The Troy City Council held a special meeting Thursday to discuss an audit of how city police use automated license plate readers (ALPRs).
Officials met as the city navigates how to regulate the cameras manufactured by Flock Safety, while also mitigating residents' privacy concerns.
The 60-day audit completed this summer was part of a compromise reached by the all-Democratic council and Republican Mayor Carmella Mantello after months of disagreement over how to proceed — if at all — with the city's contract with Flock.
In May, City Councilmember Noreen McKee introduced legislation regarding the city's Flock cameras that, among other components, sought to limit how long data collected by the cameras would be archived. The legislation would delete data after 48 hours.
Troy police officials said 48 hours was not enough time to solve a crime because victims sometimes remember incidents and important information a couple of days after an incident. They also said victims sometimes don't come forward immediately. So, officials agreed to pause further action until police conducted the audit of their use of Flock cameras.
Thursday's meeting came a week after Flock Safety, one of the nation’s largest providers of ALPRs, announced a series of changes set to take effect by Jan. 1. The changes aim to regulate use of Flock's license plate readers. They include archiving data for no more than seven days, flagging abnormal search behavior and giving law enforcement agencies the ability to block outside searches such as those related to immigration enforcement.
Since the local review was released last month, McKee has claimed the accompanying report is incomplete. Mantello disagreed. On Thursday, lawmakers met to dig through the findings.
Police officials addressed Thursday why their audit might appear incomplete. They said it included a lot of anecdotal evidence rather than data about how Flock helps solve crimes because the ALPRs are a tool and their impact on a case is not always quantifiable.
Assistant Police Chief Stephen Barker said the cameras are just a piece of the puzzle.
"It's not the only material thing that may impact a case. ... Maybe it provides the lead, but it doesn't corroborate the lead, or maybe it provides no lead," Barker said.
Police also said finding each time Flock has definitively detected and helped solve a crime would be "cumbersome" because sometimes the officer who files a case and does the query might not be the same officer who closes the case. They also said the shortened window data is archived to seven days is not helpful.
Regardless of how long data is archived, Councilor Shikole Struber shared concerns about what happens to data if the city ends its contract with Flock. She shared findings from another cybersecurity report on Flock's cloud-based service.
"There's nothing in writing from the audit that says, you know, you end your subscription, your data is gone," she said. "That is something I find to be very important because, once the subscription ends, they no longer have any kind of reason to do what we want them to do. Like, we're not paying them anymore."
The council said Thursday it will now meet to discuss changes and amendments to the local law McKee proposed in May. McKee said she was pleased with Thursday's conversation, but there's more work to be done. She had criticized the lack of conversation amongst officials when she initially proposed the legislation.
Residents at the meeting Thursday said they were thankful for the conversation as well, but they still want the council to take a stronger stance against Flock cameras.
