RIVER FALLS — The Pierce County sheriff, the River Falls mayor and multiple members of the city council joined dozens of community members at the River Falls Public Library on Aug. 18 to informally discuss the present and future of Flock cameras and other license plate readers in the area.
Flock is an automated license plate reader company that uses artificial intelligence to allow law enforcement to rapidly search for license plate numbers and see when and which Flock cameras any given vehicle passes. Flock self-proclaims to have 137,416 plate readers set up worldwide, with all but about 10,000 of them in the United States. Wisconsin ranks among the middle of the pack in the state rankings, with 2,107 Flock readers. Flock is the largest and most well-known automated license plate reader, but it is not the only company involved in the market.
Law enforcement departments across the country have praised the readers for assistance in solving crimes and the potential to find missing or kidnapped people. The opposition stems from privacy concerns, claims of unreasonable search and seizure rights violations, data safety and misuse from departments across the country. There are also concerns about unconstitutional “predictive policing” being used because of the cameras.
Groups opposing the cameras, like Anti-Flock and DeFlock have seen a swift rise, leading to many cameras throughout the nation being cut down or damaged. Flock’s contract with River Falls says the company will replace up to two readers at no cost if vandalism occurs.
River Falls has nine Flock cameras, and the city is in year two of a four-year contract for about $25,000-30,000 per year. How cities use the cameras differ greatly. For example, Hudson shares its Flock data to other departments, while River Falls is said to keep the information to itself. That said, Flock contracts sometimes include wording that allows the company to share information from the readers.
Pierce County Sheriff Chad Koranda chose not to speak about other departments’ uses of the cameras but said River Falls residents should have confidence in Police Chief Gordon Young. River Falls Mayor Alison Page said residents should attend the Oct. 20 Ask the City event at City Hall where city staff will be prepared to answer any questions about Flock in the city.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department uses Axon, a different brand that also manages the department’s body cameras. The Law Enforcement Committee first denied a proposal for Flock cameras because of the buzz surrounding the company, which led to the change to Axon.
“We were going to go with Flock cameras, and we did some research,” Koranda said. “They found out that the data practices were not what we thought they should be. They were not up to what I was willing to put my neck out on the line for.”
“We got approved to spend $50,000 on four cameras. They’re not up yet. Where they’re going to go, I don’t know,” Koranda said. “I encourage you to come to the next Law Enforcement meeting if you have concerns.”
The money for the cameras came from Opioid settlements, which Pierce County received close to $1 million from, to combat drug use. The use of the cameras was presented to fit into that window. Law Enforcement Committee meetings are usually on the second Tuesday of each month.
“The only safe play that we’ve got here, in my opinion, is to have it highly, highly regulated within our department. Very few people that have access to it, and when you access it, you need to have a case number to reference,” Koranda said.
He said he would look into starting a sub-committee that would audit the uses of the readers by the department.
“I can tell you that if I wasn’t the sheriff, I’d be really, really worried about who was in control of that stuff,” Koranda said. “I’m asking you that you trust me and trust my department that we would use this tool correctly.”
One of the gathering’s organizers, Bridget Faricy, recalled a time from living in the Twin Cities area, when someone was kidnapped. Faricy both expressed some concerns about the cameras while also sharing the benefits they could bring to a community.
“A few months later, the same people that kidnapped him actually murdered a beloved coach in another very safe neighborhood,” Faricy said. “Maybe if this would have helped catch the bad guys before they killed the coach, I just saw it a little bit differently.”
Faricy’s presentation included a news story of a shortfall of Flock, when Brookfield police drew guns on what they thought was a vehicle containing a murder suspect, but police forgot to remove her license plate from the suspect list that they created using Flock, leading to the situation.
“You can say I don’t want my data used, but guess what, they have the ability to overrule that,” Faricy said. “It has real implications for people.”
Flock recently altered its default data storage setting to store data for 30 days down to seven days. That setting does not mean it cannot be increased by departments if they can afford the data storage.
Koranda said license plate readers have been around since 1981, and the biggest difference with Flock is the network sharing with other departments.
“I’ve been asked straight up if I was for Flocks or not, and there was a time not too long ago that I wasn’t for them. When I found out that you couldn’t enter the City of Hudson without being on camera, I had a problem with that,” Koranda said. “Why did I have a problem with it? Because I was uneducated. I was taking what I see on TV or what I read on Facebook and all of these things and saying, ‘Okay, they’re monitoring me.’”
Koranda said most of his department wants this tool. He spoke about a handful of instances where the cameras have been useful to their work.
“Recently, less than a week ago, there was a situation with a person that was in mental crisis out in the county to the point that the neighbors, who do an in-home daycare and an in-home business, canceled it because this individual was being so threatening with their behavior. At that point, we have to make contact with them,” Koranda said. “Every time we go there to talk to the person by the door or whatever, they would never answer. Here we are as law enforcement having to balance the safety of these neighbors of this person with how are we going to make contact with this individual. At that point, one of our only options is to bring out a SWAT team, kick in the door, and that’s just not a good option.”
Koranda said they used a vehicle license plate, connected with the River Falls Police Department, using Flock information to conduct a traffic stop. The individual was then transferred to a mental health facility.
“Nobody got hurt. I think it was a good use of the information,” Koranda said.
He also recalled using the cameras to stop a network of home loan fraud.
“There’s a guy, John Adams, don’t know if you’ve heard of him, he said, ‘Those who would trade their freedoms for safety deserve neither,” Koranda said. “How do we get to a point where we can balance our privacy and our safety.”
He also spoke about an issue within the police department staff, which he said they used Hudson’s cameras to solve.
“There was a person that had worked for me that made some bad choices. One of the ways that we have verified that is we reached out to Hudson and asked for their Flock data, and we were able to find out that person wasn’t where they were supposed to be at the same time,” Koranda said. “We also called Woodbury, and when we explained the situation to them, Woodbury said, ‘We will not give you the data.’”
