GREEN RIVER — The Green River City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday to reject a $111,956 Wyoming Office of Homeland Security grant that would have funded automated license plate readers in the city, following unanimous public opposition during the meeting’s comment period.

Council Member Garry Killpack cast the lone vote in favor. A motion by Killpack to table the item and hold a public workshop before voting died after it failed to receive a second. Because the original motion received a second before failing, the council could bring the grant agreement back for consideration in the future.

Green River Police Chief Shaun Sturlaugson told the council the grant would have funded license plate reader equipment through Motorola, not Flock cameras, and that the department planned to use the readers reactively rather than for proactive enforcement.

“We don’t plan on any proactive enforcement with license plate readers. We will not use them to actively drive around finding registrations that are expired, things like that in nature,” Sturlaugson said. “These are for things that are already in the system already.”

As an example, Sturlaugson described a hypothetical situation involving a runaway minor, saying that once a vehicle passed a reader, officers would be notified and could act immediately to locate the car.

Sturlaugson said four cameras would have been installed at the ends of town, with data retained for less than 30 days under a policy still being finalized before being automatically scrubbed from cloud storage. He said only police officers and the department’s records division would have direct access to the data, though he acknowledged Motorola would also have access to information collected by its own equipment and that he could not control how the company used it.

Ten people spoke during the public comment period, all against the proposal.

Brogan Yost was the first to speak, asking, “Once we start this, where does this end, surveilling the general public?”

Sturlaugson responded to Yost’s comment directly, saying the department does not use the technology to surveil residents, noting that cameras already exist throughout town.

“We are surveilled every day. That would be one of my arguments,” Sturlaugson said. “There are cameras all over town and we don’t need more. This is just a different tool in order to do a different function.”

Green River resident Gregory Sherwin said he was concerned about the precedent the grant would set.

“Less than one percent of all cars scanned by these automatic license plate readers are connected to any crime or any wrongdoing,” Sherwin said. “You are banking on the odds of flipping a coin 10 times in a row and getting heads every single time. History teaches us that liberty is rarely lost all at once. It is rendered one reasonable-sounding exception at a time, one data point at a time, one promise of a convenience at a time.”

Melanie Roberts said she opposed the broad surveillance capabilities of mobile license plate readers, or mlprs, as she referred to them.

“I feel the potential for misuse from mlprs is not unreasonable, and frankly that is frightening,” Roberts said. “If a regular, law-abiding person like me feels mlprs are really nothing more than a tool to monitor movement of community citizens, then we are no longer living in freedom.”

Roberts also questioned the use of terrorism prevention as justification for the grant, asking, “What specific terrorism problems are we solving in Green River, Wyoming? If there is not, terrorism should not be used as a frightening hypothetical to justify permanent surveillance infrastructure.”

Dennis Olsen said his concerns centered on the technology’s capabilities beyond reading license plates.

“Motorola’s own website advertises license plate recognition technology with capability simply beyond reading a plate number, including AI-powered vehicle searches using characteristics such as make, model, color, accessories, damage and even bumper stickers,” Olsen said. “Before the public is told these cameras only capture plates, we deserve to know the exact model, every capability it has, and what features can be enabled now or later.”

Brian Wallace said grant funding would not cover long-term costs to the city.

“Grants only cover the initial buying,” Wallace said. “This leaves the taxpayer on the hook for ongoing tax liability, maintenance, software licensing and inevitable upgrade costs.”

Dennis Laughlin complimented the GRPD while also cautioning the council to vote against the grant.

“The GRPD kicks ass,” Laughlin said. “With that being said, maybe the fact that nobody has come up here and said, ‘Yeah, let’s do this,’ maybe vote against this.”

Sturlaugson addressed the criticism, saying no one takes civil liberties and the Constitution more seriously than he does and that the intent of the program was not to violate residents’ rights but to improve safety.

“That has always been our intent. It’s not to violate anybody’s rights, it’s to make us more safe,” Sturlaugson said.

Killpack asked Sturlaugson directly whether the readers would make the city safer. “It will, in my opinion,” Sturlaugson responded.

Council Member Jessica Maser said she hoped Sturlaugson was not taking the public criticism personally. He told her he was not.

“I don’t take any of this personally, this is my job,” Sturlaugson said.

I took an oath to protect the citizens of Green River and that’s how I do business. I respect everybody that got up here and I understand their concerns. Outside of this uniform, I might be sitting with them

Green River Police Chief Shaun Sturlaugson

Council Member Ron Williams asked Sturlaugson whether he knew how much future maintenance and upgrades would cost the city. Sturlaugson did not have a cost estimate but noted the department already pays for other technology services, including body cameras, interview room cameras and more specialized software.

“There will be ongoing costs. There always are with technology,” Sturlaugson said.

Maser and Councilwoman Sherry Bushman both said during the discussion that they had not fully understood the scope of the grant application when the council initially voted to pursue it months earlier.

“I probably would not have voted in favor of going after this in the first place,” Maser said. “I apologize for my ignorance on the topic.”

Maser also asked Sturlaugson for a definition of terrorism, saying she was concerned about the term being used as justification for the grant.

“I think terrorism gets pigeonholed into events like 9/11,” Sturlaugson said. “Terrorism has many definitions. Every mass shooting is a terrorist act. Burning down a government building, blowing up a government building is a terrorist act. There are numerous examples of small-level terrorism. It’s designed to create terror.”

Sturlaugson offered a second hypothetical, describing a scenario in which Rock Springs officials learned of a student planning to confront a Green River High School student and alerted Green River police, who used the readers to intercept the vehicle before it reached the school.

“That’s stopping terrorism in my mind,” Sturlaugson said.

Killpack and Mayor Pete Rust both said they believed the council had only heard one side of the issue. Council Member Robert Berg disagreed, saying, “The other side had the same opportunity.”