The Edgewood City Council has voted to remove Flock Safety devices from its city.
The council cast a unanimous vote to remove the cameras at its meeting on Monday. Council Member Scott Spille did not attend the meeting and did not cast a vote.
Edgewood now joins the ranks of many cities in the region that have removed Flock devices from their roads. The city contracted with the tech company in September of last year for four devices, according to city documents.
“I just can’t get past the constitutionality of the Flock cameras,” said Council Member Jeff Schreiver. Schreiver would eventually make the motion to remove the cameras.
Flock Safety is a company that makes automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, and other surveillance technology. The devices have created tension both locally and nationally due to controversies over how the information obtained by the devices is stored and to whom it’s available.
Several cities in the region have already removed or ceased using their Flock devices, including Newport, Fort Thomas, Bellevue, Fort Mitchell and Independence, among others.
Likewise, there have been controversies over similar technologies from other companies in other cities, such as the recent backlash against a contract with Axon Enterprises in Covington.
In the wake of the broader outcry, Edgewood announced in September that it was pausing its use of the devices. The council first discussed the long-term use of the devices at a meeting in early October, where residents came and spoke out against the cameras. Mayor John Link announced at that meeting that the city had already covered up the devices with black bags, even though no official action on the contract had yet occurred.
This week, the council members present at the meeting went one by one, stating their positions on the devices. Like Schreiver, several took issue with constitutional questions the devices raised. Others were concerned about data sharing practices. Several council members felt they had been misled by the company.
“Flock misrepresented — in my opinion, from everything I’ve read — Flock misrepresented in the contract and in how the contract was practiced what they were selling,” said Council Member W. Jamie Ruehl.
“I do think that we went into this in good faith,” said Council Member Bridget Grady Spears. “We’re trying to arm our police with the tools that they need.”
Spears expressed concern about how collected data was shared but said safety concerns were something that were still worth considering. She gave the example of security cameras at a gas station.
“You can’t just say, ‘well, we’ve gotten rid of Flock, we’ve gotten rid of cameras,'” said Spears. “You haven’t, and I think we have to accept that in our world and deal with it on a case-by-case basis, and always consider the safety aspect, as well.”
Council Member Joe Messmer pointed out that with all of the neighboring jurisdictions getting rid of their devices, the purported benefit of the devices (i.e. being able to track criminal activity over large distances) was essentially out of consideration.
“The effectiveness is kind of gone,” Messmer said. Messmer would eventually vote to remove the cameras with the rest of the council members.
City Administrator Brian Dehner recommended that if the council wanted to terminate its contract with the company, the best way to do that would be to cut off funding for the devices. Now that the vote has been cast, the city’s legal department will have to negotiate with the company to cease the contract and eventually remove the devices. They will remain covered and out of use in the meantime.
“They’ll be up temporarily until they take them down,” said Mayor Link. “But we will have Flock remove them.”
