Flock Falcon ALPR (old gen)

Hello everyone,

If you want to know more about Flock in Leon County/ Tallahassee, please see my comprehensive post here. There has been a huge debate about this nationally, and I wanted to share what I have found about local meeting and public information.

If you want to see the discussions directly, here is the July 14 Leon County Commission meeting (video of speakers + commissioner response) and the Aug. 26 City commission (video of speakers + commissioner response).

tl;dr

Upcoming Local Meetings

• The City Commission is revisiting the Flock camera question at the Sept. 9 Meeting at 3 p.m. (Agenda here. Read the Flock discussion item here). On 8/26, the City previously voted 2-3 with a motion failing to start the removal process (more below).
• Leon County Commission will discuss Flock oversight/ legal options at the Sept 15 Meeting at 3 p.m. (Agenda will be posted here on 9/9). The County commissioners were vocally concerned about them. The commission voted to deny federal grant funding for mobile ALPR trailers at the July 14 meeting.
• If you plan to speak, please arrive 15-20 minutes early to get a speaker card. This will also give time to meet other like-minded people on this issue. Email contacts for all commissioners can be found below in Section 1

Disclaimer as always. Guess I wasn’t strong enough with my warning:

I do not encourage or condone the damage of these surveillance systems as destruction or tampering can be charged as felony criminal mischief (FL Statute 806.13). Some people have been charged with multiple felonies in Florida for tampering or damaging these surveillance systems. Basically, don’t ruin your life when clearly, democratic, legal means are available.

The rest of this post covers context for Tallahassee:

1. Recent News on Suspension/Removal action
2. Local Flock Info Updates

1. Recent News on Suspension/Removal actions

Because this was previously flagged as an endorsement of current city political candidates, I am sticking to the facts. You can see the time-stamped videos and do your own research if you want.

State Level:

Gov. DeSantis has announced over the past week or so his opposition to Flock cameras. On 8/31, Florida DOT revoked the state right-of-way permits for current or any future ALPR cameras (Flock, Axon, etc). Florida Sheriffs, including LCSO, have backed away from the tech because of this.

County Level:

LCSO suspended the use of ALPRs after FDOT’s memo. Note this is not a cancellation of the contract. The Leon County Commission promised at the last meeting to have a Flock-specific agenda item at the Sep. 15 commission meeting at 3:00 p.m. Please check the agenda on 9/9 to determine if it is worth it to you to attend and/or speak. The county has the ability to have remote speakers (instructions here) if that fits your needs.

Commissioners Proctor, Caban, Maddox, and Minor have voiced direct concerns at the previous meetings. Caban stated at the July 14 meeting he wants to ban them outright. Commissioner Proctor labeled them “domestic espionage”.

Here are their emails if you would like to message them.

City Level:

At the 8/26 meeting, the city commission voted 3-2 to retain TPD’s Flock contract. For context, below are some facts about what the commissioners said during the meeting.

• Commissioner Matlow motioned to remove the cameras with Commissioner Porter seconding. Both have been vocal opponents of the tech at several past meetings.
• Commissioner Williams-Cox praised the camera’s use for solving violent crimes and supporting the Real Time Crime Center. She then compared the dangers of Flock cameras to being less than that of her own Ring camera or cell-phone tracking, citing that her phone knows she’s at CVS to give her coupons.
• Commissioner Richardson expressed support for police tools and asked TPD Chief about the importance of the cameras. TPD Chief then spoke for several minutes saying “these are extremely important for public safety”. Richardson made a motion for TPD to set up a TPD-hosted town hall which passed unanimously. I’ll make a post about that when it gets announced.
• Mayor Dailey did not give comments but voted in favor of retaining the contract.

After the FDOT memo, Commissioner Matlow requested Flock come back as a discussion item at the Sept 9 city commission meeting.

Here are the city commissioners’ contact info.

2. Local Flock Info Updates

As a previous poster mentioned here, TPD and LCSO launched their “Flock transparency portals”. Please take some time to look over these and determine if you understand more or less about Flock and how it is used locally. This will be helpful for the commission meetings and town hall if you have questions about the technology.

Official locations of all LCSO/TPD cameras were announced: see this article.

According to the portal, TPD shares Flock data with 1,416 other agencies including these federal ones:

• [Federal] Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• [Federal] Natchez Trace Parkway MS – National Park Service
• [Federal] Tennessee Valley Authority Police
• [Federal] US GSA Office of Inspector General
• [Federal] US Postal Inspection Service
• [Federal] Wright Patterson OH Air Force Base

All shared agencies can be found on the city’s Flock portal. TPD Chief Revell says that all of TPDs anomalously searches were cleared as appropriate.

If you want to know more about the context of federal data sharing of Flock info: 404 media article and TC Palm article as well as the Flock’s website’s own coverage.

Basically, do your own research. Come to your own conclusions. There’s plentiful info if you look for it. Feel free to ask me any questions.

I’ll state it again:

I do not encourage or condone the damage of these surveillance systems as destruction or tampering can be charged as felony criminal mischief (FL Statute 806.13).