Chief makes plea for Flock cameras

BROOKINGS – Brookings Police Chief Michael Drake gave a long and impassioned defense of Flock cameras at last week's City Council meeting, but eight citizen speakers also spoke against them and the council took no official action, asking to hear more from the public.

Drake spoke for more than 70 minutes, outlining his rationale for wanting the cameras and repeatedly framing the issue as one of "trust" of law enforcement.

Numerous Brookings Police Department officers also attended the meeting, presumably in a show of solidarity.

Still, eight citizens followed Drake, and while limited to three minutes each, provided just as much pushback on the contentious issue.

Still a Debate

Drake said BPD makes about 175 searches in an average month. He also told the council BPD had strict guidelines for who can make a search of the Flock data – and for what.

He also stressed that many of those searches were used for non-criminal calls, such as welfare checks and missing persons.

"Police officers, so that we know whatís going on, we only use it as an investigative tool," Drake told the council. "It's not used as surveillance. It is not used to track folks and do these things. It has to be used as a legitimate part of police investigation, and it has to make sure it has a case number assigned."

Drake also presented the cameras as an inexpensive way to improve the department – they cost the city a little more than $21,000 per year to lease from Flock, which has come under immense scrutiny over the past 6 months including recent Congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., where their data and contract practices were criticized by senators on both sides of the aisle.

Executives from Flock and rival Axon skipped a Sept. 23 hearing with the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism. The committee heard about a false positive which led to an innocent woman being arrested and jailed for 13 days, about massive cybersecurity concerns ó and a ton about privacy and surveillance.

Who Owns Data?

Both Drake and the city attorney at the meeting – James Moore – told the council they believed that the city owned all the data collected. Drake told councilors that the images of people's vehicles are deleted exactly 30 days after they are collected, at least on the city's end.

Neither the attorney nor Drake – nor any council member – commented or asked about what Flock may do with data it scrapes during the 30 days it's maintained, but Flock's contract – which lives on the internet and may be changed by Flock at any time – allows it to use data collected to improve its own product – which is not limited to cameras. In February, Flock announced AI software that integrated with its cameras to: "Maximize your LPR data to detect patterns of suspicious activity across cities and states." Flock also sells a "Linked Vehicles" or "Convoy Search," allowing police to "uncover vehicles frequently seen together," and a ìMultiple locations search," which promises to "Uncover vehicles seen in multiple locations."

At the end of August, Flock raised an additional $500 million in cash and was valued at more than $8.3 billion by investors.

Drake walked through numerous cases where the Flock cameras saved time in investigations or led to a break in the case.

He ended like this:

"But I can just say that it all comes down to what we do here in Brookings. I don't care what they're doing somewhere else. I care what we're doing here in Brookings. That's why you hired me, was to make sure that we provide the best public safety to our community," Drake said. "Seven cameras that take static photographs that we almost never see, and we only access through policy and procedure for legitimate purposes that are upheld right now by the Supreme Court."

Public comment

Comment from the public, however, remained 100 percent against the City Council renewing the contract with Flock Safety, with one commenter observing that if the only constituency for the cameras was the police themselves, then the cameras needed to go immediately.

Craig Jorgenson, an Aurora resident and cybersecurity expert, told the council that Drake undercut his own argument repeatedly – essentially arguing that if Flock cameras were as benign as Drake portrayed, they wouldn't be the effective law enforcement tool he was also portraying them as.

"However, portraying the Flock safety system merely as an investigative tool is a gross oversimplification," Jorgenson said. "In the presentation the chief gave, I heard him describe the system as an interagency collaboration tool, a real-time alert system, a warrantless hit list or a warrantless hot list creator, and although the system doesn't track your movements, we also don't want people to be aware of where the camera is at because the system can develop patterns of traffic and movement. That sounds like far more than an investigative asset to me."

"Chief Drake also highlighted some high-profile success stories. We applaud those," Jorgenson continued. "We appreciate solving crime, but we also want to emphasize that this system cannot make the distinction between criminal and normal activity when itís logging data. It has to track everyone and everything it sees to then retroactively be available to be searched for criminal activity."

Robert Herb, who also works in information technology, said while he empathized with the chief's presentation, it ultimately was beside the point before the council.

"Chief Drake can come up with every justification, every reason, every excuse to keep the system in place," Herb said. "He can come up with any reason he wants to get what he wants, but it does not matter because what he wants is immaterial. He's a public servant, and he should enact the public will. The public does not want these cameras. You are hearing a small selection of people, but this is not left versus right. This is not Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians. Everybody agrees these cameras are far too much."

Six more speakers took turns highlighting problems with the Flock cameras and surveillance more broadly. Mayor Ope Niemeyer concluded that portion of the meeting without action, saying he wanted more information.

The mayor also encouraged citizens to contact council members with their thoughts.