Flock cameras in Grand Traverse County have taken photographs of almost 450,000 vehicles in the last 30 days. The data from those photographs is used by police to solve crimes.
But there is very little oversight on who is searching through that data and what they are searching for.
According to the Institute for Justice, nationwide there have been at least 26 examples of officers using Flock data to stalk romantic interests.
There have been no instances of abuse reported in Grand Traverse County.
Sheriff Michael Shea says, “the audits [of the Flock searches] are done by our detective captain. That report is forwarded to me. It’s done on a regular basis, so that if there were an attempt on something nefarious, it would be identified immediately.”
According to the Grand Traverse Sheriff's Office's policy manual, the audits are conducted twice per year. The detective captain conducting the audits is an officer internal to the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s department.
“We are trusting the captain to uphold public trust and do things appropriately,” said Sheriff Shea. “I think there is a level of confidence that we have to put in that individual. They’ve taken the oath, they’ve raised to that level of clearance…you have to have some level of faith in that.”
Michael Soyfer, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice says, “it’s dangerous to put blind trust in the police.”
According to Soyfer, local police aren’t the only officers searching through Flock data. Grand Traverse County shares its data with Flock’s nationwide database. “You have countless officers searching your data who aren’t accountable to the police department,” said Soyfer. “They don’t have to cooperate in an audit and can’t be disciplined by your local police agency.”
Over 1,400 agencies across the country have access to Grand Traverse County Flock data. The sheriff’s office has no control over other agencies that are searching through the data.
Flock data has been used to solve crimes
According to the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s department, Flock data has assisted in the arrest of 90 persons on existing criminal warrants and other criminal charges. Some of the crimes include rape and sex trafficking.
According to Sheriff Shea, Flock technology is one of the most important technological advances in policing during his more-than-twenty-year career. Shea said it opened up “a whole new world” in investigating crimes and finding missing persons.
But Soyfer at the Institute for Justice says the public concern is that Flock technology “makes it easy to search the database and reconstruct peoples’ movements over time…what people are objecting to is the ability for police to see everywhere they’ve been over the last 30 days.”
With no state or federal guidelines on appropriate uses of Flock camera data, oversight is conducted on a local level. Soyfer says these departments should be looking to the 4th amendment to inform their audit and oversight policies.
“The ideal for oversight is the one that’s spelled out in our constitution. Having a neutral and detached magistrate deciding whether police have enough to go on to invade someone’s privacy and security.”
