Indianola is the latest Iowa town to switch off its Flock cameras, automated license plate readers which are prompting protests across the nation about privacy and security.
Indianola Police Lieutenant Tye Sparks says the Warren County town, 17 miles south of Des Moines, has been using eight of the pole-mounted traffic cameras and they’ve proven to be a valuable law enforcement tool.
“If someone reports a crime and they have a make/model of a vehicle associated in a timeframe, it gives us the ability to locate those vehicles or identify suspects,” Sparks says. “We’ve identified vehicles with hit and runs, violent criminal investigations, recovering stolen vehicles, that sort of thing.”
As the use of this technology has broadened in Iowa and the country, so has the conversation about privacy, data retention, data sharing, and safeguards that should accompany its use. Sparks says those are fair questions, and they deserve thoughtful consideration, so use of the cameras is being suspended.
“It will definitely make our jobs a little harder, but police work is police work. We did police work prior to these cameras, we’ll do police work afterwards,” Sparks says. “There might be some circumstances if people only got a make and model of a vehicle and didn’t get a plate, then that may go unsolved.”
Sparks says choosing to suspend the Flock camera program, despite its investigative value, reflects the importance the department places on maintaining the confidence of Indianola’s residents.
“We want the community that we serve to trust in what we’re doing, and this technology is unknown enough, there’s not enough known about where this data goes after we’ve used it,” Sparks says. “We saw that as a legitimate concern. We are willing to make our jobs a little bit harder in order to maintain that trust with our community.”
The eight cameras in Indianola will remain in place during the suspension pending coordination with Flock. Sparks says the annual cost of the program was around $24,000.
Just last week, Waukee ended its contract with the company, shutting down 11 cameras. Reports say there are still some 300 Flock cameras in use just in central Iowa.