NEWPORT, Ky. — The city of Newport is ending its Flock pilot program and will remove the cameras from the city and not move forward with purchasing the technology.
Newport announced Tuesday afternoon that it is ending its Flock Safety pilot program and will not purchase the automated license plate reader cameras. The city said the cameras helped police with criminal investigations and showed promise as a public safety tool, but officials decided not to continue the program after reviewing the pilot results, public feedback and recent developments in Fourth Amendment law.
“We didn’t think for a minute that our staff would misuse this,” Newport Assistant City Manager Brian Steffen said. “All the considerations and factors were outside of that concern, and there’s a lot of misinformation about this technology out there. It is a very effective tool for efficiency, and we witnessed that ourselves. It just leaves too many open questions where we’re at right now.”
Steffen said the city’s use of the system will cease immediately and the Flock cameras should be removed within the next week or so.
A factor in the city’s decision to end the Flock pilot was a U.S. Supreme Court case that the city had been monitoring. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 29 in Chatrie v. United States, which concerned digital location information and Fourth Amendment privacy protections. The court reaffirmed that collecting detailed location-history information is subject to the Fourth Amendment, meaning law enforcement generally must obtain a warrant supported by probable cause before accessing it.
While the court decision does not directly address automated license plate reader technology, the city reviewed the case with its attorney and said that some of the similarities in the case, such as the tracking of movement, has the potential in the future to become an issue as it relates to Flock, or other automated license plate reader systems.
With that court decision, along with public feedback and input from the board of commissioners and from the police department, Steffen said the city thought it best to take a step back and reevaluate.
Feedback came from the public at a July 8 town hall, hosted by the Newport Police Department to explain the technology, answer questions and hear from residents. Newport residents packed the room during the meeting, voicing concerns about the automated license plate reader cameras, questioning the technology’s impact on privacy, government surveillance and Fourth Amendment protections.
The city said that the discussion raised important questions about privacy, transparency, data retention, oversight and constitutional protections. Steffen said the city and police department also heard behind the scenes from supporters of the technology.
The city said its decision should not be interpreted as opposition to emerging public safety technologies or as a reflection that automated license plate readers lack public safety value.
Newport Police Chief Chris Fangman said the Flock cameras did create efficiency, including in solving the city’s only shooting of the year back in May.
Fangman said the department has to balance that efficiency with listening to those it serves.
“For those that really wanted us to have them, I don’t know the majority in this situation, but there’s also the silent group out there that does give their opinion, and we had a lot of people that were very much for this, so it weighed heavily, and we really had to consider all the sources and all the people that we were listening to,” Fangman said.
Newport Police Captain Kevin Drohan said he will be working with Flock to get its contractors out to the city to remove the cameras.
As new technologies become available, the city said it will continue to evaluate them.
Fangman said a lot of police training goes into what technology is coming out, evaluating what is going to create efficiency for the police department and piloting the technology. The city said that any future pilot programs or proposals involving similar technology will include opportunities for public engagement and input before decisions are made.
“We anguish over trying to make the best decision for everybody,” Fangman said. “We have our finger on the pulse, and we try to get as much transparent information out as possible, especially when things get political. We want people to understand the technology and really what we use it for, because the last thing we’d ever want anybody to feel is that we’re trying to invade their privacy.”
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