(The Center Square) - Arizona local governments continue to grapple with how they should handle Flock cameras.
In August, many cities have either adjusted their Flock camera policies or ended their contract with the automatic license plate reader company.
The city of Chandler ended its contract with Flock after an audit found unexplained system activity. Another city, Surprise, canceled its contract with the company after an officer was found to have potentially misused the technology. The officer, who has not been publicly named, has been placed on administrative leave.
In Pinal County, Sheriff Ross Teeple announced the county sheriff's department would cancel its contract with Flock over Fourth Amendment concerns. This amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Other local governments, such as Tempe and Apache Junction, are adjusting their policies.
In Apache Junction, the city’s police department changed its policies after Officer Joshua McDaniel used Flock cameras to track his wife. McDaniel resigned from the police department.
Apache Junction Commander Mike Beaton said the city caught McDaniel within hours of the search and noted that the police department immediately limited his access after learning of the search.
Despite the incident, Beaton told The Center Square that the police department still wants to use Flock cameras to solve crimes.
If an ongoing crime is occurring, police officers can access the Flock system and search for license plates, he said.
When police officers want to submit a follow-up request to review the Flock system, they must have it approved by a supervisor, Beaton said, adding that the supervisor’s name and identification number must be documented when searching for a license plate number.
According to Beaton, the police department wants to implement guidelines so that improper use of the cameras never happens again.
Beaton called Flock cameras a “game changer,” noting that the police department can solve crimes much more quickly.
The commander said the cameras have provided a “significant boost” to the city’s public safety.
Apache Junction has 35 Flock cameras, which are constantly moved around,” he explained.
Beaton said a Flock camera is capturing a picture “of a point in time on a public street” of the back of a person’s car license plate. The camera is not capturing a person’s face or the front of a car, he explained.
The commander added that the police department is not using the cameras for facial recognition or capturing people’s phone data.
In Tempe, the city announced it will stop sharing external data obtained from Flock cameras.
Bobby Nichols, a Democratic city council member for Tempe, said Flock cameras are a “significant violation” of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.
He told The Center Square that the city needs to “get rid of [Flock] cameras as quickly as possible because the data that is generated is incredibly vulnerable and very dangerous for cities to have out in the ether.”
As long as these Flock cameras are on Tempe streets, the city “should be doing everything [it] possibly can to prevent that data from getting into the wrong hands,” he explained.
Automatic license plate readers collect data on more than just license plate numbers, the city council member said.
He noted they gather data on who's driving the car, the car’s damage, bumper stickers and the type of car.
“They are designed to create a digital vehicle fingerprint, which can be used to track individuals from place to place,” he said, adding that they ultimately result in them generating data on people’s “locations, movements, affiliations and associations.”
Nichols said this type of data is “incredibly dangerous” and a violation of people’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Due to concerns about Fourth Amendment violations, he explained Tempe needs to be able to “overcome the burden of strict scrutiny” if the city is going to continue using Flock cameras.
According to Cornell Law School, strict scrutiny is “the highest standard of review that a court will use to evaluate the constitutionality of government action.”
Even with the city’s new policy, Nichols said he was “still not convinced” that Tempe’s use of Flock cameras would survive a legal challenge. Tempe has around 60 Flock cameras, the council member noted.
Courtney Terlecki, a spokeswoman for Flock, previously told The Center Square that more than “40 courts across the country have determined that fixed license plate readers do not violate the Fourth Amendment and cannot track the whole of an individual's movements.”
Nichols, who is continuing discussing Flock cameras with his colleagues, said he hopes the city of Tempe will remove all automatic license plate readers.
