Staunton Police Chief Jim Williams is clearly frustrated with Flock Safety for its delays in removing six automatic license plate reader cameras in the city.
Despite cancelling the service in mid-December, the cameras remained up nearly eight weeks later. The cameras were scheduled to come down last Friday, but no one showed up to remove them.
On Wednesday, Williams sent a note to AFP saying the cameras were coming down that day.
He had not heard anything from Flock directly to reschedule but when he was driving home for lunch, he saw a contractor on a pole removing one of the cameras. He said he ate lunch and then went to another location on the West End where a camera had been installed, and it had also been removed.
“I’m like, aah, finally,” he told AFP on Friday. “So then I assumed, you know, he’d run around and get the rest of them.”
But, that’s not what happened. A resident contacted him today and said one camera remains on Commerce Road.
Williams said that he has reached back out to Flock to find out why it hasn’t been removed.
“I really have no idea,” he told AFP. “We keep calling them and leaving messages, and had I not seen him do it, I wouldn’t have known they were doing it on Wednesday, so we have another call into them.”
Williams said the contractor he saw on Wednesday didn’t have a bucket truck – it was just one guy out there with a ladder. He can only guess that maybe the delay is due to ice or because Flock installed a pole for this camera and maybe the contractor is required to also remove the pole. The other cameras had been affixed to existing infrastructure, like a telephone pole.
He said the cameras were all turned off, and officers no longer have access to the data to assist in investigations.
On Wednesday, a Flock Safety transparency portal for the city was still showing activity, but since then, the page has been wiped of data.
One Staunton resident suggested the city cover the lone camera until it is removed.
Williams told AFP he didn’t want his people trying to climb the pole for multiple reasons, including safety. He said the physical camera doesn’t belong to the city (only the data it captures), and if the camera was damaged when putting a bag or something else over it, he was sure the city would incur additional costs from Flock.
“I know people are afraid, but I really think it’s going to be gone here sooner than, well, I thought it was already gone, but we got another call in.
“My guess is taking them down is a low priority,” he said. “We’re gonna keep pushing it, but again, we don’t get any data from it.”
Related: Ring cancels agreement with Flock
Ring, an industry leader in doorbell cameras, recently used the Super Bowl to share a new feature called Search Party where customers could share their video to help locate a lost pet.
The backlash was immediate with many customers fearing that the same technology could be used to track people.
The blowback caused Amazon to also put an end to a planned partnership between Ring and Flock Safety for a feature called Community Requests. The technology would’ve allowed Ring customers to share videos with police, presumably to help solve crimes in their neighborhood.
Flock said in a statement that the integration was never launched, so Flock never received any Ring customer videos.
More than 25 percent of households in the U.S. operate doorbell cameras.
Related stories
- Staunton police: Flock Safety license-plate reader cameras taken down
- Staunton Police Chief: Flock Safety cameras no longer accessible to officers
- Staunton to cancel Flock Safety camera contract, citing issues with ideology of CEO
- Staunton | Are police, ICE using Flock license plate cameras to spy on you?
- Albemarle County | Police building community registry of exterior security cameras
- Albemarle County: Database launched to assist first responders during emergencies
Support AFP
Share
Crystal Graham
