New Garden City Police Chief Sets Safety Priorities, Not Ready to Commit to License Plate Readers

Our Take

Credit where it's due: Idaho News 6 caught something refreshing here. A brand-new police chief, freshly installed after 16 years on the force, and he's not sprinting to sign a Flock Safety contract just to look modern. That hesitation is worth noticing, because in most towns we track, ALPR rollout isn't a community decision at all — it's a purchase order that shows up on a council consent agenda between road paving bids and printer leases.

Chief Domeny framing this as one tool among many for street and greenbelt safety is exactly the posture we wish more incoming chiefs took. License plate readers aren't a magic safety switch — they're a permanent log of everywhere your car goes, stored by a private company, often shared across a network of agencies with little public oversight. "Not ready to commit" should mean Garden City residents get a real conversation about retention windows, data sharing, and who else gets to query that database — not just a quiet green light a few months down the road.

If you're in Garden City or anywhere in the Boise area, now's the time to speak up before the cameras go in, not after. Check our map to see what's already watching nearby, and use our take-action resources to push your local officials for transparency before they write the check.