Technology

What Happened When Flock Came to My Town

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/49772467

Snips from the article below, but the full thing is worth reading.

My small town in South Carolina will soon have more Flock cameras than police officers.

the city council of my small town of Irmo, South Carolina, voted to install 22 new Flock cameras. That’ll bring the total up to 33. With a population of only 12,000 or so, it means there’ll be one Flock camera for every 300 residents. That means there will be more Flock cameras in my town than police officers.

The vote for the cameras was a hot topic in local news and South Carolina social media. The city council expected a lot of people to show and asked folks to sign up early if they wanted to talk.

I wasn’t the only person who decided to speak. More than 10 other citizens went to the podium and spoke out against the cameras.

“I’m pretty enthralled by all the pushback you’re getting on the cameras you installed without asking a single member of the community if they wanted them installed,” said another resident, a man in a T-shirt and shorts. “If you give the government a tool, they will misuse it. Period. End of story. Get rid of them or we will get rid of them for you.”

For a bit, I thought it was possible that the town might not install these cameras. Then the police chief stood up and explained how he’d used Flock to capture pedophiles and I knew that was probably the end of it.

Police chief Bobby Dale has long been an advocate for the expansion of Flock in town. He told local outlet News19 that 33 cameras will allow him to see all the entrances and exits. “That would ultimately cover pretty much every nook and cranny, every entry point into the town,” he said. “That’s what we want. As the chief of police, I’ve got to make sure our town is safe. I’m learning that with these cameras, with these license plate readers, we’re solving crimes and solving them quicker.”

During the city council meeting, Dale explained that Flock cameras had been instrumental in a To Catch a Predator style sting operation Irmo PD conducted. “During an internet crimes against children operation hosted by a department, 15 adults traveled to our community believing they were coming to meet children for sexual activity," Dale said. “Fourteen of those 15 suspects were not from our jurisdiction.”

“So you lured them here. Into our town. Genius,” the T-shirt and shorts guy shouted from the back of the room. This was the guy who’d said the community would remove the Flock cameras if the city didn’t. The mayor had police escort him from the meeting. He left without a fight and Dale finished his speech praising Flock.

Mayor Bill Danielson opened his portion of the Flock discussion by talking about how he’d recently commiserated with other mayors at the conference about how mean people were on Facebook.

“I came back with a renewed vigor to be the mayor of this town,” he said. “And knowing that I’m not the only one being abused on Facebook, social media, by some people in this room. It’s going to take a whole lot more than that to sway any position I may or may not have on behalf of these citizens.”

“Every one of those mayors either wanted Flock, was trying to figure out how to budget for Flock, or had Flock and was figuring out how to increase their presence.”

My city council voted 4 to 1 to increase the presence of Flock in this small town of 12,000 people. Police chief Dale will soon have more cameras than officers. And, if they can get money from the state, they may also purchase a drone from Flock to use as part of the company’s “drones as first responder” program.

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