TRENTON, Ohio — As Tri-State towns and law enforcement agencies re-evaluate their use of license plate-reading Flock Camera systems, Trenton's police chief stood before a packed city council chamber to explain to council members and the public why he still believed they should be used.
WATCH: Chief Carr defends Flock cameras
During the presentation, Chief Patrick Carr candidly answered questions from the public, pledged to get answers for portions he wasn't completely sure about, and laid out Trenton's plan to change policy to regain the public's trust.
Carr said misuse by officers in other departments across the country has been central to spreading distrust.
"Mandatory misuse detection and abnormal activity lockouts are now the norm moving forward," he said. "So, if someone is doing something wonky, they're going to get locked out of the system."
One person watching from the crowd brought the issue to the forefront with a question directly to Carr.
"You hear so many bad things, people searching for other people illegally," the person said before Carr cut him off.
"That's called a felony in the fifth degree in the state of Ohio, if they do that," he said. "We will refer them to the Butler County Sheriff's Office. We will terminate them, and they will be prosecuted."
Carr told the crowd that .00022% of all plates read by the 11 total cameras in Trenton are searched by officers in the department, actively restricting what outside organizations can access data from Trenton's Flock cameras, reducing standard storage time for collected data and requiring searches to be accompanied by an offense type to produce results.
The chief argued they were powerful law enforcement tools that have allowed them to find a missing person incapacitated in a car crash, catch a serial flasher, and arrest a pair of armed robbers.
"Some individuals out of the City of Middletown walked up to an individual who was using the ATM, put a gun to his head and relieved him of his cash," Carr said.
Mayor Ryan Perry said council had invited Carr to give a presentation on the cameras because of how controversial they had become.
"I do think that there is probably a deeper conversation that we have about this later because this is something, it obviously has become a hot-button topic nationally," Perry said.
Carr told us he's organizing a town hall on Flock cameras to have more informal conversations with people with concerns.
Perry said council would eventually have to consider the technology's future.
"We'll look into it, we'll do some research, and see what happens."
