Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office transitions to Axon automatic license plate readers
The short version: Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office is swapping vendors for its license plate readers, but the surveillance dragnet over New Mexico drivers isn't shrinking — it's just rebranding.
Our Take
KRQE's report on Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office moving to Axon-made ALPRs is a good reminder that the fight against mass license plate surveillance isn't just about one company. Flock Safety gets most of the headlines, but Axon — the Taser and body-cam giant — is muscling into the same market, and sheriffs are happy to shop around. The cameras change logos, but the underlying problem doesn't: every plate that passes a fixed reader gets logged, timestamped, and stored, building a map of where you go whether or not you've ever been suspected of anything.
Vendor transitions like this one deserve more scrutiny than they usually get. Who audits what data gets migrated or deleted when a county switches systems? What retention policy does Axon's platform use compared to Flock's? Local news rarely digs into those details, and county commissions rarely ask. That leaves residents to find out for themselves whether a new contract means new cameras in new neighborhoods, expanded data-sharing agreements, or just a hardware refresh.
If you live in Bernalillo County or anywhere else in New Mexico, now's a good time to check our camera map and see what's already watching your street, and to use our take-action resources to push your local officials for transparency before the next vendor swap quietly expands the surveillance net even further.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KRQE, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.