2026 Election: Hobbs, Biggs discuss the AZ border, Flock cameras | FOX 10 Phoenix

Our Take

FOX 10 Phoenix's coverage of the Arizona Police Association forum is worth watching for what it reveals by omission: when Katie Hobbs and Andy Biggs were asked about border crime, Flock cameras came up as a shared talking point rather than a contested policy. That's the pattern we keep seeing nationwide — ALPR dragnets get framed as a bipartisan no-brainer, a line item somewhere between "more funding" and "more equipment," with almost no discussion of who else gets swept up in that data besides the traffickers politicians invoke to sell it.

Border security rhetoric is a particularly effective Trojan horse for camera expansion. Once a network of plate readers goes up to catch cartel vehicles, it doesn't selectively ignore everyone else driving through Arizona — commuters, churchgoers, people fleeing abusive partners, journalists, immigrants with pending asylum cases. The infrastructure is permanent and the mission always creeps. Candidates on both sides of the aisle rarely get pressed on retention policies, audit trails, or interstate data sharing, because "it's for the border" ends the conversation before it starts.

Credit to FOX 10 for airing the forum, but we'd note that a genuine public safety debate would ask harder follow-ups: who audits these systems, how long is data kept, and which agencies get query access. Arizona residents can check our camera map to see what's already been installed near them, and our take-action page has tools for pushing local officials toward actual transparency instead of election-year applause lines.