Custer County, CO · Community Watcher
Explore the Community Watcher map — by Pyramid Designs LLC
Pan, zoom, and tap any marker. Fire perimeter, peaks, water, fire stations, community points, and credited public Ambient Weather stations — the same live context as our overview map, on a map you can move around. Use the layer box (top-right) to toggle what you see.
⚠️ This is not an evacuation map. It is situational awareness only. For evacuation zones and orders, use the
Pueblo County Sheriff's official map,
the Custer County Sheriff, and sign up for CodeRED.
🧭 Know Your Zone
Type an address or paste coordinates — or double-click your spot on the map. We check it against the public evacuation/advisory/re-entry polygons loaded on this map. Always confirm with Sheriff/CodeRED before making safety decisions.
Public infrastructure awareness
🎥 Roadside ALPR cameras
The Sheriff’s Office ended this program
On October 6, 2026 the Custer County Sheriff’s Office announced it has ended its contract with Flock Safety and that a Flock contractor removed the last cameras the previous weekend. CCSO says it notified Flock on March 24, 2026 that it wanted to cancel, and that “at this time, CCSO does not plan to install license plate reader cameras or the photo radar cameras that had been discussed in the past.”
CCSO gave two reasons: national reports of officers misusing license plate reader databases for searches unrelated to criminal investigations, and “a growing number” of county residents asking that the cameras be taken down.
Source: CCSO statement, posted to the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page October 6, 2026 · corroborated by Tony Keith, KOAA News 5 and Denver 7.
An automated license plate reader (ALPR) photographs license plates and associates a vehicle sighting with a place and time so authorized users can search it later. How ALPRs work — EFF → This map shows infrastructure only—never plates, faces, or people.
The locations below are kept as a record of where cameras stood, not as a live inventory. They were mapped by OpenStreetMap contributors and the community mapping work behind DeFlock.
What we can and cannot confirm
- Four records, three cameras. CCSO says it operated three cameras. Volunteers mapped four records — two of which sit about two metres apart, which would be one pole facing two directions. That reconciliation is our arithmetic, not a CCSO statement.
- The two CO 69 north records went first, and not by county decision. They were mapped as deleted on Sept 9, 2026, and a Pyramid Designs resident independently noticed one gone from the road on Sept 20. CCSO says a vandal cut down two camera poles on Highway 69 north of Reed Road in early August. We cannot match the vandalised poles to specific map records.
- Crowdsourced maps still show cameras here. Volunteer maps lag reality in both directions and may show cameras for some time yet. Where a volunteer map and the Sheriff’s own statement disagree, this page follows CCSO.
- “No camera on a map” never meant “no camera.” It still doesn’t. CCSO’s statement covers CCSO; it is not a claim about every device in the county.
Retention and sharing: now answered
CCSO says its Flock data was deleted automatically after 30 days, well inside Colorado’s one-year limit. Access started open to any law enforcement agency in the country, and was later narrowed to Colorado agencies only. Colorado law now bars state agencies from sharing this data with ICE or sharing data related to reproductive health care services. Flock's retention statement →
Accountability questions: two still open
We published five questions while the cameras were up. CCSO’s October 6 statement answers three of them. We are leaving all five on the page, answered or not, so the record is checkable.
- Open When were the cameras adopted, at what public meeting, and by what vote?
- Answered Retention was 30 days, automatic.
- Partly CCSO acknowledges national misuse reports and says the Sheriff was troubled by them, but no local usage policy or search audit has been published here.
- Answered Nationwide at first, later Colorado agencies only; no ICE or reproductive-health sharing under current Colorado law.
- Open What did the system cost, and which fund paid for it?
📍 Put your place on the map
Want your homestead, ranch, or business tracked on the community map? Add it below — or just double-click your spot on the map above and the coordinates fill in for you (single-click and drag just moves the map). Every submission is reviewed by a person before it appears.
Your pin (name + location) becomes public on the map after review. Your email stays private — used only for community updates, never shown on the map or shared.
Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors. Fire perimeter from NIFC; public weather-station snapshots are credited to their Ambient Weather dashboards and shown as unofficial community-sourced context. ← Back to the Community Watcher overview (static map + resources).