Should Leelanau County buy into an increasingly popular law enforcement tool?

That question was a major topic of discussion at Tuesday’s executive board meeting, where the Board of Commissioners talked through a proposal from the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Office to pursue a 60-day trial period for license plate-reading cameras on county roads. Those cameras, which are currently in place throughout several nearby counties, can trigger real-time alerts when vehicles of interest – such as cars reported stolen, linked to criminal activity, or flagged by AMBER alerts – pass through key intersections. With multiple commissioners expressing misgivings about the technology, the board decided to table the matter pending further research and consideration.

The sheriff’s office had sought board approval for “a trial period with Flock Safety for a 60-day traffic study that would include the installation of 12 traffic-related cameras in various locations throughout the county.” The trial, which would take place “late spring to early summer of 2026,” would be free of charge, with Flock Safety “absorbing the costs of all initial installation, permitting, and utilities.” Commissioners could then decide based on trial results if an ongoing partnership with Flock is in the county’s best interests.

If Flock Safety sounds familiar, it’s because several townships in Grand Traverse County have entered into agreements with the company in recent years. Per Leelanau Undersheriff James Kiessel, the system is also in use in Antrim County. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Flock offers a variety of public safety and law enforcement surveillance tools.

According to Flock, these types of traffic cameras are not used to issue speeding tickets or to spot other traffic violations. They are intended to create a “vehicle fingerprint” of cars traveling local roads, cataloging information including license plate number, make, model, color, and after-market features. Flock claims the collection of this information has “proven to increase case clearance and solve more crime” in the 4,000-plus communities where its cameras are now in place.

Leelanau Sheriff Mike Borkovich told commissioners he was intrigued in part because of the positive reviews he’s heard from Grand Traverse law enforcement officers.

“They really push it hard down there, because they’ve had such success with it,” he said.

Despite the purported benefits in certain situations, though, most Leelanau commissioners balked at the idea for one reason or another.

“This is really scary to me,” said Board Vice Chair Ty Wessell. “[Flock] is a private firm. The data they collect in Leelanau County can be sold, can be distributed, can be used for whatever purpose anybody else using Flock cameras wants it for…I don’t want to support something that’s going to be misused – not by us, but by who knows who. And I think we’ve got to be really careful. Yeah, we want to catch stolen cars, but we do not want to frighten our residents.”

Commissioner Gwenn Allgaier concurred, suggesting the cameras could easily be abused.

“Right now, we have hard-working citizens who’ve lived here for years and years and years, who have not been successful navigating our citizenship programs, which are difficult,” Allgaier said, in an apparent reference to the nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration. “This could be turned against any one of us, and I don’t think we live in a county rife with these kinds of problems. I don’t think we need to increase our surveillance of our people.”

Wessell and Allgaier, both Democrats, weren’t alone in their opposition. Republican commissioners like Will Bunek and Alan Campbell also raised concerns, flagging the possibilities for everything from hidden costs to data security issues.

Undersheriff James Kiessel argued that some of those concerns were likely unfounded. “I can only speak to the information we’ve been provided, but [Flock] flat out say they do not sell to third parties, and all of the information is only kept for 30 days. It’s our information. Yes, they store it. Other agencies, if they’re tied into the system and need it, they can get to it. But it’s not available for public consumption or third-party sales, based on their pitch.”

Kiessel also noted that, when the Flock system snaps a photo of a license plate, it is not automatically running that plate through law enforcement systems. That step would still fall to local police officers.

Sensing the pushback – and admitting some of his own reservations about the technology – Borkovich encouraged commissioners to table the matter for a future meeting.

“Research this,” Borkovich said. “Look at Grand Traverse. I could have the Grand Traverse sheriff here; I could have State Police here… [They] could come and give you actual examples of how, where, what, why they used it, and how they then got the support of all the townships saying ‘We want that right here right now.’” Borkovich also said a Flock representative would likely be happy to attend a future meeting and give a presentation on the technology, to address commissioners’ concerns about privacy and data safety.

“I don’t have a problem waiting,” Borkovich concluded, floating the idea of revisiting the proposal in September or October. “I share a lot of your thoughts. I do not want people spied upon; this is a free society, a free country. I just know it’s a really good tool. That we don’t make a decision on that today is OK with me.”