The Fullerton City Council, having heard from residents leery of losing their privacy to surveillance technology, voted this week to turn off more than a dozen Flock Safety license plate readers for a six-month period.<\/p>\n
Fullerton, on Tuesday\u2019s 3-1 vote of the council, became the first city in Orange County to suspend its use of Flock cameras. The panel\u2019s majority favored the moratorium and pledged to host a community meeting on the policing tool while assessing any impacts going dark would have on crime-solving statistics.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s see how effective they are,\u201d Councilmember Ahmad Zahra said of the cameras. \u201cLet\u2019s see if, in the next six months, we [are] achieving the same results without them or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fullerton has used automated license plate reader technology since 2007. The city first contracted with Flock five years ago. The surveillance system, which includes 17 stationary and two mobile cameras, does not record audio or video. It does take still photographs of vehicles and their license plates. <\/p>\n
Data is stored for 30 days, while backup data takes a week longer before deletion.<\/p>\n
In a presentation to the council, Fullerton Police Chief Jon Radus argued the cameras have helped his detectives solve an array of crimes, from burglaries to attempted murder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is simply a tool that provides a lead,\u201d he said. \u201cNo arrests are based simply on a photograph.\u201d<\/p>\n
Radus added that data gathered by the Flock camera system cannot be shared for federal immigration enforcement under state law. His department also tightened its auditing timeline of the system from annually to quarterly reviews.<\/p>\n
Despite his assurances, the discussion in Fullerton came as the surveillance technology has sparked controversy nationwide in cases where officers have accessed Flock camera data to stalk women. In April, a former Costa Mesa police officer pleaded guilty<\/a> to using Flock data to track his wife, an ex-girlfriend and another person. <\/p>\n The American Civil Liberties Union has also called for a \u201cGet the Flock Out\u201d movement in calling the cameras a \u201ccreepy\u201d building block of a mass surveillance state without little to no transparency, oversight or regulation.<\/p>\n