City Council members approved a new surveillance ordinance at their Oct. 7 meeting to a mixed public reception.
City Council adopted the Flock Safety ordinance with a 5-2 vote on Oct. 7, allowing Columbia’s city manager, De’Carlon Seewood, to negotiate a contract for the installation of automatic license plate reader and video cameras in Columbia. To cover the contract’s cost, the ordinance expanded the Columbia police department’s annual budget by over $500,000.
Flock Safety will install the cameras in four to six months depending on weather circumstances, according to Columbia Police Chief Jill Schlude.
Ongoing officer vacancies prompted the consideration of a Flock Safety contract. According to Schlude, Downtown Columbia’s dense population is difficult to monitor with a smaller force, especially during community events like the Homecoming Parade.
“We get calls every day about different concerns around public safety,” said Nickie Davis, Executive Director of the Downtown Community Improvement District. She believes installing Flock cameras will help Columbia’s police rapidly address incidents downtown.
Data collected by the cameras will be stored for 30 days by Flock Safety as an open record unless it becomes evidence in a criminal case, civil case or police investigation then it will change to a closed record. Law enforcement agencies outside Columbia will have access to the Flock camera system for investigations at the discretion of the Columbia police department.
Flock Safety cameras will not utilize facial recognition technology, according to a presentation given to Columbia residents. However, residents and organizations at the city council meeting expressed privacy concerns regarding data storage because data from Flock Safety cameras will be stored as an open record.
Missouri’s Sunshine Law permits anyone to request open records held by the government, but large requests of surveillance data would likely require the requester to pay the cost of retaining data past the 30-day retention period, according to City Counselor Nancy Thompson.
Before bringing the Flock Safety ordinance to the floor, the City Council unanimously passed a surveillance oversight ordinance to deter misuse of any surveillance technology used by Columbia law enforcement. This separate ordinance mandates the police department to write an annual report that includes details about the effectiveness of specific surveillance technologies, how they were used and known misuse by any officials.
Hold Como Accountable, an organization of concerned Columbia residents, criticized the surveillance oversight ordinance for lacking concrete disciplinary measures for misuse of surveillance technology. A resident of Columbia’s Second Ward described a case in which a police chief in Sedgwick, Kan., used Flock Safety cameras to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her partner for four months.
The former Sedgwick police chief resigned, lost his police certification and no legal action was taken.
Residents will be able to monitor Columbia law enforcement’s use of the cameras through a transparency portal provided by Flock Safety. The number of queries by officers and other officials, license plates captured by cameras and “hotlist hits” — when a vehicle associated with criminal activity is caught by a camera — in the last 30 days will be available to the public, according to Schlude.
In the event of a substantiated instance of misconduct, Schlude would recommend disciplinary action relative to the “gravity of the infraction.” Schlude plans to prevent consistent misuse through random audits of police department employees and inspections of unusually high-volume data requests from the camera system.
Roy Lovelady, representative of Columbia’s Third Ward, expressed skepticism about increasing surveillance, emphasizing his experience with law enforcement as a Black man.
“I see areas where we should be building trust and working on preventative measures [instead],” Lovelady said. “I am the only Black and brown person up here, that’s on council, that would be casting a vote … My experience may not look like any of the rest of my council members, so when I call the police, it’s a different experience than what my council members may experience, and I’m expected to trust that the system will be used appropriately.”
Lovelady believes reaching the overarching goal of safety for the people he represents requires further accountability of law enforcement.
Valerie Carroll, representative of Columbia’s First Ward — which includes the University of Missouri — was one of the opposing votes to the Flock Safety ordinance.
“We have a sanctuary ordinance and other communities don’t have that … I’m not comfortable creating material that can be used against our citizens in a way that we don’t support,” Carroll said.
Council members who favored the ordinance emphasized their bottom line before voting — enhancing their constituents’ safety.
“We are putting a great deal of trust in the police department to use this system properly,” said Donald Waterman, representative of Columbia’s Fifth Ward. “Any system out there can be abused.”
Edited by Eric Hughes | ehughes@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Ethan Palgon and Natalie Kientzy | nkientzy@themaneater.com
Edited by Emily Skidmore | eskidmore@themaneater.com