No secrets. No hidden cameras. One missing camera.
Prescott Valley’s mayor wants you to know there is nothing to worry about. “All Flock camera locations are listed online on the Town’s website,” he wrote. “No secrets. No hidden cameras. No black helicopters.”
He’s half right. The locations are listed. One of them just isn’t there anymore.
The Prescott Valley Police Department’s Technology page lists Camera #2, LPR #13, at E Lakeshore Dr & N Badger Rd as “Active / Installed.” Drive out to Lakeshore and Badger and you will find a fence, a brace post, and a lot of grass. You will not find a camera.
This is the story of how a police department that says its cameras helped recover a stolen dog lost track of one of its own cameras, and how its website has insisted for weeks that nothing is wrong.
Exhibit A: the camera, and then no camera
In the first week of July, LPR #13 stood on the side of East Lakeshore Drive near North Badger Road. Black pole. Solar panel. Camera pointed at traffic, logging every plate that rolled by.
A resident went out recently to check on it. Same hillside. Same barbed-wire fence. Same green brace post. No pole, no panel, no camera. (See the before and after photos at the top of this post.)
Residents went back more than once to see if #13 had been replaced or moved down the road. It hasn’t been. Grass now covers the spot where the pole stood.
Meanwhile, here’s what the department’s website says is standing there:
The timeline: a paper trail the department didn’t read
The department’s own page and the public DeFlock map tell the story in order.
- First week of July: A resident photographs LPR #13 standing on its pole at Lakeshore and Badger.
- Aug 14: PVPD posts its ALPR Q&A, promising residents “factual, up-to-date data.”
- Aug 19: LPR #13 is deleted from the public DeFlock map. The change log labels it “spam/vandalism.”
- Sept 3: Someone at PVPD builds a camera map in Microsoft Word from a screenshot. There is no dot at Lakeshore and Badger.
- Sept 4: That map goes up on the Technology page, right beside a table “as of September 2026” that lists #13 as “Active / Installed.”
- Oct 5: The missing camera goes public on X.
- Oct 9: An update with before-and-after photos follows. Still gone.
- Oct 14: The Technology page is unchanged. Same table. Same totals: 29 LPR cameras, 27 locations, 39 cameras.
That’s 56 days since #13 disappeared from the public map, and 61 days since the department promised “up-to-date data.” The page making that promise has been wrong for most of that time.
The map that forgot the dot
The Technology page has two pieces side by side: a table of camera locations and a map of them. They disagree.
The table lists LPR #13 at Lakeshore and Badger as “Active / Installed.” The map shows no dot there. Same page, same “September 2026” label, two different answers.
Click the map and it opens a PDF. The file’s own properties tell you how it was made: in Microsoft Word, on Sept 3, 2026, at 10:39 in the morning. Inside is a single small image, a cropped screenshot of a web map. No title. No legend. No credit line.
Compared side by side, PVPD’s map matches the DeFlock map dot for dot, with no credit given. DeFlock had already dropped #13 on Aug 19. So when the screenshot was taken two weeks later, the blue dot for Lakeshore and Badger was already gone. Nobody at PVPD noticed. Nobody held the map up next to the table it was posted beside.
This wasn’t a rushed job by a summer intern. The map was built in Word, saved under the account of a command-staff officer, and posted the next day beside a table it contradicts. Six weeks later, no one in the chain of command has noticed.
To recap: the department borrowed a map from the very people tracking its cameras, didn’t credit them, and didn’t notice the map was telling it something its own records weren’t.
Five choices, and someone picked “spam”
DeFlock runs on OpenStreetMap, and every change to it is logged in public. The log shows #13 didn’t quietly fade away. On Aug 19 it was deleted through the DeFlock app, with the reason “spam/vandalism.”
When you delete a camera in the DeFlock app, it asks why. There are five options:
If the camera had simply been taken down, “Device removed” is sitting right there at the top of the list. Whoever deleted #13 picked “Spam/vandalism” instead.
The camera wasn’t spam. A resident photographed it standing on its pole. And nothing so far shows it was vandalized. Maybe it was a mis-tap. Maybe it wasn’t. Who deleted it is unknown, and so is why they chose that label.
What is known: the public map updated in August. The police department’s own page still hasn’t.
Why one missing camera matters
This isn’t really about a pole. Cameras get moved. Equipment gets pulled. If that’s all that happened, a one-line edit to the table would have fixed it weeks ago.
It’s about what the department asks residents to take on faith.
A Flock camera records every vehicle that passes: the plate, the make, model and color, details like roof racks and bumper stickers, and the time and place. Those records go into a database officers can search. PVPD’s policy requires officers to document a reason for each search. It doesn’t mention a warrant. The department says the data can be shared with other agencies outside Prescott Valley.
For all of that, residents are given promises. PVPD says it runs annual audits. It says routine plate reads are purged after 30 days. It says sharing is limited and searches are logged and reviewed. It says that if its practices change, the public “should expect transparency.”
We can’t check any of those promises from the outside. We could check this one. The department published a list of 39 cameras and said where each one is. One of them isn’t there, the map on the same page says so, and nobody in the department has noticed in six weeks.
If PVPD can’t keep a list of 39 cameras straight, residents have every reason to ask how carefully it’s keeping track of the roughly 300,000 vehicle detections those cameras logged in a single 30-day period, by the department’s own count.
The search party remains on standby
So, PVPD: was #13 moved, removed, or stolen? Any of those answers is fine. Any of them takes one line on a web page you already maintain.
Until then, LPR #13 remains the best-documented missing person in Prescott Valley: last seen on a pole, deleted as spam, painted out of one map and still “Active / Installed” on the table beside it.
If found, please do not approach. It may be recording.
Free cold case lessons remain available to the Prescott Valley Police Department. Class meets at Lakeshore and Badger. Bring your own camera.
Sources
- Prescott Valley Police Department, Technology page (accessed Oct. 14, 2026). Live page · Archived copy · Saved copy (PDF)
- PVPD map PDF, “September 2026 Camera Locations” (posted Sept. 4, 2026; linked from the map on the Technology page). Live link · Saved copy (PDF)
- OpenStreetMap edit history for LPR #13: deleted Aug. 19, 2026, through the DeFlock app, reason “spam/vandalism.” Saved screenshot
- Mayor Kell Palguta, public Facebook post, Oct. 12, 2026 (screenshot taken Oct. 14, 2026). Saved screenshot
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