Sedona City Council was right to shut down Flock spy cameras – Sedona Red Rock News
We would like to commend the five members of Sedona City Council Councilmen Brian Fultz, Derek Pfaff and Pete Furman and Councilwomen Melissa Dunn and Kathy Kinsella — for directing city staff to shut down the automated license plate readers purchased from Flock Safety and installed around Sedona beginning in June.
Sedona residents are almost uniformly opposed in a politically bipartisan way to the installation of these cameras and council was wise to not continue with what seems to be a clearly despised public program, but to listen to the will of the public and shut them down indefinitely, perhaps permanently.
It seems that in the end, Mayor Scott Jablow was the only council member to argue in their favor and against the public will.
Contrary to erroneous assertions made by city staff during the meeting, we at the NEWS were not notified in advance of their installation, nor, it seems was the public. Sedona residents began seeing the Flock poles and cameras erected in early June, posted pictures to social media and asked us to investigate, which we did on June 6.
It was only after our inquiry on June 6 that the Communications Department finally responded — on June 11 — and then posted a statement to Facebook on June 12.
After some further inquiries, our lengthy story appeared on June 20.
In the Facebook post, the city notified residents that the city would not be revealing the locations of the proposed 12 cameras, 11 of which were eventually erected, leading residents and our staff to a two-month long hunt to locate them, which seems absurd, considering they were paid for by taxpayer money, installed with taxpayer funds and on public rights-of-way.
Overwhelmingly against the cameras were public comments online posted after the initial story, our concurrent editorial, further posts identifying new cameras and a story that Judicial Watch, a nationwide conservative nonpartisan nonprofit that files Freedom of Information Act and public records lawsuits to investigate claims of misconduct by governments and officials.
The feedback in favor was only from a small handful of Sedona residents, with the rest being active or retired law enforcement, residents from other cities outside the Verde Valley and other states.
It’s rare to have such public output be against the government program across the political spectrum, from liberals who feared that the cameras would supply information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to conservatives who feared of the encroachments on their civil liberties and freedom of movement without government surveillance. But liberals, moderates and conservatives were all united in their fear of threats to our privacy, questioning why the camera data would be retained for 30 days, how it would be used, who would have access, how it might be sold or traded by Flock, a for-profit private company with no government or public oversight.
The anger expressed by council members was palpable. Why they had not had an informed debate ahead of time? Why were residents and elected officials blindsided? Why are the cameras needed?
While purchasing the program was certainly legal and lawful under the purview of the Sedona police chief and Sedona city manager, council rightfully wondered why such a mass surveillance program far grander in scale and more intrusive in scope than police body cameras or vehicle equipment had not been discussed at length previously. While city staff and some council members asserted that the program is lawful and not currently prohibited by Arizona state statute, that evades the key question.
What’s “lawful” is not always what’s “right.” Lawful programs and policies simply may not be in keeping with American values, Western ideals, Arizonans’ morals or Sedona community values, which is why elected officials are entrusted with upholding them.
Fortunately, Dunn, Fultz, Furman, Kinsella and Pfaff did the right thing by shutting down this threat to our privacy and civil liberties.
Christopher Fox Graham is the managing editor of the Sedona Rock Rock News, The Camp Verde Journal and the Cottonwood Journal Extra. Hired by Larson Newspapers as a copy editor in 2004, he became assistant manager editor in October 2009 and managing editor in August 2013. Graham has won awards for editorials, investigative news reporting, headline writing, page design and community service from the Arizona Newspapers Association. Graham has also been a guest contributor in Editor & Publisher magazine and featured in the LA Times, New York Post and San Francisco Chronicle. He lectures on journalism, media law and the First Amendment and is a nationally recognized performance aka slam poet. In January 2025, the International Astronomical Union formally named asteroid 29722 Chrisgraham (1999 AQ23) in his honor at the behest of Lowell Observatory, citing him as “an American journalist and longtime managing editor of Sedona Red Rock News. He is a nationally-recognized slam poet who has written and performed multiple poems about Pluto and other space themes.”
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