Illegal Surveillance Not an Issue

Local police chiefs say Flock Cameras are about negating crime

By Rita Cook
Correspondent
Texas Metro News

DESOTO – At last week’s DeSoto City Council meeting the council passed a Resolution approving the 2024 Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program Funds Sharing and Fiscal Agency Agreement in the amount of $12,453 for the DeSoto Police Department. 

The PD will receive $8,106.90 with the remainder allocated to the City of Dallas and Dallas County for various fees. 

The money allotted to DeSoto PD will fund the annual subscription for five Flock cameras to be installed in DeSoto.

Desoto City Councilmember Place 6 Crystal Chism brought up a fear questioned by some residents of oversurveillance due to the cameras.

“When you put these cameras in a minority-majority community it can look like… as though we are being overpoliced or overwatched,” she said.

DeSoto Police Chief Joe Costa said, “We have had Flock cameras for the past five or six years and we are growing our cadre of cameras as we go each year.”

According to Costa, HOAs and other communities in the city have their own Flock cameras. He also added that he educates the residents in his Town Hall meetings and reminds them that these cameras are license plate reader cameras, not facial recognition. 

The cameras hit on stolen cars, or cars in which the owners/operators have warrants.

“When something hits the camera that has a warrant on it there is a message sent to dispatch and then a message goes to our officers who have that app on their phones on patrol,” Costa explained.

Heath Penwarden, DeSoto PD Lieutenant, Support Service, SRT Commander, also emphasized “Flock cameras do not function as a tool for continuous surveillance of citizens. They do not record live video or audio. Instead, they are designed specifically to capture still images of vehicles and identify license plates in a general location.”

He continued, “The system is used solely for investigative purposes, helping law enforcement solve crimes by providing objective vehicle data rather than monitoring individuals’ daily activities.”

Like in the other Best Southwest cities utilizing Flock cameras, DeSoto studies the city’s crime statistics and determines where the cameras will be most effective.

In DeSoto that is in the I-35 corridor area. 

“We do not just put them randomly in areas, we do it strategically with our crime stats,” Costa told the council, adding that the cameras are moveable and can be taken down and the poles moved if crime trends change. 

Eventually the chief said he would like to install a Flock camera at every exit and entryway into the city.

And while DeSoto only has five cameras currently and five incoming with the passing of the council item last week, the City of Cedar Hill has 48 Flock cameras in that city.

Cedar Hill Police Chief Ely Reyes mentioned 12 of the 48 cameras are owned by the city and the remainder were purchased through PID/HOA. 

“We work with neighborhood groups on deployment strategies trying to cover all points of ingress and egress,” Reyes said. “The cameras owned by the city are deployed strategically in areas to capture license plates on vehicles entering or leaving the city and other areas based on crime statistics and higher activity.”
He said the city currently has five more incoming through a grant and that in the past the current cameras have assisted with leads that helped solve two murders, an aggravated assault (shooting), and multiple thefts, to name a few.

“The investigative lead in solving any case is worth the cost of the cameras,” Reyes assured. 

In the case of the flock cameras in Cedar Hill, Reyes added, “The system does allow us to activate a “hotlist,” which includes stolen vehicles, sex offenders and wanted persons.”

Duncanville’s Police Chief Matt Stogner said his city has several cameras also placed strategically based on “locations with higher crime rates, vehicle-related offenses, or known patterns of criminal activity, these areas are prioritized.”

Stogner emphasized how these cameras can help in locating missing persons.

“These cameras assist in locating missing persons (Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts) and recovering stolen property and are worth the money spent when you locate a family member that has been missing.”

The City of Midlothian has 27 Flock cameras. Midlothian Assistant Chief of Police Scott Brown said they are situated in that city near city parks and on major city thoroughfares.

“Deployable cameras can be used near potential crime locations as necessary, such as construction sites or any neighborhood that experiences an uptick in criminal activity,” Brown added.    

He also said at some point, the PD would like to explore a partnership with the School District to have more coverage around the campuses to help protect the community’s children. 

Midlothian’s cameras came in handy over the last month twice when on February 13 the PD recovered two Cadillac Escalades stolen from MidTex. The PD was also able to arrest the suspects “thanks to the ability to track the vehicles from Midlothian to a residence in Grand Prairie,” Brown explained.

On January 30 the Flock cameras identified a 13-year-old boy in Midlothian who stole his father’s truck and ran away from home. 

“With the aid of Flock, we were able to track his movements down Interstate 35 and work with the Troy PD to get him stopped and get both the child and the truck back home safely,” Brown said.

If you live in Lancaster, Police Chief Sam Urbanski said the PD recently purchased 18 cameras that will be installed soon.

“We are adding them to the highest traffic entrances to the city and some in high traffic intersections inside the city,” Urbanski said. 

As for how long the data obtained from Flocks is kept, many cities retain their data for only 30 days, which is the default period. 

Urbanski said Lancaster PD is still undecided on their camera retention plan. 

Not so in Dallas, however. Dallas keeps its camera footage for a year according to Dallas Councilmember District 3 Zarin Gracey, whose district is predominantly in southwest Dallas.

Dallas spent $820,000 in 2022 on a five-year contract with Flock and recently had another request for 43 cameras in Dallas, costing $200,000.

While Dallas has not publicly revealed where its Flock cameras are located, apparently, according to one report the city also has an eye toward 600 CCTV cameras and 550 license plate-reading cameras overall.

When does surveillance that is assured to be “just about safety” become an overreach that can turn into a runaway train of unnecessary surveillance?

It is safe to say the five Best Southwest Police Chiefs have their resident’s safety at the forefront of their decisions. Dallas on the other hand, some might wonder if its future outlay of camera surveillance could be infringing on Fourth Amendment citizen’s rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. 

To date, Fourth Amendment case law has indicated Flock cameras do not constitute a warrantless search for the most part because the camera takes photos of cars in public and cannot track the movements of an individual.