Asheville Is Moving to Remove Its Flock Cameras. Here's What Two Officers Said About Why They Use Them.
Mayor Esther Manheimer is calling for a vote to end the city's contract with Flock Safety. WNCW sat down with Asheville Police and the Spartanburg County Sheriff before that announcement — to hear the law enforcement case for the technology.
By Dylan Henson | WNCW
This week, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer announced she would ask city council to end the city's contract with Flock Safety and remove its license plate reader cameras from the city. She said she had heard clearly from residents that a moratorium on the cameras' use wasn't enough — the contract had to go.
"Let's regroup and work with our community to come up with policies that protect individuals while protecting the entire community," Manheimer said in a statement.
The vote is scheduled for Monday, August 25.
The announcement came as WNCW was wrapping a two-part series on how law enforcement agencies across western North Carolina and the Upstate of South Carolina are using those same cameras.
In part one, I sat down with two officers who have embraced the technology: Asheville Police Department technology supervisor James Wingo and Spartanburg County Sheriff Bill Rhyne. Their interview was recorded before Manheimer's announcement.
Chances are you've driven past a Flock camera without knowing it — a small device, mounted on a pole near a road or parking lot entrance, photographing license plates and logging the time and location. In the past two years, the cameras have spread to school parking lots, business corridors, and major roads across the region.
HOW IT WORKS
Flock's system does two things. Passively, it photographs every plate that passes and stores the image. Actively, officers can enter a specific plate into what Flock calls a hotlist — and the system sends an alert if that vehicle appears anywhere in the network.
In Asheville, Wingo says access to that search function is tightly restricted. Of the department's 200-plus officers, only 12 are authorized to run plate searches — a policy, he says, that came directly from APD's accreditation review of national best practices.
APD is also one of only two agencies in North Carolina that explicitly prohibits officers from using the cameras to surveil protests, rallies, or religious gatherings.
In Spartanburg, Sheriff Bill Rhyne inherited the cameras when he was sworn in last November. The county's contract was started by the previous administration. Rhyne says the technology has already played a direct role in three homicides this year — including a case where a single Flock image of a fleeing vehicle helped locate a suspect and two children three hours later, with a hit on a camera in northern Georgia.
"Without that technology, that is one of those cases where we would have been dependent on an Amber Alert," Rhyne said.
THE DATA QUESTION
Both officers say the cameras are narrower than critics suggest — they photograph the rear of a vehicle and its license plate, with no facial recognition. But the question of where the data goes, and how long it stays, varies by state.
Flock recently shortened its default data retention window from 30 days to seven. In North Carolina, state law allows up to 90 days. Wingo says APD keeps to Flock's 30-day company default — and says he's seen that limit matter in real cases.
"There have been cases where a detective has come in and said, I know this car was in the area — and you look at it and say, yeah, but it was 31 days ago and it's gone," Wingo said.
Across the country, authorities have suspended law enforcement officers who misuse the technology, in most cases using it to spy on someone they know. In Spartanburg, Rhyne said he wants the penalty to go beyond termination — he's pushing for misuse to be charged as a criminal offense.
In Asheville, APD runs quarterly audits of every search conducted by its 12 authorized users. The results go directly to the chief.
WHAT'S NEXT
Part two of this series covers the other side of the debate: the ACLU's concerns about Flock's data policies, and what at least one city discovered after signing its contract. That episode will also address the outcome of Monday's city council vote.
More to the Story runs Friday mornings at 7:51 on WNCW, 88.7 FM. You can also stream the episode after it airs on wncw.org
