CLEVELAND — Demands are getting louder for the City of Cleveland to drop its Flock Safety cameras.
On Wednesday, community activists with Flock No stood inside City Hall to let city leaders know they want Cleveland to end its relationship with Flock and remove all of its license plate readers from city streets.
The city wants to extend the Flock contract for one year.
"I’m not comfortable knowing that my movements over the last month can be reconstructed in very great detail at any given time,” Flock No’s Bryn Adams said.
Adams and several members of the group held a news conference ahead of the city council safety committee meeting on Wednesday.
"Our city’s growing surveillance system, Flock, raises serious concerns for immigrant communities,” Rebecca Garcia said.
Flock No was formed late last year when the city wanted to push through the council an emergency proposal to expand Flock Safety’s footprint beyond license plate readers without giving other companies a chance to bid.
At that time, Cleveland wasn’t planning to renew its Shotspotter contract, saying Flock can also listen for gunshots. Flock No sent the Mayor and council an open letter to reconsider the relationship with Flock.
The city pulled back its plans, and now the contract with Flock ends on June 28.
"We are not gathering information on our community. We take privacy very seriously. We have safeguards in place working with our vendors, working with our police chief to make sure we have the right guardrails,” Cleveland Public Safety Director Wayne Drummond said.
On Monday, the Mayor sent a letter to the council president and the safety committee chair saying that, after considering feedback, the administration decided not to go to the Board of Control for a Flock contract extension.
Read the full letter here.
The city went to the Board of Control when Shotspotter was renewed for $850K, which upset some council members.
"We internally discussed it with the administration, and we felt it most prudent to bring it to the city council so they’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and get clarification,” Drummond said.
Flock No says it hasn’t received the audit logs from Cleveland police yet.
Garcia says as a child of Colombian immigrants, she’s concerned about who has access.
"It creates fear, discourages people from accessing public services, reporting crimes or even participating fully in civic life,” Garcia said.
Drummond says a query for immigration would not be allowed. Filters were put in place last November.
"Immigration is one of the filters we put in place," Drummond said.
Flock No says the technology is not a solution to keep the community safe.
"Police have ways they’ve been doing this work for many years. I think, you know, go and get a warrant,” Adams said.
The legislation to extend Flock’s contract will be submitted on June 1.
The safety committee plans to hold a special meeting mid-month.
News 5 Investigators are still waiting for requests to be filled for audit logs from Cleveland.
In the suburbs
Lakewood resident Jared Clark is concerned about the flock cameras.
“It’s unnerving,” Clark continued, “The data from the cameras is shared on a nationwide network where anybody with a subscription to FLOCK can access them, and that's police departments, that's HOAs, that's private businesses.”
To push for change, Clark started a petition, which has already gathered more than 350 signatures, urging the city to cancel its contract or at least take action.
“If removing them altogether was not an option, we would like to see some sort of corrective policy in place to reduce the harm that they're capable of," said Clark.
In Olmsted Township, Nathaniel French started another petition, with over 250 signatures so far.
“I was hoping to get some more clarification on that decision making process from the board,” said French.
Olmsted Township has approved Flock cameras, but they haven’t been installed yet. French feels the decision happened without a public meeting or community input.
“Yes, I would like the contract to be to be void if in fact that you know the purchase order was not certified the day of the contract, and the community gets their voices heard,” said French.
But he concedes if the community supports it.
“I believe in, in fairness, so if the majority of the people in our community do want them, I can't really say that my voice means more than other people's,” said French.
While both residents are calling for Flock camera contracts to be canceled—or at least re-examined—Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sees value in the technology.
“A camera standing in a public place has the ability to see what cops standing in a public place would be. So the fact that we're using a piece of technology instead of a human being, um, at a lower cost doesn't bring privacy concerns to the front for me,” said Yost.
But Yost isn’t opposed to policies that protect how camera data is used.
“I think that those kinds of safeguards are adequate, and when we're talking about flock cameras or drones or any number of things that the government might be using in public areas, um, I think those kinds of protections ought to extend,” said Yost.
