The discussion on the use of Flock cameras came to Shawano on Aug. 25 as the Shawano Police Department spoke with the Shawano Field Committee about how they are used. An officer also talked about how they intend to sidestep any potential for abuse of the data the cameras collect.
There are currently Flock cameras in the city at various entry points, according to Lt. Heidi Cartwright. The cameras are at the intersections of Airport Road and County Road B, County B and Main Street, Lieg and River streets, Main Street and Anderson Avenue, West Green Bay Street near Bartlett Street, East Green Bay Street near Madison Way, as well as Gumaer Road.
“What we did was create a virtual fencing, if you want to look at it that way,” Cartwright said.
The cameras are fixed in place, not allowing any movement beyond the direction they’re already pointed. Some are on poles put in place by Flock and attached to solar panels to power them, while others are on city utility poles, according to Cartwright.
The cameras are strictly investigative tools, she said, and are only used in reaction to a crime already being reported. As an example, if a vehicle is stolen, the cameras capture still images and allow the police to access camera data from the previous seven days to track whether the vehicle has left or come into the city.
“They are not a movie. It is not something that runs as a consistent feed 24-7,” Cartwright said. “It is a single image. Their main purpose is ALPRs, which stands for Automated License Plate Readers. The camera focuses in on that license plate. It will capture an image of the vehicle that the license plate is attached to, but the main focus is the license plate.”
Cartwright added that when police request information on a vehicle, Flock sends one image of the full vehicle and one image of the license plate on the vehicle. The focus is usually on the rear plate, with Cartwright noting many vehicles do not have front license plates despite Wisconsin requiring them.
The city owns the cameras and the data contained within. However, access to the entire Flock network comes at $20,000 per year, according to Cartwright.
All officers can access the Flock software, but in order to seek a specific license plate, the officers have to enter a specific case number in order to access any data. The system automatically inputs the officer’s access number to indicate that the officer was looking for a specific license plate. Cartwright said she audits the Flock records on a weekly basis, and she’ll flag any instances that seem unusual.
She noted the system has two-factor authentication, which means that once an officer inputs a password, a text message goes to the officer’s city-issued cellphone with a code that must then be entered to get the information.
The presentation comes a few days after a Menasha police officer was sentenced to jail time after pleading no contest to felony misconduct in public office. Cristian Morales ran seven searches through tens of thousands of Flock cameras trying to find a vehicle connected with his former girlfriend.
Cartwright gave some instances where the cameras helped to arrest people connected with crimes. In one situation, a suspect in a domestic violence situation fled the city, but the police were able to put in an alert that notified when the vehicle came back into Shawano, and then officers could make an arrest.
The Flock cameras can be helpful when looking for vehicles involved in burglaries, thefts and cases involving missing and endangered people.
“A lot of times, people aren’t able to give the best descriptions,” Cartwright said. “Sometimes they don’t capture the license plate, or sometimes they say it’s a red four-door car. We’re able to go out and search the system for four-door cars and look through it for specific dates and a time frame when it may have come through. We can find a potential suspect vehicle with that.”
Committee member Aaron Wallrich expressed concerns about how the data is stored and whether it can be accessed outside government agencies.
“They’re cameras. They’re a tool, but they’re very visible,” Wallrich said. “I hadn’t seen anything for two years, but then I noticed, ‘Oh, there’s a camera on the bridge.’ It’s a big deal, so we want to have the city council make sure the audits are happening.”
Mayor Bruce Milavitz noted that notions of total privacy today have gone out the window because of home security systems. He said Flock issued a statement that all data will be wiped from its servers after seven days.
“Flock has gotten the flak,” Milavitz said. “The interesting thing is that everybody and their brother has something like a Ring camera, and they’re all over. None of those are monitored, and guess where all that data goes to? To Ring. I didn’t know this, but there’s a database you can search certain systems to find information. Anybody can do that. There’s no regulation.”
The mayor's statements were disputed by Ring, according to spokeswoman Meghan Carney.
"Ring users maintain control of their videos, and Ring does not share footage with any searchable database," Carney wrote in an Aug. 28 email to NEW Media. "The company also just launched TAKE: Throw Away the Key Encryption, a new industry standard in video encryption which further ensures Ring users remain in control of both their encryption keys and their videos."
The city has other cameras in place, but they are not affiliated with Flock. There are a number of cameras on traffic signals in Shawano that are used for investigations in the event that crashes happen at intersections, according to Public Works Director Mike Mahloch. He said there are also cameras in place in the city parks in the event that vandalism or other criminal activity takes place.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
