Rio Rancho man faces felony charges for damaging FLOCK cameras

A Rio Rancho man is now facing felony charges after investigators tied him to damage done to the city’s FLOCK license-plate readers, turning a property case into a wider test of how the city defends its surveillance tools. Jevon Martinez, 44, was summoned on three counts each of larceny, criminal damage to property and tampering with evidence.

The charges land in the middle of a long-running local debate over automated enforcement and neighborhood surveillance. Rio Rancho has used automated traffic-enforcement equipment since 2011 through its Safe Traffic Operations Program, known as STOP, and the city says the program is violator-funded and supported by equipment and maintenance from Verra Mobility. City information says the camera systems are intended to reduce traffic violations and collisions. The FLOCK readers at issue are different from speed cameras because they read license plates rather than photograph speed violators.

The case also follows a series of recent flashpoints around Martinez and the city’s camera network. On June 3, police detained Martinez after a SWAT incident near Country Club Road and Broadmoor Boulevard, and that report said officers had already dealt with a protest of about 40 to 50 people near NM 528 and US 550 on May 23. Another police response on May 27 brought Rio Rancho SWAT and the Albuquerque Bomb Squad to a home near Broadmoor Boulevard and Country Club Drive, where a suspicious device turned out to be a jet engine. On June 15, the city announced three additional mobile speed camera units would be deployed along N.M. 528.

The charge mix suggests prosecutors believe the damage went beyond simple vandalism. Larceny points to the taking of city equipment, criminal damage to property addresses the destruction itself and tampering with evidence raises the stakes further by suggesting the removal or interference could have affected an investigation. For a city that relies on automated enforcement to document traffic behavior and support cases after the fact, the allegations strike at the infrastructure behind that system.

Rio Rancho is not alone in that fight. More than 5,000 law-enforcement departments nationwide use interconnected Flock cameras, and critics including ProgressNow New Mexico, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have warned that the technology can be used for far more than stolen-car recovery. ProgressNow New Mexico has said the cameras have been used in ways that include abortion-care monitoring, protest surveillance and immigration enforcement. In Sandoval County, the issue has already reached local government: the Corrales Village Council debated a Rio Rancho camera installed on village land in January, underscoring how camera placement, jurisdiction and privacy concerns are still unsettled across the area.