DALLAS \u2014 Last month, the Dallas Police Department told Spectrum News how the over 650 Flock cameras within the city have helped fight crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, we have 684. But with the state funding removed, that will go down to about 360 cameras,\u201d said Sgt. Adam Reinhart during a Dallas City Council Public Safety Committee meeting.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 9, Dallas police officials gave city leaders a status update on Flock cameras.<\/p>\n
Reinhart confirmed that 321 cameras will be deactivated by Sept. 15. This comes after Gov. Greg Abbott paused state funding for the automated license plate reader system, citing privacy concerns, which has been highly criticized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe misuse has got to be our focus right now, right? We have got to be able to assure the public and reinstate trust that this tool can be used,\u201d said Dallas City Council member Kathy Stewart.<\/p>\n
Another concern is law enforcement misuse, like in Harris County where three deputies were caught misusing the Flock camera system for personal use. Many are also concerned about the invasion of privacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt raises a lot of Fourth Amendment questions,\u201d said Phil Mynona, the co-founder of the Texas Privacy Coalition.<\/p>\n
Mynona said Dallas PD deactivating half the cameras isn\u2019t enough. He wants transparency about who has access to the data.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of these police departments aren\u2019t even being transparent of who they\u2019re sharing their data with. And we\u2019ve seen inter-agency sharing from Houston to Ohio. There\u2019s no reason why somebody in Ohio should be accessing cameras in Houston,\u201d said Mynona.<\/p>\n
In August, Dallas police told Spectrum News that sharing data helps investigators solve crimes.<\/p>\n
According to Dallas Police Chief Daniel C. Comeaux, 13 murders have been solved this year so far thanks to Flock cameras.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere in Dallas, where we have located critical missing people from out of state. So that\u2019s how it becomes a very positive investigative tool is finding those missing people,\u201d Reinhart told Spectrum News in August.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the public safety committee meeting, Dallas police also confirmed outside law enforcement agency access was significantly reduced, from over 1,500 law enforcement agencies to 202 statewide agencies, including no more federal agency access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2014 Last month, the Dallas Police Department told Spectrum News how the over 650 Flock cameras within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1061,2160,132,1570,102,104,103,138,9979,223,1225,82,27,1569,2053,5239,835],"class_list":["post-436851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-austin","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-el-paso","tag-marcine-graham","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-topic-latest-public-safety-crime-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}