law enforcement purposes.[1]

Then: “ALPR system audits should be conducted on a regular basis.”[1]

Should, not shall. The policy uses shall for the duties it means to bind: that personnel complete training before operating the equipment, that the system be used only for official and legitimate law enforcement business, that evidentiary data be stored per the city’s retention schedules, that access run through a password-protected system, and that each query be logged. Three duties are phrased as should instead, and the audit is one of them. It is also the only oversight mechanism in the document, the only clause that would catch misuse of a system nobody needs a reason to search. No interval is set and nobody is named to do it.

Whether any audit has been run, and what it found, is a records question rather than a policy question, and it is the first one on this page’s list.

What the published policy does not tell you

How many cameras there are. Where they are. What the city pays. When the council approved it, and whether it debated it. Whether Caldwell’s reads are shared with the Sheriff’s Office or with Nampa, the two other systems reading plates in the same county.

The document that would answer most of that is the agreement with Flock Safety, and it is not on the page with the policy. We did not find the council’s approval of the original agreement in the record we read, which is a gap in our reading and not a finding about the council.

What the council record does show is a later, narrower decision. On 17 February 2026 the council approved, as item 16 of a 25-item consent calendar, a resolution authorizing an agreement with the Caldwell Housing Authority for the reimbursement of Flock cameras. The roll call was five yes and none against, with one councilmember not voting, having declared a conflict of interest on the Housing Authority item at the start of the meeting.[5] Earlier in that same meeting, during audience participation, a resident raised concerns about Flock cameras throughout the city.[5] That is the only public objection to any surveillance system that appears anywhere in this county’s record.

The department has proposed leaving Flock

At a budget workshop on 23 June 2026 the Chief of Police reviewed the department’s budget request and proposed, in the clerk’s summary, shifting away from Flock and moving to Axon for a total package covering cameras, translation and drones.[6]

It was a workshop, so nothing was decided there. But it means the arrangement this page describes may not be the arrangement much longer, and that the department’s plate readers, its drones and its in-car equipment could end up with one vendor. Policy 428 is written around a service provider that purges at thirty days and holds the data. Whether that survives a change of vendor is not something any document we read addresses.

On the map

The community has mapped 120 devices of this type in the county on OpenStreetMap. These are community reports: the vendor and operator of each point are unverified, and none is confirmed to belong to this system. See them on the map →

Street names from reverse geocoding — © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

What we do not know

What you can do

Show up

Systems like this one are approved by boards, councils and committees that meet in public. We have confirmed where each of them meets in Canyon County and how public comment works there.

How to show up in Canyon County →

Protect yourself

Practical steps to shrink your personal data trail. Our guides publish at launch; until then, EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense is the best starting point.

Surveillance Self-Defense →

Sources

  1. 1.
    City of Caldwell Policy Manual, policy 428, Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), effective 30 January 2024 · Primary document · · accessed
  2. 2.
    Caldwell Police Department, ALPR Policy and Drone Policy page · Primary document · accessed
  3. 3.
    City of Caldwell press release, 9 March 2026 · Primary document · · accessed
  4. 4.
    Flock Safety LPR FAQ, published by the Caldwell Police Department on its ALPR Policy and Drone Policy page · Primary document · accessed
  5. 5.
    Caldwell City Council, minutes of 17 February 2026, consent calendar item 16, in the council packet for 2 March 2026 · Meeting record · · accessed
  6. 6.
    Caldwell City Council budget workshop notes, 23 June 2026, in the council packet for 8 September 2026 · Meeting record · · accessed

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