The Troy City Council introduced a local law Thursday night that Democratic leaders said would address residents’ privacy concerns regarding license plate readers. But the city's Republican mayor said the law “defies logic” and is not conducive to law enforcement operations.
The proposal is the latest chapter in a contentious discourse over the license-plate-reading cameras between the all-Democratic council and Republican Mayor Carmella Mantello.
The council and the mayor disagree on what led the city to automatically renew its contract with Flock Safety for the cameras on April 1.
Mantello says the renewal occurred because the council tabled the decision on March 19 instead of deciding not to renew it. But the council counters that they were not given enough time to decide before the contract was set to renew. Five councilors began their tenures on the board in January.
After the contract was renewed, the council tried to stop the city auditor from paying Flock. But the mayor declared a public emergency to keep the payments for the roughly two-dozen cameras going. That emergency order remains in effect.
At Thursday's council meeting, Councilmember Nancy McKee introduced Local Law 3, which would regulate how the license-plate readers capture and share data with other agencies.
McKee said residents have been calling her and her colleagues about privacy concerns.
Some residents spoke at Thursday's meeting about examples from across the nation of what they described as Flock’s data being misused.
One resident said the Dayton, Ohio, police department reportedly paused its Flock safety contract after department and city leaders realized data was being accessed more broadly than intended.
McKee said after Troy's meeting that regulating the cameras is about more than just protecting city residents.
“At the local level, it's really important for us to resist,” McKee said, “because ... if we don't do it at the local level - like they did in Minneapolis - ... it will never rise up to encompass the whole country, for people to protect democracy.”
The proposed law has two major sections.
The first aims to define when the license-plate readers can be used and how long they can keep data.
The law would limit the city’s use of the captured data so it could only be used to compare license plate numbers against hot lists, or databases that local, state, and federal governments keep of license plate numbers when they have a reasonable claim that the vehicle is linked to criminal or missing person investigations. Even then, McKee's proposal demands that data captured be deleted no later than 48 hours after it was captured unless it is being used for parking enforcement fees or is pursuant to a valid court order.
The law would also prohibit the city from sharing the data with outside agencies unless there is a criminal proceeding or a valid court order.
The second part calls for more transparency surrounding how the city uses the data. It would require an annual audit of the data, which would be published on the city’s website, and include data on: how many times each camera captured a license plate, how many times these databases were used and matched with a hot list, and how often those matches were wrong.
On multiple occasions, the mayor said this law “defies logic.” She shared concerns at Thursday's council meeting about the 48-hour period before deletion. She thinks it’s too short.
The mayor mentioned victims oftentimes don’t report a crime within 48 hours. She called the law deeply harmful to criminal investigations.
“This legislation sends exactly the wrong message,” Mantello said. “You cannot claim to support public safety while simultaneously stripping our law enforcement of the technology they rely on to solve crimes and protect residents.”
When asked about the mayor's concern, McKee said she consulted many researchers and looked at examples of Flock usage around the country before selecting 48 hours as the threshold included in the proposal. She called it the “gold standard” and said it would be effective in deterring misuse of that data by “bad actors.”
“It reduces the ability for bad actors to use it and to make predictions, because they'll have all this data about our movements,” McKee said. “You know, you get seven days of that data, and you can make very accurate predictions about where people go, what time of day, and so that's why we came up with 48 hours.”
Many residents who spoke at Thursday's meeting were happy the proposal was being introduced. They said the proposal is a step toward reining in surveillance in Troy, but many also said Local Law 3 can be improved and workshopped.
Some suggested changes, like increasing the fine for violations beyond $1,000 and having severe penalties for officers who abuse Flock data.
Silva Menard said she really wants to see this law passed.
“It helps balance out this enormous, seven-and-a-half-billion-dollar company that has come into our neighborhoods and our communities and gives ... a little bit of power back to the people to say we're not OK with that,” Menard said.
