The Washington City Council approved a plan to install four automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras at the city’s major entry points.
The cameras, manufactured by Flock Safety, will be located at the intersection of Highway 100 and East Fifth Street facing west, at Highway 100 and Bluff Road facing east, at the Highway 47 bridge to capture southbound traffic, and at Highway 100 and Bieker Road capturing northbound traffic.
The two-year, $24,600 contract approved this week includes installation and maintenance of the ALPRs, which will be owned by Flock and record the license plate of every passing car in a database maintained by the company. Data will remain available to assist with law enforcement investigations, assuming police have a valid reason to search the database, for 30 days.
The 6-1 vote Tuesday in favor of the cameras came after a previous vote failed Jan. 2. At that meeting, Ward 3 Councilman Chad Briggs voted against the proposal and only four other councilmen were present to vote in favor of the plan, meaning the council did not have a quorum for approval. Briggs was not at this week’s council meeting. Although he previously voted in favor of the plan Jan. 2, Ward 2 Councilman Mark Hidritch was the lone vote against it Jan. 16.
Council members had previously brought up a variety of potential concerns about the ALPR cameras, and once again had questions for police officials at this week’s council meeting.
“I’ve been getting a lot of feedback on this,” Hidritch said Tuesday. Many of his constituents are concerned that the cameras violate their constitutional rights, he said, as well as questioning the use of public funds to help prevent theft at local retail stores, which is one example of how the cameras can be used that police have previously highlighted.
“A lot of people are telling me that they believe these business owners ought to have a security guard sitting there if they’re worried about this, instead of the taxpayers having to pay,” Hidritch said.
Washington Police Capt. Darryl Balleydier said, however, that there are many other uses for the ALPRs besides catching shoplifters.
“It’s not just for the businesses, it’s for any crime in the city,” he said. “It’s for stolen vehicles, it’s for child abductions, it’s for the murder we had at Best Western, it could have helped with that. It affects so many different crimes, it’s not just retail.”
Washington Police Chief Jim Armstrong noted that several local governments in the area have installed or approved Flock cameras, including Franklin County and the City of St. Clair, which are in the process of adding five cameras each.
Other area cities that have implemented Flock ALPRs include Eureka, Wentzville, Lake St. Louis and Ellisville, Balleydier said.
“That’s why we went with Flock, because it’s such a huge footprint in the metro area and we all share information,” he said.
“They can give us access to their cameras, we can give them access to our cameras, and we share hotlists. So like if our detectives are working a case and all they have is a license plate or a vehicle color, they can create this hotlist, it goes into Flock, and anywhere that that’s shared with, whether it’s Ellisville, Wentzville, wherever, when that vehicle passes a Flock, then we’ll get notified.”
In response to a question from Ward 4 Councilman Mike Coulter, Balleydier said other area communities are happy with their Flock cameras. Ward 3 Councilman Jeff Patke said that “to deter the crime more than anything and protect the citizens,” approving the ALPRs seemed like a good idea.
“That’s part of it too,” said Balleydier. “Once that word gets out that we have those, other cities have seen that, that these smash and grabs and retail theft crime has gone down a little bit.”
“You can understand our reluctance though,” said Ward 1 Councilman Duane Reed, “as far as the general public worried to death about Big Brother looking down their throat.”
Flock notes on its website, however, that it “has strict measures in place to protect resident privacy” and “will never share or sell data with third parties.”
Armstrong said that ensuring the security and privacy of the data it collects is in Flock’s business interest and is part of what it has to do to remain a viable company.
“So that’s why they’re so focused on encryption and making sure that information is kept private,” he said. “It’s just good business sense for them to do that.”
If there are any unforeseen problems with the Flock ALPRs, Armstrong said, the city can always change course and get rid of the cameras.
“If you decide down the road that there’s issues, we can certainly withdraw that,” he said.
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