ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — St. Petersburg residents made their concerns about Flock cameras known to the city council Thursday afternoon.
“Who can access this information, why are they searching it and how long can it be kept?” asked one resident.
Free website, app lets you avoid Flock cameras for Florida road trips
But although residents asked questions, they didn’t receive answers from council. St. Petersburg Police Chief Anthony Holloway said a meeting is scheduled in the future where he can discuss Flock cameras to council and residents, as he says there’s some misinformation about the cameras.
“This is a camera; it takes a picture of the tag and the vehicle. We can’t tell you who drives the car. All I can tell you is that if we do a search, we can tell what’s going on at the time. We don’t have officers monitoring these cameras 24/7,” he said.
As St. Petersburg is discussing the future of Flock cameras, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office has announced it is ending its license plate reader systems.
That agreement is set to officially be axed September 30 after Sheriff Chris Nocco said a majority of the board of county commissioners no longer showed support for the agreement during two meetings in August.
Florida Governor Ron Desantis even recently weighing in on the Flock camera debate.
“No one’s been stronger on law enforcement than me, but I don’t want to have this become a surveillance state,” DeSantis said.
Chief Holloway said he is not ruling out the possibility of Flock not being used in the future.
“If the community feels that way, city council feels that way, we’ll have that conversation. As of today, we’re still going to use that tool to continue to arrest people that are committing crimes in our city,” he said.
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