Ok, first let’s get all the one liners out of the way.

-Paradise Valley residents are starting to wonder if their town government is run by a bunch of pricks

-It’s going to be pretty hard to deny that PV Police aren’t just “Planting” all their evidence.

-PV is the first town that’s broke enough to have to outsource their police work to the vegetation

Ok, that felt good.

So, just what the hell are these creepy cactus cameras being thrust in to the ground in Paradise Valley? Of course, the town doesn’t want to answer because disclosure would most certainly raise more questions about the new program and just what the endgame is. Paradise Valley Town government is on the run from the truth, but here’s what we know so far:

The City of Paradise Valley has added cactus with cameras in them over the past few days, but residents have no idea why, and the city doesn’t want to talk about them.

• The vendor providing the technology is “L3″ or Level 3 Communications and the contract is available here from a WarOnDriving public records request.

• Local news couldn’t find one resident who had anything good to say about the Cacteye. They were all creeped out [FOX]  [3TV]  [AP]

• PV Police would not say a word about it. They refused to comment

• Nobody at town hall wanted to talk about the Cacteye either

• Finally the town manager, when pressed, said they wanted to get all the cactus cams installed before they’d discuss with the town residents what they were actually for and what the data retention policies are - their public vetting process is completely backwards

• Also, according to the town manager, the “CactEye” are being used to scan license plates of every driver passing by to check for “stolen vehicles, Amber Alerts or anything else that matches a “hot list” that the technology checks them against

• The 4th Amendment still does not mean anything to Paradise Valley town government

• 11 locations are planned, but the public was never notified

• The town actually bragged in a press release about the license plate scanners producing a false positive and wrongfully detaining a motorist http://paradisevalleyaz.gov/DocumentCenter/View/3944