The Lane County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday it has followed Eugene and Springfield’s lead and canceled its contract with automatic license plate camera company Flock Safety.
Last week Eugene and Springfield said they had asked Flock to remove their combined 80 license plate cameras. Eugene officials said one of their devices had been activated after the city’s leaders told the company to keep them turned off.
According to public records previously requested by KLCC, Lane County paid for 22 Flock cameras in July. The Sheriff’s Office was much slower in its rollout, waiting on Eugene and Springfield to resolve privacy and federal abuse fears, and Flock never installed any of the county’s devices. In a news release, Lane County Sheriff Carl Wilkerson said he was still interested in the technology because of how effective it was when Eugene used it to track down homicide suspects.
“We are still examining this type of technology and others in an effort to improve community and deputy safety,” Wilkerson said. “ALPRs have proven their benefit to our residents with the capture of multiple murderers over the past year.”
But, Wilkerson said Flock isn’t a good use of resources without Eugene and Springfield's’ participation in a regional network.
In the weeks leading up to the decision, some county residents used public comment at Lane County Board of Commissioners meetings to raise concerns about the devices. Some residents said they felt putting the cameras on county roads would invade their privacy.
Activists from the group Eyes off Eugene said they had identified vulnerabilities in the company’s systems, and pointed to numerous instances of federal immigration authorities accessing the network in other cities, often without local police’s knowledge.
Springfield officials never turned their cameras on – but said they had identified one instance where the devices were inadvertently activated.
Eugene used their Flock cameras for several months and Police Chief Chris Skinner said the system had helped them close dozens of cases, including violent felonies.
In a press conference Tuesday, Skinner said Flock was one of multiple vendors that provided this technology and the city may consider it again in the future."In this day and age, with a contemporary police department like this, not having that piece of technology just puts us behind the curve," he said.
