SCOTTSDALE, AZ — Scottsdale residents are calling for a public debate over the city's use of Flock cameras, and city leaders are promising new oversight measures.
Scottsdale police and city leaders are promising new safeguards for the city's Flock license plate reader cameras after a growing number of residents pushed back and demanded a public discussion about the surveillance technology.
The city manager and police chief sent a memo to council members just days after residents took their demands directly to the council at a meeting.
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The memo calls the Flock cameras a crucial public safety tool. But it also outlines several new oversight measures. These include:
- Plans for an independent city audit of the cameras.
- An ordinance that would come to the council for a vote on criminal penalties for intentional misuse of the cameras.
- A public transparency website, explaining how the cameras work.
City leaders also plan to evaluate alternative vendors besides Flock "to determine whether other solutions can provide the same or better public safety capability while giving Scottsdale greater control over its information."
The city will also review how long it keeps camera data. Police currently store that information for about six months, and city leaders want to explore whether they can reduce that retention period without hurting police investigations.
At a recent council meeting, Scottsdale resident Craig Ramey questioned whether the council has ever discussed license-plate camera readers and their implications in a public meeting.
"This is not an argument against police," he said. "This is an argument that surveillance at this scale should never become normal without public debate and constitutional scrutiny."
Ramey is also calling on the city council to address the issue in a public forum.
"Please put this entire issue on a council agenda. Explain how this data is shared and retained. How much of a person's patterns and movements can be reconstructed and what safeguards protect people," Ramey said.
Former police officer and Scottsdale resident Christine Burke is also among those raising concerns about the cameras.
"You guys really need to research into this and look into this because this is 100 percent absolutely not good," Burke told council members.
"There's nothing better than a cop on the street," she said.
"A cop that lives in the community, that is in the community 24 hours a day, that hears alarms, sees body language and can respond to anything and is not just on a fixed pole."
Some residents also pointed out that several cities, such as Chandler and Tempe, recently ended their contracts with Flock.
Scottsdale police told ABC15 they are not doing interviews on Flock at this time.
As ABC15 has previously reported, Scottsdale spends more than $281,000 a year on 85 cameras. The cameras have already become a campaign issue for the three candidates who are vying for two opens spaces on the Scottsdale City Council in November.
