Glenrock asks its residents for a lot of trust. Its Flock cameras photograph every car that drives through town and keep a record of where and when. To ease people's minds, the Chief handed out a sheet in August promising that the data is "controlled only by the Glenrock Police Department," that every search is logged, and that "The system is also regularly audited."

So here is a test of how this Town handles sensitive information when it thinks no one is checking.

On November 4, the Town produced 1,549 emails in response to my records request about the cameras. Buried in them was a law enforcement sensitive list of 4,783 people on probation or parole across Wyoming, with their names, birthdates, home addresses and phone numbers. The Town did not redact a single entry. It did, however, black out one line its Clerk wrote about me: a "Lol."

What they handed over

The email came from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation's intelligence unit to Chief Felton on October 15, 2024. The subject line reads "State P & P current client lists as of 10/15/24." It is marked "UNCLASSIFIED//LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE," and it ends with this warning: "NO REPORT OR SEGMENT THEREOF MAY BE RELEASED TO ANY MEDIA SOURCES."

The Town released it to me, a journalist, with all six attachments: a statewide list and a separate Cheyenne list, each as a PDF, a spreadsheet and a data file. For each of 4,783 people, the list gives a full name, date of birth, home address, phone number, offense, court docket number, supervising officer and status, such as active, in custody or on a warrant.

The statewide PDF alone is 479 pages. The Cheyenne PDF is another 67. To miss it, whoever reviewed these emails would have had to skip past FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX PAGES of names, birthdates and home addresses, plus a warning printed in capital letters on the email itself.

How it got in

The email has nothing to do with cameras. It landed in my records because the Town searched its mailboxes for the word "flock," and one person on the statewide list has the last name Flock.

That is the exact problem the Town Attorney complained about to Cowboy State Daily when she said my request was pulling in "a flock of turkeys." There were no turkeys. There was a parole list, pulled in by one person's last name, and no one at the Town stopped it.

What they protected instead

On September 11, the day after I filed my request, the Town Clerk sent an email to me and to the Town Attorney. It read like it was meant for the attorney alone: "When you acknowledge this, you may want to tell him that this will definitely exceed $50. Lol."

That email came to my own inbox. When the Town produced its records, the same message turned up inside my reply to her, blacked out and logged as attorney-client privilege and attorney work product (TOG-GALLAWAY_00136).

Privilege protects confidential conversations with a lawyer about legal advice. This was neither. It was sent to me, the person asking for the records, and it was a remark about my fees with a "Lol" on the end. The only thing that redaction protects is the Town's embarrassment.

So the Town's review found a one-line joke about me and hid it. It did not notice FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX PAGES of other people's home addresses and criminal records.

And residents paid for that review. The Town billed $238 for my request, figured at its rate for reviewing emails, one hour for every 400. Concerned Glenrock residents chipped in to pay it so the Town would release its own records. The Clerk had also told me in writing that "no review had been done" and that I would "receive whatever is pulled." Looking at what came out, I believe her.

Was it rushed?

Here is a question the Town should answer.

The Town's own fee rule, Resolution 2026-10, was adopted in August, a week after a dispute with another records requester. It says the Town takes a one-hour minimum, $40, before work begins. The Clerk quoted that rule to me herself. But the Town did not ask for $40. It asked for $600 "up front," based on an estimate of $560 to $760 that did not add up even by the Town's own math. The high end of that estimate is more than I pay in rent.

Then the Town waited. In October the Clerk told a state public records official: "We are not going to do any of the work on this request until all the arguing is settled and if we are able to get some of the $$ up front." The cost was not settled until October 15, at $238. The agreed release date was October 30.

So did the Town spend weeks fighting over money instead of working on the request, then rush through 1,549 emails against a deadline, too fast to see FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SIX PAGES of parole records? If so, the policy meant to protect the Town's time is what put 4,783 people's information out the door.

Why this is about the cameras

If the Town cannot keep a law enforcement sensitive spreadsheet out of a records release, residents have no reason to believe the promises on that handout.

The list came out of the Police Chief's own mailbox. It was released by the same Town government that runs Glenrock's camera system and tells residents, trust us, the data is controlled.

A parole list is a spreadsheet. The Flock system is a running record of where every car in town goes, open to about 67 police agencies in nine states. If the Town cannot keep a law enforcement sensitive spreadsheet out of a records release, residents have no reason to believe the promises on that handout.

The records already show those promises do not hold. About 375 searches carry five case numbers. Dispatchers were set up to log in on one shared phone. No audit has ever been produced. And when residents raised the audits at the August public meeting, the Police Department's next move was to ask Flock for accounts that could search "without triggering audits."

"Controlled," "logged" and "audited" are only as good as the people doing the controlling. This week we found out how carefully they check.

What the law says

Wyoming law calls this kind of information "criminal history record information." The definition covers records about "sentencing, rehabilitation, incarceration, correctional supervision and release." Under W.S. 7-19-106, criminal justice agencies, including a police department, may share it "only to" a set list of recipients such as other police agencies, courts, certain licensing boards and the person the record is about. A member of the public asking about cameras is not on that list. The same section bars passing those records along for any purpose beyond the one they were released for.

I'm not a lawyer, but I cannot find any reading of that law that lets a town mail a statewide parole list to a records requester.

My part

I have not published any of it, and the parole list itself was never in anything I posted. But I want to be straight about my part. On the night of November 4, I posted the Town's production online as a public records release. The parole list was not in it, only the email it came attached to. The file did include some of the law enforcement bulletins the Town released, including ones naming criminal suspects and an endangered missing man. When I found them on November 5, I took the file down that evening and replaced it with a copy that leaves them out. The people on that list, and in those bulletins, did nothing to deserve having their information passed around because of a search for a camera company.

Questions for the Town

  • Who reviewed the emails before they were released, and how did 546 pages of parole records get past them?
  • Has the Town told the Division of Criminal Investigation, or the people on the list, that their information was released?
  • Did any other records requester receive the same emails?
  • Will the Town release the September 11 email it blacked out, since the person it was hidden from already has it?
  • And if this is how the Town handles a spreadsheet, who is checking how it handles the cameras?

The Town's records, with the sensitive material left out, are here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qpT3ATQ_j3jz760-dnbOnYR4JKqW9NHp/view?usp=sharing