Henderson KY Police Chief Pens Open Letter to the Community About Flock Cameras “I Have Zero fears About This Technology”

-by Billy Bolin, Henderson KY Police Chief 

OPEN LETTER ON FLOCK SAFETY

(I’ll warn everyone up front, this is a long post). There is currently a lot of debate going on about Flock cameras. I realize this is controversial, and I realize some won’t like my stance, but in my 31-year career as a law enforcement officer, Flock is one of the best tools I’ve seen to help keep our communities safe and for that reason, I’m passionate about not losing this great tool.   I’m going to share my views on as many of these points as possible, and I’ll try to break this post down by the concerns I’m seeing.

BENEFITS OF FLOCK CAMERAS

I learned about Flock cameras in 2021, and we installed our first batch of them in Evansville during the summer of 2022. Within the first month of having these cameras in Evansville, we had a 7-year-old boy disappear from his front yard. A witness saw him on the back of a motorcycle with a neighbor. The neighbor didn’t have permission to take the boy for a ride, and it was learned that the neighbor was a convicted sex offender. Officers entered the motorcycle into the Flock system, and it passed a camera on Green River Rd. Shortly after, a patrol sergeant located the motorcycle leaving the back of the mall with the child still on it. The man was arrested, and luckily, nothing bad had happened to the little boy yet. (It should be noted that after bonding out, this man was later arrested for sexually assaulting another little girl).

Officers and detectives are using this technology weekly, if not daily, in both Henderson and Evansville. Since I’ve been in Henderson, we have solved shootings, recovered stolen vehicles, helped return endangered elderly citizens back to their families and the list goes on. Just last night, we had a victim advise that her ex-boyfriend had been stalking her, and she had a protective order against him. He had previously broken into her apartment and stole her cell phone. He had active warrants, and officers checked to see if there had been recent activity with his vehicle on Flock. It had hit on the camera by Ellis Park 10 minutes prior, and one of our officers located him in the Ellis Park Parking lot, still in his vehicle. The bottom line is they help keep us all safer and make it harder for criminals to succeed.

Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

WHAT DO FLOCK CAMERAS ACTUALLY DO?

I see a lot of false assumptions on both sides of the argument concerning these cameras. I’ve had people who work closely with us ask why we can’t look at our Flock cameras and see who broke into their vehicle. There is a perception that we can see where everyone is always located – we can’t. I’ve seen people post that we followed someone to their attorney’s office on Flock cameras. I see a lot of comments about how these cameras track your every movement. I’ve seen people comment about how they walk on the other side of the street, so it doesn’t take their photo. These cameras don’t track your every movement; they don’t track your vehicle's every movement. They give us snapshots in time of the back of vehicles if you happen to pass one of the cameras. I’ll try to explain further here:

I cannot look in the Flock system and tell you where any of you are located right now. If I have your vehicle plate number, I can enter it into the system and tell you the time and location of the last camera your vehicle passed. It will tell me the other cameras and the times you passed them, but I don’t know how many turns you made, where you stopped in between, where you started from, etc. It gives us snapshots in time.

The Flock Falcon cameras are Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR) and these are the topic of all the conversation. These Falcon cameras take still images of the back of vehicles.

The Flock system doesn’t have your name, DOB, SSN, or any other personal info about you. It just has vehicle descriptions and plate numbers.

The only exception to this is if law enforcement manually attaches a name to a plate/vehicle description for warrant and/or safety reasons – such as the person wanted for shooting the KSP Trooper last week.

The two communities I’m familiar with are Henderson, KY, and Evansville, IN. I asked Google how many miles of road are in Henderson County, Kentucky, and between the city, county and state roads inside the county, there are over 775 miles of roadway. Between the city police and the sheriff’s office, we have a total of 30 Flock Falcon ALPR cameras. This equals 1 camera for every 25.8 miles of road within Henderson County.

In Vanderburgh County, Indiana, they have over 950 miles of roadway and 104 Flock Falcon ALPR cameras. This equals 1 camera for every 10.1 mile of roadway in Vanderburgh County. It would be hard to track your every movement with 1 camera per every 10.1 miles of road.

In short, these cameras help us narrow down an area to where a vehicle has been, but they don’t track you as a GPS does.

It will show a broad track of where the vehicle has been, but it doesn’t have exact details. For example, if your vehicle was stolen and taken to Florida and we searched for it in the system, we would be able to see each time and location it passed a camera, so we would know that it traveled through several states and we would be able to see the last location it hit in Florida. We wouldn’t be able to see who is in the vehicle. We wouldn’t be able to see where they stopped for gas. We wouldn’t be able to see what restaurants they ate at. Or what hotels they stayed in. Or where they are at the given moment. But it would give us a good idea of the area or city your vehicle is in.

OFFICER MISCONDUCT

There have been numerous incidents where officers have been caught abusing this tool, primarily to keep tabs on their significant other or ex-significant other. It is my opinion, along with every other officer I’ve spoken with, that officers who abuse this should be fired and charged criminally. The Flock company has rolled out a lot of safeguards in the past few months that have helped law enforcement catch the people who are abusing it. A combination of the new safeguards and the negative attention being drawn to them is going to make this extremely hard for officers to abuse in the future. I can’t promise you there won’t be cases of it happening in the future, but I’m confident they will be caught and dealt with appropriately.

The officers who have abused this have brought a lot of negative attention onto both our profession and the Flock company. I would ask that we not throw the baby out with the bath water over the actions of a small percentage of officers who have acted recklessly, though. In all our audits, we haven’t caught one officer abusing this locally. But we have solved numerous crimes with it. In both Henderson and Evansville, we have a long list of proven successes with this system, and the actions of officers elsewhere should give us something to watch and plan for but shouldn’t negate the positive outcomes this system is providing for us.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) CONCERNS

Another one of the main concerns I hear is that these cameras are using AI. They do utilize AI. Their cameras don’t just read a license plate; they break it down into a set of identifiable metrics.

They automatically classify the following:

• Physical features such as vehicle make, model, body type, and color.

• Unique identifiers such as license plate number, temporary paper plates, missing or obscured plates, roof racks, custom bumpers, specific paint configurations, major scratches, unique dents, bumper stickers, etc.

DeFlock

I recently listened to a national politician talk about how Flock’s AI can differentiate between Harris, Trump, pro-life, or NRA stickers and ask if we wanted police having access to this. I wonder if he realizes the vehicles that have all these stickers drive on public streets past law enforcement every day? If you have a bumper sticker on your vehicle, it is already visible for the world to see.

They will also identify if vehicles are caravanning together.

When the escapee and the jailer from Alabama, Casey and Vicky White, were in Evansville, Flock cameras were how we figured out what vehicle they were in. They purchased a Cadillac with cash on the west side of Evansville, and nobody knew about it.

When the detectives down south realized they were in a stolen truck, they contacted EPD, as the plate had been run in another database when it was recovered at the car wash. Detectives then looked for the truck in Flock, and their AI detected that it and a Cadillac had both been together while they passed several Flock cameras. This is how we learned about the Cadillac, and then a detective found it in the parking lot of a motel on the north side of Evansville.

I know the term "Artificial Intelligence" has also become a hot topic, and the fact that Flock cameras are utilizing this is concerning to some, but I would like to point out some other camera systems that use AI:

The camera in your smartphone utilizes AI to enhance the image and focus on what you’re trying to take a photo of. It takes multiple images at the same time at different exposure levels and then uses pixel merging to balance bright skies and dark shadows.

It also does the same thing Flock cameras do and can sort cars, food, pets, people, trees, etc.

Look in your photos, and when you see them sorted by person, that is AI. It records GPS location data of the photos. It can read text in your photos and sort screenshots, receipts, or notes. If you have a newer home security system, they utilize AI. Mine give me alerts such as: “a dog has been detected” or “a person has been detected”. Trail Cams – a detective at work said his trail cam will alert him to different animals and will even distinguish between a doe and a buck.

Retail stores are using cameras with AI They can recognize suspicious behavior and alert loss prevention to abnormal gestures such as concealing merchandise or sweeping shelves into bags. Some retailers utilize facial recognition and compare incoming shoppers against watchlists of repeat shoplifting offenders. They use AI at self-checkouts to detect scan avoidance and other deceptive behaviors. Some use roving AI cameras to detect out-of-stock inventory.

DATA LEAKS

I’ve had people ask about what happens when this data gets leaked. This is another thing that we have much bigger things to worry about. As I’ve already said, Flock doesn’t have your name or any personal data about you. It has photos of vehicles in public places. All these pose much greater risks when it comes to data leaks:

• Banking and Financial institutions

• Hospitals and Healthcare

• Retail and E-Commerce

• Telecommunications and Internet Service Providers

• License Branches

• Utility providers

• Hospitality and Travel

OFFICERS SHOULD DO THEIR JOBS AND NOT NEED SHORTCUTS

Flock is just another tool for an officer to use, and it doesn’t eliminate the need for officers to do their jobs. As I mentioned above in the case of the Whites from Alabama, Flock identified the Cadillac for us, but it hadn’t appeared on a Flock camera for several days. A detective was actively driving around looking for the Cadillac and found it parked in a hotel parking lot.

We had a case in Henderson recently where we had $80,000 of silver delivered to a house from another state via a national carrier. The carrier was approached by someone who said he was expecting the package, and the driver identified the type of vehicle. There was a Flock camera blocks away, and the detective matched a vehicle on Flock to that description and, after days of police work, was able to tie the person who was driving the rental car to the company the silver was purchased from in another state.

Flock cameras have helped us solve cases that we would have never solved before. And it helps us solve many cases much faster than we would have in the past. They’re not replacing good old-fashioned police work, but they’re helping to make us more efficient and give us new leads.

In closing, I’m not a fan of this technology because I’m a police officer. I’m a fan because I’ve seen firsthand how much safer it makes all of us. I have three kids who are spread around the country right now, and I have zero fears about this technology ever affecting them negatively; I want the technology in their cities. If we lose this technology, we will all be less safe tomorrow. That may sound dramatic, but it’s the truth.

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