Good morning, good morning, good morning.

Okay.

We have a quorum.

Hey, Chief.

Wheels.

Okay.

Let me get my sheet here.

Okay.

Yeah, it was okay.

Madam Clerk.

Madam Clerk.

Do we have a quorum?

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Will the public safety committee of Cleveland City Council please come to order?

Madam Clerk, do we have a quorum?

Please call the roll.

Present.

Present.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

We are here today.

First of all, I want to welcome everyone who's here.

If you haven't been here to Cleveland City Council before, this is the people's house, and you're more than welcome to be here at any time, especially for our committees in the council general meeting that we have on Monday nights.

The rules of engagement today will be just this.

Anyone standing, we're asking everybody to be across, go across the hall.

And so you can uh stage yourself outside or be prepared to come in to testify.

Everyone will be given three minutes.

We ask that everyone identify where they're from, and especially if they are a Cleveland resident, what ward they live in.

The council members will be given ten minutes each for questioning and comment, and then again, if you need more time, we will put you back on the list because today is very important.

So let me just get started here by saying uh the council president asked that this ordinance be referred back to the safety committee for a more thorough review and discussion so that the committee can make an informed decision after review of data not available to the committee at the last time we heard the legislation.

Are there any objections to hearing ordinance six eighty-three-2026 being referred back to committee?

Any objections?

No objections.

Thank you very much.

Then we will move forward.

Um, and so we already have the we know who is here.

Um I'm gonna call upon the safety director at this time, but let me say this before I um I am asked for the director's comments.

Um again, we're here to discuss ordinance six eighty-three-2026 uh being proposed by Mayor Bibb and the Department of Public Safety.

Uh again, the council president asked us to hear this.

Um to the director of public safety.

Does the mayor still want this legislation?

That's correct.

Okay.

Um in addition, I want to clarify the process here in council for all, because there's some confusion, as I've learned from the viewing public and people who've contacted my office and I've entered into discussions with the the council by law.

We cannot hire, fire, deploy, or administer.

We provide the funding for a legislative action and the budget.

The flock legislation that is before us today has come from the mayor and the public safety uh administration and not from city council, did not originate in city council.

So we're here to hear that piece and hopefully to get additional information.

So, Director, would you care to comment first and then we're gonna ask for public comment again because we know that there are folks who might have to go on to back to work or whatever the case may be.

So we want to get public comment out of the way, but you want to open up first.

Yes, uh, thank you, uh Chair and uh council members.

Uh thank you for giving us the opportunity to uh to talk about this legislation, which is extremely important as you know.

Uh 683-2026.

And again, good morning, uh safety chair and uh committee members.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss automated license plate readers or ALPRs technology currently used by the division of police since their installation in the city of Cleveland in 2023.

The L the ALPRs have played a crucial role in helping the division arrest violent offenders.

This technology has also been instrumental in locating missing persons and assisting in amber alert cases.

ALPR data supports investigations into violent crimes, aids in the recovering stolen vehicles, locates abducted children and adults with cognitive impairments, provides investigators with valuable leads and hit skip uh cases.

Captain James O'Malley, president of FOP Logum Rate, and a current sworn member of the division of police, expressed in a letter of support to counsel that if the division had access to this technology during his tenure as officer in charge of the accident investigation unit, and I'm going to quote quote I cannot begin to count how many serious hit skip accidents could have been solved with a tool like FLOC, end quote.

Moreover, ALPR data enhances operations at the real-time crime center.

We have individuals here from the real-time crime center, which is important to hear from them.

They're the end users.

And provides our detectives with objective data complementing video analysis and digital forensic capabilities and capacities.

Consisting of a report comparing case closure rates before and after flock implementation, and a memo regarding data request.

I understand there are concerns about privacy and potential violations of the Fourth Amendment.

I want to assure you that the division of police has implemented safeguards and accountability measures.

These include role-based access controls, comprehensive audits, and compliance reviews.

Personnel's or personnel are provided prohibited from using ALPRs for personal purposes, personal purposes, journalized surveillance, and First Amendment uh activities, reproductive rights or immigration enforcement.

As stated, data is retained for 30 days unless it is tied to an investigation.

And all searches are logged and subject to auditing.

At the previous safety committee hearing, several cases were highlighted regarding the use of ALPR.

We assure you that the ALPR technology coupled with good police work has been instrumental in bringing offenders to justice and is a detailed in a document provided to council by Caigo County prosecutor Michael O'Malley.

It's important to clarify that ALPR technology and the surveillance cameras located throughout the city of Cleveland are two distinct systems that serve different purposes, although they can complement each other.

ALPR is a vital tool used by investigators to accomplish their mission, which is to act as guardians of the Cleveland community by enforcing the laws, maintaining order, protecting lives, property, and rights of all people.

We're going to talk about the technology itself and the importance of it.

Chief's going to get into more of the safeguards that we have in place, but I know that you want to have public comments.

That's my statement for now.

Thank you.

And I thank you, and we're going to be getting comment from all the other members of the administration that are here, but I do want to get into public comment because we do have I believe about 23 25 people on this list.

And again, each person will be given three minutes to testify.

Okay, thank you.

And she's for I'm going to agree the first group, so everyone knows where they're at.

Jennifer Blakene, Brenda Bickerstaff, Mary Maloney, Walt Gart.

If I if I pronounce that, please kill that name.

I apologize.

That's going to be the first four up.

Three minutes each.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Um, Councilman and committee for allowing us to speak and for putting us first, because I have to leave right away for a client.

And my technology, um, as most of us probably aware, didn't work well.

Excuse me.

Indicate where you live and what's what we do.

Cleveland resident in your ward 10.

Good.

Um, yeah, I have to leave right away.

So thank you so much for making public comment available now.

Um my tech didn't work because tech doesn't always work.

And as we know, we've got lots of cases of that that I won't be talking to.

But anyway, um, hopefully please forgive me for my last minute note here.

Um my message.

Um, but I want to propose that the public safe that public safety includes protecting the privacy of citizens, and I uh up I ask you to uphold the responsibility.

Um public safety is not limited to violations of person and property, and I cite how the police department, you know, police officers come to protect our rights of um the Fourth Amendment rights to demonstrate and freedom of speech at demonstrations, and we appreciate that.

And that's an example of how my constitutional rights are upheld by public safety.

Um's cameras photograph where whereas Flock violates my privacy at every turn.

Their cameras photograph every passing vehicle, catalog the images, and make them searchable, allowing investigate investigators to determine where a vehicle traveled and when the data can determine what doctor appointments I go to, whom I associate with, what religious or political institutions I and we participate in, even where we spend the night.

This is an extreme violation of our privacy.

I ask you to defend that right by ending the use of Flock camera.

We may be able to trust the restrictions and intentions of this cook um Cleveland Police Department to limit data sharing, but we absolutely do not trust Flock or the federal agencies of this unlawful administration.

The data collected is not safe from federal agencies or anyone who has a flock count contract without legitimate cause.

And a researcher reports that Cleveland Heights data has been searched under the term protests.

What relig legitimate reason could they have?

I wonder.

And if I am if in order to search that information of my location, warrants are required in order to do a limited search to a specific incident that affects the public good and not just free access to my information.

So I ask you again to please support um to not support Flock.

Um I don't um believe we know have lots of incidences, and I know we'll have some great information that I won't report now, but we um know that there uh has not been um any real improvement in our public safety, and I think it's an excuse for police department to sit back and snooze such things like what's happening, like Stephanie Ward, um Stephanie has Jones identified in her ward that we need action flock cameras, um, not an excuse to not do um your job.

So please include in your job um protecting our privacy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Michael O'Malley, prosecutor of Caga County.

Do we have the people of Lock are here?

Because that's what we need to have in the table.

I don't have them here, then it doesn't mean any.

Okay, I don't know if they're not again.

Morning, Mr.

Safety Chair, the men and women from the Cleveland Division of Police and Spectators.

I come here as your county prosecutor, not to advocate for one vendor or another.

I am here to just tell this committee without LPR technology, you can rest assured that your neighborhood will be more dangerous, more violent individuals will not be apprehended, and the overall safety of this community will plummet.

I was on my morning walk this morning, and I asked Sirius simple question.

Give me a list of the top ten most violent communities in our country.

Cleveland Falls at number seven.

When I was on this council 25 years ago, we had two thousand police officers in the city of Cleveland.

Two thousand.

I sat in this committee room on this committee when around 2001, 2002, the city was forced to lay off 350 police officers.

And as a body, we were frightened at the concept that we would be down to 1,650 officers.

We're now about 1150.

Again, I don't advocate for any vendor.

Some of the issues that I have seen and read about concerning federal agencies accessing this data is also troubling to me.

Watching the slaughter of two innocent human beings in Minneapolis disgusted me.

But watching dozens and dozens of videos each month of people in our own community being violated, shot, murdered.

And the only answer to those violent crimes being solved are LPRs.

The thought that we may take away the best tool that this community has now with 1,150 officers, 40 of whom are out at the airport, right?

So we're probably down to 1,100.

We don't have the leg power anymore, the investigative abilities to solve all these crimes without LPRs.

It's nuts.

So again, I am not here to advocate for any one vendor.

This this past weekend there was three individuals shout out in Blaine's ward.

One's dead.

Okay this weekend.

Three shot.

It's your job to provide CPD with the tools to do their job.

It's my job to prosecute those cases when they come to me.

But you will be endangering and decreasing the overall safety of every resident with which you have committed to serve.

Thank you.

Don't go away, Mike.

First of all, I appreciate the information that you have provided to all members, all members have it in their possession, a printed copy broken down by Ward, and I appreciate the discussions that you and I have had around this issue running up to today, and the information you have provided.

The issue is not, as I've come to the realization after talking to a wide range of people.

The issue is not the license plate readers.

The issue is Flock.

That's the issue.

I'm sorry, what was that?

The issue is Flock.

The provider.

This is the legislation that was presented to us, and you know, as a member of this body, we're here to review the legislation.

We also have a series of amendments that we will be providing later after testimony, which we are hoping that will draw the wagons around the provider and also indicate to the administration within a time frame, which we would like them to go out for RFQs, RFPs.

The issue is not the license plate readers.

We know the importance of them, and I looked at the cases that you provided in my own ward, and that one specific terrible case where that individual ran over that child and then went on the lamb.

Um and it was through the license plate readers, they were able to identify where he was and make that arrest.

And I was there that day when that child was hit.

So I'm very much aware of the importance of the license plate readers.

The issue before us and the administration is the company that is providing the data.

Again, and that's not my issue.

My issue is the technology.

I understand that.

And this committee has the ability to put guardrails on.

I hope that will narrow the focus and take the federal government out of Cuyahoga County.

Right.

And we're gonna attempt to do that later as we get into amendments.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

Uh Miss Brenda Bickerstaff.

Okay.

And you tell when you get to the table, all the uh all the speakers, presenters, when you get to the table, tell us when you're ready.

So we want to make sure you get the sufficient amount of time.

Good morning, everyone.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm Brenda Bickerstaff.

I live in Kevin's ward, Ward 9, Glennville, woo-hoo.

Um I'm on the Cubs.

And the reason why, because as an investigator, some of this cameras has vindicated some of our clients that was accused of a crime.

Uh three weeks ago, I pulled some footage that proved that our client didn't do a murder.

And it was clear that you could see it wasn't our client.

So that helped.

Now, you say you got safeguards.

But this is the thing.

Who who was the safeguard and watching the information in the data?

The police department.

And you guys know I don't trust you.

I'm just getting keeping it real.

I don't.

And the reason why is because I know for a fact that you have done things with that information to wrongfully convict people.

And that's a problem.

And when you won't convict someone, and they're gone away from their families and their friends and their children, you destroy them.

And they'll come back, and no amount of money can bring them back mentally because they suffer for trauma.

I'm just telling you.

Yes, right.

So I'm on the cuffs with it.

Due to the fact because the way it's set up, and I get you got restraints, but who's in charge of the restraints?

And what are the details of the restraints?

Who is it?

It's up in the air.

I don't because I know.

And you cannot use technology to do away with crime.

You got to get out there and do your job.

You're a patrol.

Sometimes you got to walk the beat.

You say you're afraid because of the times.

Guess what?

Put on plain clothes.

I'm not a pop cop, I'm an investigator, but sometimes I wear wigs when I go in high crime areas.

And guess what?

I've been doing it almost 20 years.

And Kevin knows that.

Joe know that.

Because they've seen me.

They just didn't blow my cover.

Okay.

Remember, as an investigator, not a detective.

I'm not perpetrating.

I'm talking about criminal defense work.

So I'm just on the cuff with it.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

Now if you show me some information where it's gonna be transparent for the public, and we can have access to it every time you do it, and we can have a portal, they talk about a portal.

That we can access it so we can see what you're doing.

Then maybe but as it stands, I'm on the cups, and I want to make it clear where I'm at with that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mary Maloney and then Walt.

Can you hear me now?

When you're ready, tell us when you're ready.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Mary Maloney.

I am a Ward 10 resident.

I'm here on behalf of multiple Ward 10 residents who can't be here today because they have to work.

Flock safety markets itself as a public safety tool, but the evidence tells a much more complicated story.

The ACL and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have extensively documented how this system enables warrantless tracking of ordinary drivers across thousands of agencies with a single database query.

While Fox Flock promotes the technology as a crime fighting resource, it functions as a nationwide surveillance network that local governments do not fully control once they opt in.

The consequences are not hypothetical here in our own region.

Activists have uncovered hundreds of immigration-related queries and law with law enforcement agencies logging 273 immigration searches as the reason.

187 of those were in January alone.

When a community using Flock works directly with ICE, every other community in the network is also sharing data with ICE, whether they want to or not.

Closer to home, Cleveland audit logs revealed more than a million searches each month by police nationwide, including federal agencies and the city itself was compelled to ban immigration searches and implement reproductive care filters after discovering how this data was used.

The problem is those filters are easily circumvented.

The hardware itself poses independent security concerns.

Researchers demonstrated that by pressing a button on the back of a flock device in a specific sequence, Wi-Fi access point a Wi-Fi access point is created that grants full access to the device.

The cameras store hard-coded Wi-Fi credentials transmitted in unencrypted plain text, and they run on a version of Android that was discontinued in 2021 and carries hundreds of known vulnerabilities.

Senators Ron Wyden and Raja Krishnamurti have called on the FTC to investigate Flock safety for negligently exposing Americans' personal data, noting that Flock does not require its law enforcement customers to use multi-factor authentication.

No matter what assurances the company provides, once cameras are installed, the data the city does not truly control the data they generate.

At least 30 localities have deactivated their flock cameras or canceled their contracts since the beginning of 25, including Cambridge, Eugene, Santa Cruz, Dayton Flagstaff, and that number continues to grow.

In Stanton, Virginia, the city cur terminated its contract after Flock's own CEO referred to critics as being part of a quote, coordinated attack seeking to defund the police and normalized lawlessness.

That's a statement that reveals a great deal about how the company views the community it serves.

It's also worth noting that who funds this company.

Flock safety's most recent funding round was led by Andreas and Horowitz and included the founders' fund, two venture firms that have been vocal supporters of the current federal administration whose politics are well documented.

Inviting a corporation with those financial ties into your public safety infrastructure is a decision that serves scrutiny.

Finally, Flock has been caught lying to city councils around the country.

Reputable governments don't do business with disreputable companies.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Walt.

Come on, safety committees.

American citizens.

Tell us where you live, Walt.

Give me a second there.

Good morning.

My name is Walt.

I live in Ward 14.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I am here to strongly oppose the renewal of the Flock contract.

This isn't just my personal opinion.

The ACLU, an organization that has been more than a century defending civil liberties and constitutional rights, has repeatedly warned about the dangers of mass surveillance technology like these.

So let me ask counsel a simple question.

How would you feel if residents submitted public record requests to receive reports showing your daily movements?

Where you went, who you met with, what time you arrived at City Hall, and when you left.

Most people would consider that invasion of privacy.

Why should residents be held to a different standard?

A free society is not one where government engages in dragnet surveillance of everyone, regardless of suspicion.

Privacy is not a privilege reserved for elected officials.

It is a constitutional rights.

Many residents also have concerns about how this contract has been pursued.

Public trust was damaged when former Councilman McCormick left office to work for Flock, and the city subsequently attempted to award the company a two million dollar no-bid contract.

Whether intended or not, that sequence raised serious questions about transparency and accountability.

What is perhaps most alarming is that after the contract expired last week, the cameras reportedly remained active and continued collecting data.

If the service is supposedly free during a grace period, it raises an obvious question.

If we're not the customers, are we the product?

History should teach us to be skeptical whenever government asks us to trade liberty for security.

After 9-11 surveillance powers were dramatically expanded under the Patriot Act.

Yet years later, we learned that vast amounts of information on innocent Americans had been collected and retained while yielding remarkable little in the way of results.

Once surveillance infrastructure is built, it rarely shrinks, it grows.

There are effective alternatives that respect both public safety and constitutional rights.

Tools that requires require probable cause, judicial oversight, and search warrants before tracking people's movements.

Clevelanders deserve a local government that serves as a check on government overreach, not one that bends the knee to a lawless administration and adopts the same surveillance surveillance practices that erode our constitutional freedoms.

I urge you to reject this contract renewal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mark Smith, Brandon Owens, Aaron Phillips, and Eugene Ward in that order.

Antoine.

Council President has.

He's coming up.

If I could just make a note to all of the speakers, get really cozy with the microphone.

You got to get real close.

Thank you very much.

Tell us when you're ready.

I'm ready.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um, I'm Antoine Carrington.

Uh member of the church community in various churches in Cleveland.

I'm sorry I can't hear you, Miss Chairman.

And do you tell us where you live, please?

Thank you.

Can you pull it up?

You probably have to talk with your outside voice.

There's this button on.

Okay.

Everybody has to do that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes.

Um, I'm a resident of Maple Heights, but I do a lot of activity and work in the city of Cleveland, uh, Ward 10, as well as other wards.

Um, I work with various churches.

I do admire how the cameras did help solve the break-ins that a lot of our churches in our communities were having.

We we don't have, as uh was stated earlier by the prosecutor, we don't have the manpower to put officers out and walk around and keep us safe.

But these cameras do give them a little help in situations like this where we could still be dealing with this today, where our uh congregation is being terrorized while they're in worship because someone's breaking in the cars and stealing cars, and that there were even shots fired at one of those scenes.

But this was taken care of because of those cameras, and you know, we we we like I said, you know, we can't depend on technology, but when it's here and it's at our fingertips, we have to use it.

We we we can't be afraid of being seen doing something that we don't want someone to see us doing when when uh the bottom line of this is that it is helping with crime, it is helping catch people that are warned for violent crimes, it is helping people who are wanted for terrorizing other citizens.

So, you know, as a member of the church community, I I say these cameras are a big help, and we we should we should stand behind this because I want to feel safe going to church.

I I want my my elderly family members to feel safe.

I want to feel safe if my kid wants to go out of church and go across the street and get a bag of chips.

I don't feel it's it should be that much of a dangerous situation just because we're low on police right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Pastor Mark Smith.

Tell us when you're ready, sir.

I am ready.

Okay.

Uh the members of the committee, uh, to all the city officials, and in fact, to all my uh father's children.

I say to you, good morning.

My name is Pastorslash Councilman Mark Smith.

Today I sit before you wearing two hats.

Pastor of the Sanctuary Baptist Church located at 4004 East 131st Street in Cleveland, and councilman for Ward 3 in the city of Garfield Heights.

While these are two different roles, they share one degree of commonality, protecting the people we serve.

That is why I support flop safety cameras.

These cameras are not simply an investment in technology, they are an investment in public safety.

Every family deserves to feel safe leaving home in the morning and returning home at night.

Every child deserves to play in a neighborhood where parents have peace of mind.

Every business, every church, every resident deserves protection from those who would steal, vandalize or threaten their livelihood.

Flock cameras are one proven tool that helps make those goals a reality.

As pastor of the Sanctuary Baptist Church, located on one of Cleveland's highest crime intersections, I have witnessed firsthand what cameras can do, and I'm not speaking from something I read in a report.

I'm speaking from experience.

Since cameras were installed in our area, we have seen a noticeable reduction in criminal activity.

Their presence has made a difference.

The truth is flock cameras provide reliable investigative evidence that often would not exist otherwise.

Criminals know that.

These cameras give law enforcement critical leads by identifying vehicles connected to crimes.

They have helped recover stolen vehicles, locate missing people, and solve serious crimes that might otherwise have remained unsolved.

As a councilman in one of the largest suburbs in Cuyahoga County, I also have the opportunity to review the results.

More than 39%, and flop cameras have been one important part of that success.

I understand that some people have some concerns about privacy.

Those concerns deserve to be heard.

But in Garfield Heights, we have demonstrated that public safety and constitutional rights can coexist.

We have clear policies, limited data retention, strict access controls, and public oversight.

Technology should always be accompanied by accountability.

I stand here today to say that I am in support of the flock cameras, and please, by all means, let's make that happen.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Pastor.

Bishop Owens.

Tell us when you're ready, Bishop.

I am ready.

Thank you.

Good morning to everyone.

Protocol being established already.

I stand to you or present to you this morning as a young pastor of the city of Cleveland, Ohio.

Not only am I a pastor of Second Ebenezer Baptist Church at 1881, East 71st Street, Crawford Road, between Chester and Huff, I'm also a resident of that area.

I was born and raised there.

My children, their grandparents, play there.

I went to school.

I traveled those streets.

I have been in this area all of my life.

And I am speaking now from the prospect on the council of the fact that we need safety.

There must be things and places put in place that will allow us to make sure our children have safe time playing.

As a pastor, my church mothers are fearful of coming out at night for Bible study and revival because we don't know what's going to happen.

I believe with our cameras, we will have a better chance of revitalizing our community, the Huff community of which I serve, uh, which some seems to be dying.

I say it is living.

Seems to be coming alive simply because of the fact that we have some safety things that need to be put in place.

It is my prayer, it is my ask of you that you assist us in helping to keep our community safe in every area.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bishop.

Pastor Aaron Phillips.

Okay.

And then after Pastor Phillips will be past Bishop Eugene Ward.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Pastor Aaron Phillips.

I live at 2063 East 36th Street in the city of Cleveland.

Councilman Richard Starr is my great, excellent, fantastic councilman is also my friend.

He's doing a great job.

Also pastor in 11318 Miles Avenue in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, where Kevin Bishop is my councilman.

And on most days, my best friend is Councilman Joe Jones.

So I just want to get let all y'all know that.

We're here again.

And I just let me tell y'all for the clergy, July is usually a slow month because people are on vacation.

We're getting revitalized and organized again, getting ready for the fall.

But this July, we're very busy because we are concerned about our community.

When what most of us who are here today, when we leave here, we're going out to another meeting with our congressman to talk about the importance of getting out together to vote and organize.

I am very disturbed that we have let a safety issue divide us.

If there's one thing that we don't need in the city of Cleveland right now, is any division, and there is no reason why there should be two sides of people who want to support safety in our community.

I really don't understand that, and somebody needs to explain that to me.

I live and work in this city.

In Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, they have these cameras.

The school district in the city of Cleveland has these cameras.

I don't even know why we're taking our time to do all of this when we all know the plight of our community in the city of Cleveland.

We have a safety issue.

That's why many people are running from our city because our city isn't safe enough.

Our council peoples tell us that all the time.

Councilman Polinsick, Councilman Joe Jones, they tell us the need for us to have safety.

Why would not we want to continue to make sure we have safety in our community?

It is time for us to stand together.

There should be, we're there's no such thing as Democrats and Republicans and black folks and white folks when it comes to safety in our community.

We all want to be safe.

Please, that's right.

Please support these flock license plate reader cameras in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you to the chair and to the committee as well as to the safety department.

I'm coming here today.

I want to let you know, first of all, we many of the pastors agreed with councilwoman Stephanie House Jones when she gave her statement when we were here a couple of weeks ago, because we need to see results.

You're not, you don't have a problem with the cameras.

You got a problem with the results.

And we realize that if you're going to spend a quarter of a million dollars on these cameras, you want to see some results from the people who are going to be working with it.

Councilman Chairman, you you mentioned the fact that we need to be making sure that we put up more boards and board up places that we're that are uh not making contributions to our community.

And I'm sorry, I'm Bishop Eugene Ward, Ward 2, Greater Love Baptist Church, that I am here right in the city of Cleveland, and we're celebrating 44 years in our anniversary at this time.

We we've got to do more to make sure that this city is safe.

The prosecutor talked about us being seven, number seven in unsafe cities, but we're 176 in the unsafest cities in this country.

And we've got to do more to make sure that all of us, even if you're against the cameras, that all of us are safe, east side and west side, and as much as I travel through this county, I know my license plate is red all of the time.

But I'm doing what I need to do, and I don't really have much of a choice in people knowing where I am or where I'm doing, because of the fact that I know that I'm making sure that I'm abiding by the law.

I'm hoping and praying that we continue to make sure that flock cameras are in the city, that they are doing their job, and that we have responsible people who are watching over them and caring for them so that they are not misusing information in this city.

And many of the incidents that have been questioned and have been spoken about this morning are on these cards, and I was hoping that I could share them with you, but they're on the card so that many of your questions are answered, that flock camera has been able to answer to us as well.

God bless you.

But we need to make sure that this city is a better place to live and a safe place for all of our residents, regardless of where we stand.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bishop.

Pastor Prince.

In this order, Pastor Prince, Randy Cunningham, Bishop Chewy, Breen Adams, and Rebecca Garcia in that order.

Who?

Tell us when you're ready, Pastor.

I'm ready.

I'm Reverend R.

A.

Prince, pastor of the Simile Baptist Church in Ward One, also the president of the Baptist Minister Ministers Conference that represents around 82 churches.

How many of you remember the name of Annie Ally Annie Dufries?

I call those names to you because Annie Dufries is no longer with us.

But it was flocked cameras that was able to help catch the person who murdered her.

Helped catch that young man that did that.

I I'm from rural Missouri.

Times have changed when I moved to Cleveland.

I am an avid hunter and fisherman.

But when we moved to Cleveland, the use of guns was different.

Communication was different.

We used to be able to talk to one another and get that information now.

We don't get that now.

It's called Deer Park, Missouri.

In this community, I don't think anyone wants to have bad advice or bad comment.

When I told some of the people of our conference and what they thought about flock cameras, they were more against license plate readers than flock cameras.

So as I heard today, I I think we may be talking about two separate things, maybe.

No.

No, sir.

There's the same thing.

Yes, sir.

The privacy of license plate readers is a concern to a lot of people.

But flock cameras and helping keep control of our city is not.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

And I hope your decision is made wisely.

Thank you, Pastor.

Thank you.

Randy Cunningham.

And again, I want to reinforce them.

Please let us know where you live, or if you're representing a given group or organization.

And then please speak loudly into the microphone.

I continue to get text that it's tough to hear online.

Yes.

Yeah, I will.

Mr.

Cunningham, tell us when you're ready, sir.

I'm ready right now.

My name is Randy Cunningham.

I am a former city employee.

I am a resident of Ward 12.

And on West Boulevard.

Are uh, I guess living in very nice neighborhoods and have very little experience with crime.

But my wife and I in our married life, we've been held up by gun at gunpoint.

We've had our house broken into numerous times, and it's not unusual to find us uh listening tonight at night to gunfire.

Um regarding the technology, I have never heard of a security, a police, or a military agency that doesn't have enough technology.

And what they're will tell any critics of that technology is that either you give us what you want what we want, or civilization will collapse and we will be living in a dystopian hellhole.

I think the reason, instead of all the details about Flock, that there are so many people upset about it, is that we live in a surveillance state.

A surveillance state that has been that started after World War One and has continued to do only one since, and that is to grow and become more powerful and more uh intrusive.

And recently we had a hundred FBI agents come in and raid the homes and businesses of the Ohio organizing collaborative.

This is typical FBI, which swears that it's an law enforcement off uh organization, but is also a political police force.

We also have um so that is why people are so concerned about this.

You have you wanted to see you've heard of uh most of you George Orwell's 1984.

This is big brother now.

We all carry them, they all tied in to security system.

So that's why I'm against thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh Bishop Chewy.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes, tell us when you're ready.

My name is Bishop Chewy.

I'm a resident of Ward 8, and I'm here to speak plainly about accountability and the lack of it.

This city council is being asked again to renew a contract with Flock Safety, a private surveillance company that will collect and store data on every vehicle that passes its cameras.

Residents going to work to worship to the doctor, and once that data leaves Cleveland, neither the council nor the mayor's office has any meaningful power to protect it.

That is not a hypothetical risk, it is a structural certainty.

Consider what happened in Texas.

Scanning footage from over 83,000 cameras across multiple states, including states where abortion where abortion is fully legal.

She wasn't a violent criminal, she was a woman making a private medical decision, and Flox infrastructure made it possible to hunt her across state lines.

Cleveland cannot promise that won't happen here.

Not to a woman driving to a clinic, not to an immigrant visiting family, not to a protester whose plate was logged outside of City Hall.

Once the data enters Flox Network, this administration has no authority over who accesses it and no power to pull it back.

You are consenting on behalf of every Cleveland resident to the permanent collection of their movements and then surrendering your ability to protect them from what happens next.

When the harm comes and it will, residents will remember who had the chance to stop it and didn't.

Vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Brynn Adams.

Hi, my name is Bryn Adams, and I'm a resident of Ward 12.

And I want to say first of all that I'm really frustrated to be here.

I am frustrated that despite a three to one vote against renewing the city's flock contract two weeks ago, Flock is for some reason getting a do-over.

I am also extremely frustrated that despite the contract expiring last Monday, June 29th, the cameras continue to operate.

I want to stress this point.

As we speak, there are 100 private devices just sitting out on our streets, continuously ingesting data about Cleveland residents without a permit or active contract with any government entity and feeding that information into a massive national database run by AI-powered software.

These cameras should be disabled and taken down, and the fact that the city is instead letting them continue to run uninterrupted and with no legal oversight is appalling.

Because the issue at hand is not just that these cameras are a waste of resources, although they are, but that they actively endanger our community.

Data collected on this scale and in this manner is vulnerable to abuse and misuse at every level by federal agencies seeking to extend authoritarian control by other police departments all around the country who are willing to violate laws in other jurisdictions to conduct their own investigations by cops with girlfriends they just want to keep an eye on, by the vendor themselves for purposes they can never be forced to disclose, and by bad actors operating outside the system entirely.

I also want to note that this problem is not unique to Flock.

It is a problem with ALPR technology writ large, and any private vendor selling this technology is fundamentally compromised in the same ways.

Chief Drummond, in the last hearing, you said that you've had no complaints of misconduct.

But for this body to take that statement at face value and assume that no complaints means no wrongdoing is naive at best and negligent at worst.

And do you really believe that an audit of some small percentage of Flock searches every month is guaranteed to turn up any and every instance of an officer just looking up his ex's plates?

Do you honestly think that checking a box on the back end of Flox user interface to screen out searches related to immigration or abortion is going to prevent those searches from happening just under increasingly vague and misleading search terms?

Do you genuinely trust a private company with a demonstrated track record of lying to customers to honor any restrictions curtailing their use of our data?

I don't, which is why I brought a gift for you today.

And I would like you to cover up these unlawfully operating cameras immediately.

Vote against renewing this contract, and protect us, your constituents, by bagging the ALPRs and banning mass surveillance in our city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

We have Rebecca Garcia in this order, Tessa Wan, Trevor Chandler, and Fran Calify Franz, I believe.

Okay.

In that order.

Rebecca.

Yes, Rebecca.

Garcia.

Right here.

Okay, go ahead.

Um afternoon, buenos días.

Um my name is Rebecca Garcia.

I am the campaign and policy manager for Avanzamos Unidos and Avanzamos Unidos Action Fund.

I am a resident of Ward 3.

Um, as the daughter of Colombian immigrants, I was raised with a deep appreciation for the sacrifices my parents made in pursuit of a better life.

They came to the United States believing in the enduring promise of the American dream, the belief that through hard work and determination, one could build a life defined by freedom, opportunity, security, and security from political persecution.

This story is not unique.

Every day, immigrants from around the world come to this country, come to this beautiful city of Cleveland, driven by that same hope.

Many are fleeing violent conflicts, oppressive governments, and authoritarian regimes that rely on pervasive surveillance to monitor, intimidate, and control their populations.

They seek refuge in a nation where they believe they can live without fear of being constantly watched, tracked, or targeted simply for striving to provide a better future for their families.

It is precisely because of these experiences that the expansion of the flock safety system and infrastructure raises profound concerns for Latina and immigrant communities here in Cleveland.

Across this the nation, surveillance technologies, including ALPRs, facial recognition systems, and expansive data sharing platforms have increasingly become intertwined with federal immigration enforcement.

Companies such as Flock Safety have developed systems that allow information collected by local law enforcement agencies to be accessed and shared across jurisdictions, creating pathways through its circles local surveillance data can ultimately support federal immigration investigations.

These examples illustrate an important reality.

Information collected locally does not necessarily remain local.

Data gathered through municipal surveillance systems can be shared, searched, or access accessed in ways that ultimately contribute to the tracking, detention, and deportation of immigrant community members, often without their knowledge, consent, or meaningful public oversight.

These consequences extend far beyond the questions, questions of privacy.

When communities fear that routine activities, driving to work, taking children to school, or participating in civic life may expose them to immigration enforcement, trust in public institutions begins to erode.

These very systems promote intended to promote public safety, can instead can instead undermine it by fostering fear, isolation, and distrust.

No family should have to live under the constant threat that ordinarily ordinary daily activities could result in separation from loved ones.

True public safety is built through trust, accountability, and investment in our communities.

Cleveland has the opportunity to lead by demonstrating that public that protecting civil liberties and fostering safe and thriving communities are not competing priorities, they're intertwined.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your testimony.

Tessa One.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment today.

I live in Clark Fulton Clark Fulton Ward 14, and as a mother of a young child, I care deeply about safety in our neighborhoods.

I'm not against the use of individual security cameras, but I do strongly oppose automated license plate readers like Flock, whose costs truly outweigh the benefits.

Our Flock system has been in place for years, and yet everyone in this room can agree that many of our neighborhoods still do not feel safe.

At the last safety committee meeting where this legislation was voted down, I spoke about reports of officers from across the country being able to easily abuse Flock and other ALPR systems to stalk former romantic partners because of the absence of a warrant requirement.

Some of these cases were only discovered by private citizens and journalists who noticed patterns of abuse in public records.

And we've all heard the assurances that no abuse is happening.

But the administration itself admitted at the last meeting to regularly using the technology for purposes outside of investigating violent crime, including including monitoring and disciplining police officers for leaving work early.

Did anyone here know that Cleveland's ALPRs were being used for monitoring city staff before that admission was made?

I didn't.

And this is just one example of how real oversight over the thousands of warrantless flock searches happening every month is just not possible.

The administration still has not provided any public numbers on the impact on our crime or any explanation about the tens of thousands of searches of our data which were simply labeled other or investigation.

The US Supreme Court just issued a ruling declaring that it's unconstitutional for law enforcement to obtain location data for all cell phone users in a particular area because of our protected Fourth Amendment rights.

And ALPR data is no different.

The city should just not collect data about everyone's daily movements without a warrant.

And particularly under President Trump, whose FBI director Cash Patel recently announced a plan to pay up to 36 million dollars to access ALPR data nationwide.

This would give Cash Patel the ability to more easily track vehicles in real time across the country without a warrant.

And it would give President Trump another tool to pursue his goals of detaining vulnerable immigrants, cracking down on political dissent, and securing more power for himself.

Even though the shock and awe headlines from Minnesota have faded away, ICE just made 10,000 immigrant arrests in five days just recently, to pay detaining people on their way to work or to the grocery store.

And Flock Safety has refused to comment on whether they will give the FBI what it's looking for.

So I would love to hear an answer on this from the Flock representative today.

Finally, inaccurate results have led to the unnecessary stops of innocent people.

A family in Colorado was stopped with four children aged six to seventeen being held at gunpoint and the children placed in handcuffs.

Municipalities have settled for millions of dollars in damages as a result of such incidents because Flock puts the liability onto cities like ours.

Please vote no on renewing Flock in Cleveland and instead invest in addressing the root causes of crime in our neighborhoods.

We all want Cleveland to be safe, and this is just simply not the solution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Trevor Burrus Trevor Burrus.

Good morning, Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Trevor Chandler, and I serve as the senior director of public affairs for Flock Safety.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to return and continue this conversation about the importance of public safety tools, about transparency and about accountability in the city of Cleveland.

Cleveland continues to see the impact of this investment in public safety technology just this past 4th of July weekend.

Flock LPR was used by Lakewood police to locate and arrest a suspect wanted in connection with a shooting at the Lakewood City Center shopping plaza.

Currently, Cleveland has a hundred LPR cameras, and internal usage today is concentrated in investigations and in the real-time crime center.

I wanted to be sure uh to note that CCTV cameras, which were a major topic of discussion uh in the last hearing, are separate from Flock's LPR cameras.

CCTV is a general video footage of inconsistent quality, whereas Flox LPR is high quality, purpose-built tool that contributes uh and captures objective vehicle information, including the license plate to help law enforcement develop leads connected to a vehicle in a crime.

In light of recent reports, I also wanted to share some key facts as it relates to guardrails that Flock provides uh as it relates around immigration.

First, Flock does not contract with ICE.

Uh we do not sell data.

Flock does not own or make any decision to sell uh or share Cleveland's data, decisions to share or on how to retain data or how long to retain data are solely at the decision of the city of Cleveland.

In fact, out of the top three LPR providers in the country, Flock is the only one that does not have a contract with ICE.

Second, in November of 2025, Flock introduced a search filter that allows communities to opt out of any searches related to immigration enforcement.

And that filter was activated for CPD on November 17th, 2025.

Additionally, as of June 2026, CPD chose to remove itself from Flock's nationwide sharing.

Uh this means rather than sharing more broadly across the country, they now only share with individual agencies they decide to share with.

If a comprehensive review of the network audit from November 17th, 2025 to date was done, it would confirm that the immigration filter was fully effective and CDP's system successfully obstructed all immigration-related searches uh attempts from that date forward.

Third, Flock uniquely audits uh offers audit assistance, which automatically flags irregularities with agency audits, adding another layer of accountability.

These commitments reflect a broader principle that the strongest public safety programs are the ones that pair technology with clear rules, local control, and transparent oversight.

In fact, Flock is the most transparent law enforcement tool in the country.

Community safety does not need to come at the expense of community values.

Cleveland can have both.

And believing that safety is a human right, the city can continue to use a tool that helps investigators generate timely leads while insisting on local policy.

We are happy to answer any questions that the committee may have moving forward.

Thank you.

Okay.

Fran.

I know the last name is difficult.

My name is Fran Cao Fadis.

I live in Ward 6.

I live on Larchmere Boulevard.

I am a board member or a participant in Shaker Alliance, Larchmere Community Association, Shed, Our Lady of Peace, 130th Safety Project, Larchmere Lighting Project, and Larchmere Porch Vest.

I say this basically because I want you to know I know my community.

On Mother's Day of this year, there was an incident at Kendall and Larchmere Boulevard.

At that point, 10,000 was stolen out of with merchandise out of an establishment.

Within an hour, the Shaker police, because that's the Shaker side, was able to access through the police department uh the camera that is across the street on the Cleveland side.

And they were able to get the license plate number, and within hours to track down the person who drove the perps away.

Contrast that to almost nine months ago when a uh foreign car dealership was broken into.

DNA was taken at that time.

It took nine months to have that DNA analyzed to find out the person who drove one of the cars away.

But that's not going to put anybody in jail.

That is not going to stop crime.

That is not going to have a conviction, because all we know is that person drove that car.

We didn't have cameras at that time.

So I cannot tell you how much I believe surveillance is really important.

I too am first generation American.

And I treasure my abilities.

And I also believe in our liberties.

I think both of them can be in conjunction and work together.

I know that Shaker has just tightened their contract, and I suggest that you perhaps take a look at some of the other communities and see what they have done to protect their community with new contracts.

Remember, your car has a computer in it.

It's following you anywhere.

And that can also be subpoenaed at any time.

But I'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm not raping, I'm not pillaging, I'm not destroying property.

So I'm very comfortable with my uh phone, with my computer in my car, and with the flock cameras.

I also want to say I go to the ward six meetings, and I will tell you both University Circle, Case Security, Cleveland Clinic Police have spoken at the Ward 6 meetings, saying how their campuses are safer today because of the Flock cameras.

If you and your infinite wisdom, and I appreciate the process here, and thank you.

Please bring back the Flock.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Scott Kalo, is it Scott?

Is Scott here?

See if he's across the hall.

Uh it's going to be Scott Kalo, Daryl Houston, uh Julian Roseman, and then um Joe Jones speaking on behalf of Reverend Jake and Reverend Jane um Jeff Jameson.

Who is come on Scott?

Okay.

Good morning.

I'm ready.

Good.

Go ahead.

I'm Scott.

I'm from Solon, but I have friends in Cleveland and I drive here regularly.

Last uh meeting concerning Flock, it was brought up that neither side had put forward a lot of evidence.

So I printed some out.

I have some extra copies of any of the regards to the mic.

Yes.

Um in the first half of 2026, according to the ALPR abuse library, there was reporting on at least 18 instances of ALPR abuse, most of which at least involving Flock.

That includes 11 instances of unauthorized access, eight of dragnet surveillance or fusion center sharing, and nine of personal abuse, stalking, or targeting.

Now that's only what's been caught and reported, and only so far this year.

Additionally, Flock Safety has made a number of false or misleading statements.

They've walked back promises not to allow federal agencies access to data and enabled the access without notifying cities.

They certified criminal justice information systems compliance, even though their cameras were easily hackable and didn't meet the security requirements.

And they use data gathered on the dark web, which is generally speaking illegally obtained, um, despite saying they were not.

Now we can talk all day about reassurances.

But the fact is it's missing the point because it doesn't matter, for example, if Flock doesn't directly sell data if that data is made available to subscribers of Flox services.

Um it doesn't mean much to talk about a crime that was solved using Flock cameras without evidence that that crime wouldn't have been solved without them.

And quite frankly, it doesn't mean anything to hear reassurances about privacy or security from Flock when they're lying all the time.

Um if we can't be kept safe without massive violations of our privacy, without putting our trust into untrustworthy tech companies, and without frankly sending our information to a fascist in the White House, we're not being kept safe anyway.

So I asked City Council to discontinue the flock contract.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Darrell Houston, then uh Julian Rosman Roseman, and then um Councilman Jones will be reading a letter from Reverend Jameson who had a leave.

Tell us when you're ready.

Uh I'm ready.

Um, my name is Darrell Houston.

Uh I'm an owner of a car wash and detail shop located in Harvard.

Uh Councilman Joe Jones' ward.

Uh, one of the things I just want to put on everybody's mind in this room and the viewers is that we have a common denominator in here, and I didn't hear a lot about it being mentioned.

Uh we do already have police cameras on polls, uh, and we do now have flock cameras on polls as well, and the taxpayers are on the hook for both of those sets of cameras.

But I've the one word that I did not hear in this room from anybody is where is the intervention and when are we going to invest in reducing some of the juvenile and adolescent crimes that's going on within the inner city?

Okay.

Cleveland Foundation has money to delegate to the activist in the community.

There's a lot of things that the churches can do in the community.

There's a lot of things that we can do in the community, and as a community, all nationalities, I think that we all can do a better job in getting more involved.

There's not one person probably sitting in this room that doesn't have a grandparent, that doesn't have a child, that doesn't have a grandchild, right?

We are all in this community to get this together as one.

I believe that the cameras are necessary, but I don't like some of the red tape with the cameras.

I am a victim of a gunshot wound in my head that's sitting here right now on the right side of my temple.

I am a victim of being wrongfully in prison.

I did 16 years wrongfully in prison.

I am a human being that desires to see this city thrive and see the residents be safe and see children play in the streets and parks like they once did when I grew up.

But what I do not understand is that we do not put things across the board for every entity of what we're sitting here talking about now.

The one common denominator, again, is the cameras do catch things, but that's after the fact that we have a victim, after the fact that we have a crime committed.

So, how effective do we really want to sit here and say that the cameras are?

Because if we have a person laying on the ground, we can't work that person back up and say, hey, we got the perpetrator.

Okay.

So let's pass the baton across the board for a safe community for our residents and our police officers.

Okay.

I always advocate 50-50 for what's right in the community.

And what's not right in this community is we're not investing enough in the inner city youth.

Period.

Point blank.

We have systematically taken out everything that these young men and women desire to have in their communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Julian Roseman, and then Julian.

Oh, there thank you.

Alrighty, ready.

So my name is Julianne Roseman, and I'm a resident and small business owner in Word 7.

Um, I'm here again from the last meeting.

It's very frustrating as another commenter mentioned to have to repeat the entire meeting to ask people who are not paid like you all at the table to be here.

This is your day job.

Good for you.

Uh wish I was being paid to be here.

Um, to take time out, and that's why there's only a handful.

I know 20 feels like a lot, but there's still only a handful of public that can come comment in the middle of the day.

Um, we don't support flock on a whole cameras don't prevent crime, as our um previous comments are made.

We do need to invest in our youth and our cities.

Um, you know, there's a lot of complaints in the last week, right?

It was really hot, we had power outages, the pools aren't all open.

That's the stuff that your residents want, and that would help reduce crime because it gives people a place to go and something to do, they're not frustrated.

Why do people commit crime?

Because they're desperate, they're not committing crime uh because they're you know well off and have a happy life and all their needs are met.

Their needs are not met, and that's why they're committing these crimes.

Uh, but those resources don't need to be for-profit companies whose goals are to increase shareholder value.

That's how a for-profit tech company works.

Their goal is to get as big as possible and then either go on the public stock exchange or sell to someone else and make their investors money.

We are not their investor, they're not in it for us.

Uh we are their product, they're our data is their product, and they're not going to always be honest.

You cannot trust a big tech company not to lie.

We know this from many other big tech companies.

It's not a surprise.

Um, it's sort of how business works, unfortunately.

And so we need to keep uh them out of our city and focus on nonprofit and government solutions that we control and have access to, and is just sort of built for the people by the people for the people.

And there's a lot of smart people in this city that could help us do that.

I think that's all I got to say.

I know I have more time, but uh I hope you continue to vote no.

Again, we already made this vote two weeks ago.

Keep it at keep keep the same vote.

Thank you.

Um Councilman Jones is going to read a letter from Reverend Jameson that had to leave, and again, you have three minutes just like all the other speakers, Councilman Jones, when when you're ready.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

On behalf of uh Reverend Jeff Jemison, here's his statements.

I serve as a pastor of Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church in Fremont as a vice president of the International Interdominational Ministerial Alliance of Ohio, where I work alongside with faith leaders and communities across our state.

As pastors, we spend our lives walking with people through some of their hardest moments.

We comfort families after acts of violence, support victims of crime, pay with grieving parents, and work every day to build stronger and safer neighborhoods.

Public safety is not an abstract policy issue for us.

It is deeply personal.

That's why I encourage you to continue Cleveland's partnership with Block Safety.

Technology alone cannot solve crime.

Strong families engage in neighborhoods and trusted relationships between communities and law enforcement will always be the foundation of public safety.

But when used responsibly, technology can help officers solve crimes more quickly, recover stolen vehicles, locate missing or endangered people, and provide families with answers when they need them most.

Just as important, these twos include important safeguards, flock cameras, do not use facial recognition or record conversations or record conversations.

They capture objective information about vehicles connected to crimes, and access is a limited, limited and audible.

Those protections matter because public safety and civil liberties should go hand in hand.

Our communities deserve both safety and accountability.

We should expect law enforcement to have effective twos while also expecting clear policies, oversight, and transparency, and how those twos are used.

Every day, churches across Ohio work to prevent violence before it happens by mentoring young people, supporting families, and bringing communities together.

Those efforts remain essential, but when a child goes missing, when a family member is abducted, or when a violent crime occurs, we also want law enforcement to have every responsible to available to bring someone home safely and hold those responsible accountable.

I respectively urge you to support the continuation of this program and keep this important public safety resource available for the people of Cleveland.

Thank you for your time and your service to the community.

Reverend Jeff Jameson and Mr.

Jameson, Mr.

Chairman, uh had to go and um pick up his wife from the airport.

That's the reason why he could not testify, and he appreciates the accommodation of the committee.

Thank you, Councilman.

Okay.

Um Sean McCairn.

Sean.

Then Lamont Thotson and then Terry Wang.

Those are the last three on our list.

Thank you, Chair.

Give me thank you.

Thank you, Chair Polentick and the committee for allowing me the opportunity to provide public comment today.

My name is Sean McCann, and I'm a resident of Ward 7, but I'm also here on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

We are located in Ward 5 in the Midtown neighborhood.

We've been there for decades.

And I am here to urge you to reject the proposed new contract.

Um since its founding in 2017, this very well financed and aggressively marketed corporation has been able to sign contracts with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies as of when I drafted this comment.

And estimates from crowdsourced websites such as DFLOC estimate the number of ALPRs in the country at over 100,000.

Although, you know, that's a crowdsourced estimate, so we gotta think that number is higher.

And I just say that to say that in nine years of this company's existence, and they're just one of like we've heard today, one of three um major vendors, there are other vendors, they've constructed what does equate to a mass surveillance network in this country, probably the largest in modern history.

And you know, I'll skip over uh my my comment by the way, I can I can provide to the committee, um, but I'll skip over some of what's already been said about what we've seen uncovered in Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, other communities around Cuyahoga County.

Uh the searches we've seen from out of state agencies that are enabled by Flocks Nationwide Data Sharing.

I do want to, I I believe I heard Mr.

Chandler's comment correctly that Cleveland is no longer opted into nationwide data sharing, but I think it's important for that to be okay.

Thank you.

I see that the nods.

Um, but I think you know, and still really important to note, like people before me have said, that these safeguards that are in place, the so-called safeguards, are reliant upon those who are conducting the audits, both in our Cleveland Division of Police and in other agencies.

Other agencies could be marking these searches with any number of search terms to get the information they're looking for.

That's just really important to understand why that safeguard does not hold up when we're talking about you know preventing people from conducting searches for immigration purposes for you know reproductive rights purposes.

Um there are a whole lot of other search terms you can use to get the information you're looking for.

And I do want to talk a little bit about to um our data retention.

30 days is a really long time to hang on to this data, and other states, other cities have limited that much more significantly.

Uh, you know, one recommendation is 48 hours because a whole month that exposes just a lot of a lot of privacy concerns uh when you're when you're hanging out of that data for a whole month, three weeks, whatever the case may be.

Um, and I do want to touch to you on, you know, I want to be clear.

I'm coming from the near west side, and you know, like county prosecutor said, like others have said, you know, I know that coming from my neighborhood, talking to folks who live across the east side, across the west side, you know, it's it's it might it might seem easy for me to say some of these things, but I think it's just important for us all to understand that what this company has done and what other companies are doing is creating a mass surveillance network that puts all of our privacy rights at risk no matter where you live in.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Um Mr.

Lamont Dobson.

Hello, Chief.

Tell us when you're ready.

Council, members of the division of police, our clergy, and all of the other citizens of Cleveland.

My name is Lamont Dotson.

I'm the chief of safe security for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

I am a 60-year member of Ward 2, and I'm a 30-year veteran with the Cleveland uh school district.

And so we all know that the Cleveland Division um Cleveland School District has flock cameras as well.

We have 200 can 201 cameras that we implemented some three years ago.

We use O C O FCC funding to implement those cameras for the protection of schools.

So my perspective and and sharing today is from a school emergency perspective.

In the event and when you hear of emergencies at schools, a cold blue lockdown, cold red lockdown.

Flock has been one of the tools that has been instrumental in us preventing additional incidents.

How so?

And I'll share a scenario.

Just recently, before the school year ended, we had a vehicle that came onto one of our properties.

It was a 13-year-old driving the vehicle.

The vehicle was stolen from one of our community um suburbs.

Flock indicated that the car was stolen.

The car, when we got the information on the vehicle, it was mentioned in the report that the gun was inside the vehicle when the car was stolen.

We immediately went into a cold red lockdown.

So that means shelter in place, no movement.

We immediately notified the Cleveland Division of Police.

We responded, we got there, we were able to not only safely secure the weapon, safely secure the vehicle, and also identify the individuals who were driving.

Without Flock in this process, this could have gone many, many ways.

So imagine sitting at work and you get a call that your child school is in a lockdown situation.

The first questions we asked is what are we gonna do about it?

What's being done about it?

And so with that opportunity, with the direct support of the Cleveland Division of Police responding, us being able to apprehend this young man, getting secured with the weapon, getting his parent there, releasing him, uh, one of the individuals to the parent, the parent, the individual who was uh driving the vehicle was detained and arrested and charged, and the school was then lifted out of the co-red.

Do you know how good it feels to see those kids come out high-fiving you?

Thank you, there's no way we could have done that without Flock.

It's just no way.

And so we we have the ability to utilize this as a tool to make a difference as how we save kids and how we save our community.

You know how many calls I got from clergy about their cars being broken into, and we've been able to participate and support the investigations of the Cleveland Division of Police and ID, you or others that's been in those vehicles, safeguarding the lives of law enforcement.

Because we are able to get in front of the problem.

And this is what it does for us.

And so I would just say one of the things that's missed from this conversation is do we not want to give our law enforcement officers a safe tool to operate without it being a chase or some other piece?

Thank you, Chief.

Just point you said you have 201 cameras cameras.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Miss Terry Wang.

Miss Terry Wang going once.

Ms.

Terry Wang.

Going twice.

She left.

Here she's here.

Please come to the table.

Tell us when you're ready.

I'm ready.

Yes.

Hello, my name is Terry Wong.

I am a resident of this community.

I was also a community police commissioner, and for two years, I was the only voice on the commission, and unfortunately, among the community because they did not know fighting against surveillance technology.

Let me be clear about what we are actually debating here.

We're not just debating Flock, we are debating authority and intent.

What is the intent of the Cleveland police department with regard to Flock cameras?

Who has the authority to decide whether our city uses Flock to surveil our residents?

We don't have to look at news reports.

We don't have to speculate what could happen, because it has already happened.

And I know because I was a commissioner watching it unfold in real time.

Many years ago, I sat in on a private meeting with Chief Dorothy Todd.

I asked Chief Todd to audit one of our other surveillance systems that you may not have heard of called Fuchsis.

Instead of taking my question seriously, Chief Todd laughed and said it was not possible to audit such technology or unauthorized access.

I have the recording and I will post it, Chief Todd.

When I pressed her, she made it clear there is no technical or administrative ability in this city to properly regulate flock or any surveillance technology.

So then, what is the intent of our police department using this software?

I come from a country that has successfully used surveillance to promote public safety.

But we are not living in China because in China, flock cameras are used only for traffic control, and their data is protected by a federal national law.

Our police officers also do not carry guns, and they do not perform unlawful search and seizure.

The intent of this government in this city is not socialist, it is capitalist.

And that is why we need let me tell you what Flock actually is.

It is a highly capitalistic company making money off of our citizen safety.

It is a 7.5 billion dollar surveillance company backed by Silicon Valley's most powerful investors, Anderson Horowitz, Founders Fund, and the Y Combinator.

They have over 950 million in total funding and surpass 300 million in annual recurring revenue last year.

70 percent year-over-year growth.

Their entire business model depends on data sharing.

You show me yours, I'll show you mine.

That is not about solving crimes.

That is about creating a national-wide dragnet that makes their product indispensable.

Flock deploys AI-powered license plate readers that track every vehicle that passes their cameras.

They have nearly 90,000 cameras nationwide in over 5,000 communities.

They use vehicle fingerprint technology to track cars even without plates.

And they are expanding into drones and gunshot technology.

And here in Cleveland, the intent is the same.

Acquire the technology, share the data, and let the accountability fall wherever it may.

There's no way to detect misuse until it is too late, no audit trail, no accountability, just a quiet handoff of our movements to whoever who asks.

Um, from our colleagues and through the chair.

And I just wanted to ask that question.

I want to say defamatory.

And I've exposed it.

So again, in ten minutes, we will be back in session.

I want to thank everybody.

Committee's back in session.

We have a quarum, Adam Clerk.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate everybody who came down here to comment, whether you were pro, opposed, or indifferent to what is before us because again, this is about transparency.

This is the people's house.

We want folks to come down and express their thoughts, their concerns, their uh issues.

Okay, director, the floor is yours once again.

Thank you, uh, Chair and Council members.

Uh, to my left, that's uh Chief Todd, and she's going to introduce her team, and then she has a statement.

Uh so at the end, you have uh Larry Jones, Commissioner Jones, IT.

And to my right of assistant director Shachner, but again, the chief will uh introduce her team that she has a statement, and I'll turn to uh assistant director Shaq, though, also has a statement.

Thank you.

Okay, you want to introduce members of the CPD.

Okay, Chief, the floor is yours.

Uh, good morning, Council Chair and Council members.

Uh our staff here today to my left is Deputy Chief Jared Schlott, the chief of staff.

And then I'm going to go down the line to my right.

Uh, first we have Sergeant Dahlia Lopez.

She is a sergeant in charge of our real-time crime center.

Next to her is Sergeant Brandon Malbar.

He's in the second district patrol section.

Then Sergeant Teresa Gomez in our homicide unit as well.

Vesna Piscatello, she's one of our investigative research specialists and our assigned to our homicide unit.

Thank you.

And then also we have Detective Anthony Leiser from the first district.

Okay.

Proceed.

Okay, thank you, Council Chair.

So I want to begin by making one point clear.

This request is not endorsing one particular vendor.

It is about ensuring that the Cleveland Division of Police does not lose access to technology that has become an essential part of modern policing while completing a competitive procurement process.

Today I am asking for your support for a temporary extension of our current contract so we have the time necessary to issue a request for proposal to evaluate all available license plate reader technologies and determine what solution is the best is in the best interest of the city of Cleveland.

Our original intent was to renew the contract and expand our license plate reader network because we had seen the significant impact that this technology was having on solving our violent crimes.

However, as concerns surrounding FLAC became the focus of public discussion, we've devoted a significant amount of time responding to questions, providing data, and addressing concerns.

This extension simply allows us to complete a fair and competitive RFP without creating a gap in service.

This is not about saying to one yes to one particular company, it's about saying yes to the technology of LPRs.

If you or someone you love become the victim of violence of a violent crime, your expectation would be that law enforcement uses every tool available to identify the offender and bring that person to justice.

Unfortunately, investigators often encounter situations where witnesses are unwilling to cooperate because they fear retaliation.

Technology helps bridge those gaps by providing objective investigative leads that otherwise may never exist.

License plate reader technology has become one of the those critical tools for the division of police.

Technology is used every day in every district, and in virtually every type of investigation.

It assists officers investing investigating stolen vehicles, hit skip crashes, aggravated robberies, shootings, missing person cases, homicide investigations, and countless other crimes.

It has been become a part of our daily working process.

The impact has been significant.

This year, technology, including license plate readers, has contributed to the ability to achieve an 80% solve rate clearance for our homicide investigations.

It has helped investigators identify suspects responsible for murders, shootings, violent robberies, and other serious crimes.

It helped solve the recent case involving the offender who was shooting a dart gun at residents in the second district neighborhood.

These are just a few of the many examples.

Just yesterday, we saw another example of why this system matters.

Following an aggravated robbery that occurred in our second district involving a stolen U-Haul, the suspect fled to Taylor, Michigan.

Information from our investigation generated a license plate reader alert that assisted the Taylor police department in locating that stolen U U-Hall truck, ultimately leading to an officer-involved shooting incident that occurred.

Criminals do not respect city or state boundaries, and law enforcement must be able to work together using lawful technology that protects our community.

My concern is simple.

Without these tools, violent offenders remain on our streets longer.

Every day, investigators lose access to this technology, increases the likelihood of another innocent person becoming a victim.

We cannot afford a lapse in these investigative capabilities, particularly during one of the busiest times for law enforcement.

I want to also address some of the concerns that have been raised publicly.

Much of this discussion surrounding the technology has focused on immigration enforcement.

The Cleveland Division of Police consistently has stated that we do not use this technology for immigration enforcement.

Our officers use this system to investigate criminal activity, identify violent offenders, recover stolen vehicles, locate missing persons, and protect the people of Cleveland.

In response to the concerns that were raised, we have even gone a step further.

We have disabled all outside agency searches of our license plate readers system, including agencies that participate in 287G agreements.

Outside of the Cleveland Division of Police, our fusion center is the only entity with the access to our system to support criminal intelligence and public safety operations.

These actions reinforce our commitment to ensuring this technology is used solely for investigative, investigating a legitimate lawful purposes within the policies and oversights established by the division of police.

We have also provided extensive information, answered numerous questions, and shared data that of the use of our technology.

Unfortunately, much of the public discussion continues to rely on assumptions or interpretations that do not accurately reflect how the system is actually being used by our department.

The Cleveland Division of Police has clear policies governing the lawful use of technology.

Access is controlled, every search is documented, every search is subject to audit.

Employees who misuse the system are held accountable.

These tools are not used without oversight, and they are not used indiscriminately.

They are used responsibly, legally, and for one purpose to protect our community and help bring offenders to justice.

As chief of police, my responsibility is to ensure that the men and women of the Cleveland Division of Police have the lawful tools they need to protect our residents, solve crimes, and hold violent offenders accountable.

These decisions should be driven by facts, evidence, and what best protects the people of Cleveland.

One of the hardest responsibilities any police officer has standing at the door of a family member whose loved one who had just been seriously injured or killed.

In those moments, we must make a promise that we will do everything within our power to find the person responsible and seek justice on their behalf.

Every investigative tool we lose makes that promise harder.

They work every day under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, often without recognition.

They continue to serve our community with professionalism, courage, and dedication.

They simply want the tools necessary to do their job safely and effectively on behalf of the people that we are sworn to protect.

At the end of the day, this request is not about one company.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Director, any other comments from any of your team members?

Yes, assistant director Scheckner.

Thank you.

Assistant director, identify yourself for the view in public.

Jason Shachner, Assistant Director of Public Safety.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

In response to the questions from counsel from the last committee meeting, we did work hard to find and obtain the data and analyze it in a way that can show whether or not the introduction of the flock camera camera system correlated with any uh increase in solve rate.

I also provided a memo, which I'll spare you reading in full.

That also explains the difficulty and challenges of determining what investigative tool actually contributed to a solve rate.

So let me explain this briefly.

That what we did was we looked at what were the types of offenses that LPR searches were performed for.

Then we tried to figure out which offenses had reliable data in terms of how you would define a closure rate.

We decided to define a closure rate as when an arrestee is added to the LERM system.

Now that is the law enforcement uh records management system.

Thank you, Director.

Um so some cases, so homicides were excluded because there is inconsistent when an arrestee is added to the system due to the fact that public records requests, you want to protect the investigation, adding an arrestee could lead to the release of information before the uh investigation is ripe for release.

Also uh didn't include grand theft and motor vehicles because of the KIA thefts that occurred during this time period, may uh have distorted the data.

So the we chose robberies, felonious assaults, assaults, and burglaries.

And we did two types of tests.

We did one was a two proportion Z test, and what that essentially does, it compares, it asks the question of were there more, was the close rate higher after the introduction of Flock than you would usually expect, just comparing the two incidents.

So we did 2021 and 2022.

We left out 2023 because that's when the Flock cameras were implemented, and we did 2024 and 2025.

And the results had to be weighted because keep in mind that um December of 2025 data is unavailable because we switched to a different records management system, which would have stored the data under different definitions.

So that showed that yes, um there was an increase in solve rate or case closures after Flock was introduced.

Um specifically that for robberies, the change was 4.3 percentage points from 11.9% to 16.2% for flownish assault, it was up for 4.6 percentage points from 21.2% to 25.8%.

Um for assaults, it was 15.9% to 18.9%, um, which is a 3% change.

And from for burglars was 10.7% up to 13.3% of 2.6% change.

So that led to a total uh three.

So if you took all those together, um the pre-flock rate would have been 15.5% in closure rates for those selected um crimes, and that rose to 18.7 percent, which is a 3.2% change.

Um, which let me shows that it was significantly higher.

Mr.

Chairman, on the point, point of it.

What's your point?

What what when you talk on percentages?

Can you give me numbers of what how many cases we're really fun to do?

Okay, wait a minute.

We'll put you, I'll put you on the list.

Come on, keep going.

Yeah, I need to be able to deliberate about it.

I I can, but but that distorts because things are weighted.

I could read those numbers.

Uh okay, go ahead.

Uh I'll go into the next level, but then uh so so the next test was a Poisson regression rate.

So that uses when the data you have are counts.

And that basically you have a hypothesis, right?

Your your hypothesis is gonna be that the entrance of this variable did not change anything.

All right.

So you have an X and a Y.

Um, you see if the X, which would be Flock, adding the Flock cameras, did that, if after that variable was introduced, did that result in a change?

And doing that Poisson regression, it did show it did.

With the incident rate ratios of the combined model was 1.21.

So one, right, is gonna be your baseline.

If you have a number of one in your incident rate ratio, that means there was no change.

If it's like 0.80, that means it was a negative 20% change.

The Poisson regression showed that there was a 21% change in the solve rate increase.

The thing is you can't share please.

Thank you.

Through the chair to enter.

Don't get excited yet, okay?

So that shows there's a relationship, right?

So the Poisson regression is used to test relationships.

So it shows that after the introduction of the Flock ALPR system, that there was an increase in solve rate of statistically significant increase at a 99% confidence level.

So that that's again, it's not a causal link.

It's a correlation, all right.

So it's one data point to put in your as a whole.

Because look like and as I said in my memo uh about data requests in general, the asking that how many cases that Flock solved is not unknowable, it's not impossible.

But looking at other, and I even communicated with the professors that wrote these other reports about license plate readers, there's a lot of confounding variables.

For one, um, not everybody writes so police reports are not written, so somebody could look back and say this one aspect solved the crime.

All right, it's to memorialize what occurred during your investigation.

Um I was a prosecutor, you know, somebody, an officer would say something that wasn't in the report, and the defense attorney would go, well, if it's so important, why didn't you write it down?

And you go in there on recross on redirect to re rehabilitate, and you and you as you see this at trials all the time.

Uh, what is the purpose of this report?

It's written to memorialize the events as I did it so it would assist me to further my investigation and to communicate my res my investigation to others.

Um do you write these report?

Well, usually it's at the end of my shift, you know, it's like six in the morning, seven in the morning.

I was on a 12-hour shift, and I have how many reports do you have to write?

Well, I have six or eight I have to write at the end.

So it relies on that report measure.

So what we asked juries to do, and I'm happy to ask further questions if there are follow-ups, is that when we were a prosecutor, we asked juries as a finders of facts, just like you are the finders of fact in this case, is to use your reason and common sense to determine what the facts are, right?

And you use whatever is provided as what exists in that world of how you make your decision.

And that's why testimony has always been so important and how you judge the credibility of that testimony and the people on the ground, and like these division members who use the information and the and the tools every single day for their investigations, you should give weight to that.

It's probative of how useful it is.

Just because it's not um a peer-reviewed statistical analysis or study does not mean it doesn't have any weight or probative value.

So I I would just hope that you would hear the stories and hear the actual experience of our officers on the ground, the employees of the city of Cleveland and how they use this tool every day and how it helps them do their job.

And I would ask for my colleagues hold up on the questions until we have all the comments and um and um presentation by the administration.

Who else is the chair?

Um, like uh assistant director Shaka.

So we have the information.

Information was forwarded to City Council.

That's all.

The data as well as the memo as well.

So please uh review that.

I like to turn the mic over here.

Just on that point again, I want some members who might have come in.

We do have um award breakdown by the Kyak County prosecutor, where the cameras were used specifically as it pertains to um serious cases, and we have that broken down by ward.

Correct.

Okay.

Uh well.

I'd like to turn it over to Sergeant Gomez from the uh homicide unit.

Sergeant.

Identify yourself for the view in public.

Sergeant Teresa Gomez with the Cleveland Homicide Unit.

Thank you, sir.

Welcome to the table.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council Chair, members of city council, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

License plate reader technology has become one of the most valuable investigative tools available to law enforcement.

It has helped investigators locate suspect vehicles involved in violent crimes, identify offenders, apprehend those responsible, and ultimately bring cases through the criminal justice system to a successful resolution.

Well, there are hundreds of investigations in which license plate reader technology has played a critical role.

I would like to pause for a minute and have Sergeant Rainey go and highlight some of the cases.

Sergeant, identify yourself for the viewing public Sergeant Sergeant Renee, Cleveland Homicide Unit.

Thank you.

January of 2024, Ward 12.

We had a mother who was in a ride share vehicle with her two children when she was shot 17 times with a gun with a switch.

Utilizing Flock.

A second lookout vehicle was also identified.

And that individual has still not been apprehended.

In July of 2024, Ward 13, a 10-year-old juvenile was standing in a driveway when she was shot.

Detectives were able to exclude an initial suspect vehicle described with Flock, preventing false stops and false detainment.

Detectives further were able to identify further suspect vehicle travel path with Flock.

September of 2023, Ward 11.

A three-year-old juvenile was shot while sitting in his parents' vehicle parked at uh in a in a driveway.

Flock was used to identify the suspect's vehicle travel to and from the homicide scene.

Flock paid played a pivotal role in developing leads, which led to identifying and gaining viable evidence for adjudicating the suspects who shot and killed a three-year-old juvenile.

The female defendant in this case called her boyfriend to come over to settle an argument she was having with her downstairs neighbor.

The boyfriend and friends arrived and opened fire from across the street, killing the three-year-old and wounding one other person.

Flock and art and the RTC center were used by investigators to track and locate the vehicle driven by the defendants.

January of 2024, Ward 3.

A 17-year-old was riding an electric scooter when a vehicle intentionally rammed him to the ground and then executed him with a rifle.

Flock was used to successfully identify the suspect vehicle in its travels in the 36 hours prior to the incident.

Detectives were able to canvas video in those areas and locate video, which provided crucial evidence in the eventual adjudication of the suspects, all to which have not been possible.

The case would have gone unsolved without Flock.

November of 24, Ward 17.

Victim's body was discarded in a secluded area.

There were no video or viable leads at the time of his discovery.

Detectives were able to use Flock after identifying a person of interest.

Results aided in the successful adjudication of the suspect.

December of 25, Ward 9.

Victim's body was discarded from a vehicle.

Flock was also successful once again and used to identify the suspect vehicle in eventual arrest of an unknown suspect.

February of 2025, Ward 1.

A 10-year-old was shot while sitting in a vehicle, backing out of his uh of his address.

The suspect hit a street over, snuck through a dark field, and shot into the vehicle.

Flock was used to identify the suspect vehicle after detectives had discovered a very short unidentifiable video of the suspect vehicle fleeing the scene.

June of 2023, a 16-month-old child was left alone unattended for more than a week while her mother went on vacation.

Flock helped investigators determine how long the defendant was gone on vacation by tracking her vehicle.

Defendant in this case received a life sentence for aggravated murder.

These are not isolated incidents.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

That's the right sergeant.

Proceed.

Okay.

These are not isolated incidents.

They represent the real impact this technology has on public safety and on the lives of victims and their families.

This year alone, LPR technology has been instrumental in assisting investigators in 29 of our 50 homicide investigations.

In many of these cases, it provided critical lead.

It provided the critical lead that moved an investigation forward when other investigative avenues had been exhausted.

Every lead generated through this technology represents another opportunity to identify violent offenders, prevent additional acts of violence, and deliver justice to the victims.

Behind every homicide investigation is a grieving family waiting for answers.

Behind every violent crime is a community that deserves to feel safe.

License plate reader technology helps us provide those answers and strengthens our ability to hold violent offenders accountable.

We understand and respect the importance of protecting individual privacy and ensuring appropriate safeguards are in place.

We remain committed to using this technology responsibly, lawfully, and only for the legitimate public safety purposes.

On behalf of the investigators who work tirelessly every day to solve violent crimes, and on behalf of the victims and families we serve, we respectfully ask City Council to reconsider allowing the continued use of license plate reader technology.

It is a proven investigative tool that saves lives, solves crimes, and helps bring justice and closure to those who need it most.

Thank you for your time, your consideration, and your continued commitment to the safety of our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sergeant.

Um who else?

Yeah, uh, thank you very much, sir.

I appreciate the uh the testimony.

So it's really important that the general public hearts exactly what uh the Hamaside unit is doing and other investigators.

I also want to uh draw uh the council's uh attention or committee's attention to what's been going on over the past couple years relative to street takeovers.

Uh we have Sergeant Melbar who's gonna details how Flock or license plate readers help us solve some of these cases.

Sarge Sergeant, identify yourself for the viewing public.

Sergeant Brandon Melbourne, currently assigned to the second district.

Pull the microphone a little closer to you.

Thank you.

So what while using FLOC, detectives from GIU were able to determine that the suspect vehicles from the street takeover in 2024 had fled the jurisdiction and were now flocking in Columbus.

Detectives responded and took the suspects into custody, recovered multiple vehicles from the street takeover, showing that Flock extends investigations beyond just Cleveland.

Also, the U-Haul robbery.

On June 30th, a male robbed the family dollar while standing at the register, he pulled a gun and took money from the cashier.

Standing next to the male was a young child, a juvenile female with her mother.

The gun was pointed right at her while he was robbing the female.

When the male fled the store, real-time crime was able to determine that he did flee in a U-Haul.

The detective in the second district detective asked, put a hold on the vehicle.

The vehicle then was flocking throughout Ohio, and then recently in Michigan.

Michigan was able to pull the vehicle over where a shootout happened without Flock.

That could have been a dead law, a law enforcement officer or more robberies.

In my opinion, the biggest impact that flock has on this department is making it more efficient.

Often the police are utilizing Flock when someone has had a terrorizing or dramatic life event.

Not having the ability to use all tools available to help them would be a disservice to the citizens of the city of Cleveland.

Thank you.

That's it for now, Chair, and uh we're available for any answer any questions.

Okay.

Thank you.

Who else?

That was it.

First of all, I want to thank our men and women in blue who protect us daily.

And we understand the need for technology.

Um, as the prosecutor indicated, he was here in council at the time.

Um the only number he got wrong was we were at 1,936.

We never got to 2,000.

That was the mayor white's goal and my goal then as chairman of public safety to get to 2,000.

Um we almost got there.

Um, and the reason for it was we wanted to have um clear um and decisive deployment in our neighborhoods and be able to interact with our citizens, especially with the many stations and some of the other programs that we implemented.

Since that time, um I'm proud of the fact that the council uh fought for body cams, dash cams, um, helicopters, uh drones.

I could go down the list of things that we have worked with the administration on to make our city uh hopefully a better a safer city.

So we understand the importance of the license plate readers.

And I want to say that again.

Okay.

Who determines the locations for the license plate readers?

Through the chair to the council members.

Back in 2023, there was a RFP that went out in which several companies, uh Flock, Exxon, InSight, L O PR, and one other company actually went through the RFP process.

From there, Flock was the company that was selected by the committee, which was made up of not only representatives from the division of police, but also members from IT.

At that time, the sergeant in charge of the real-time crime center worked with the former deputy chief to reach out to all five district commanders.

District commanders presented their list of locations in their districts.

At that time, it was uh posed that 20 license plate readers per district, so a total of 100 20 per district be established.

So the division took that list, worked with crime analysis as well as work with Flock to make recommendations of where those cameras should be placed throughout the each of the five districts.

Okay.

So we also know that outside agencies that are not connected to the city of Cleveland have uh license plate readers.

Um I don't know if they're all flocked, but we have requested like of Cleveland Clinic, University Circle, uh University Hospital.

We heard today from Chief Dobson about the 200 and we was 21, was it 21 or two on one cameras that CMSD has?

So we know there is a proliferation of cameras because when I looked at the um uh the data that was able to be uh downloaded by staff, um I just saw the uh the sheer number of license plate readers, like in the university circle area.

I mean, it's just it seems like they're on every block.

Um, but this is involving outside agencies as well, not just the city's uh license plate readers.

So we know they're out there.

The other question that was posed to us um of the 3,400 cameras, safety and security cameras, due to forensic um review.

Are you able to pick up license plates on those cameras?

Uh through the chair to the council members.

Um I want to make a clear uh distinction between the video surveillance cameras and license plate reader cameras.

Uh typically a video surveillance camera is placed anywhere between say 15 to 20 feet in the air.

Okay.

That camera is meant for situational awareness, um, real-time monitoring, and also um incident recreation.

Uh license plate reader is typically placed, I would say, between 18 and not 18, 8 to 12 feet high.

Right.

Um, it is focused on the vehicle lane of travel, and it's a different type of camera that has optical character software.

So that means that camera is focused on capturing that plate and then reading that plate.

So it can tell the number descriptions.

Our cameras are not set up that way.

Our cameras are more so for situational awareness.

Um we have some great folks who work in the forensics department, and occasion they can you know zoom in and pull a plate, but our cameras are meant not meant for that.

No, I understand that, but we have that capability if need be to try to identify a plate.

Uh through the chair, I would say while the capability exists, our cameras are not set up to do that.

That's not their main function.

So I I'm very much aware of that.

I'm just trying to understand because every store you go into, there's a camera.

Every gas station go into a camera.

We have again 3400 cameras out in our neighborhoods right now.

And then we also learned again that many private entities have uh license plate readers up already.

The issue before us, um, and I'm gonna open up for questions, and I have down Councilman Starr, Conwell Jones Life, any other colleagues who have questions, yes.

Okay.

Um, is um is not the fact of the um the effectiveness of the the cameras, it's the the growing concern or the concerns have been expressed of who the vendor is.

So that's the question, and we will um try to get through um in some point um as we're through with line of questions as pertains to some amendments uh that are being offered as it pertains to the to the vendor and some um um again suggestions that we we have.

So at this point, I'm gonna call upon councilman star, vice chair, and I'm gonna limit everybody to 10.

I'll put you back on.

Yes, hey Charlie Schleif, you ain't the vice chair, don't you time?

Okay, okay.

Okay.

We're timing them.

Go ahead.

I mean it.

I don't come to his committee with that.

Don't do that.

Okay.

Um, no, my context of this is um important conversation is because one, I will just take it from the lens of me.

Um by a show of hands, if anybody wants to raise your hands, who lives in Cleveland?

Who went to Cleveland Public Schools?

You know, that is very important because every time a tough conversation comes up, everybody gives their outside opinion about what's going on in Cleveland.

And me being born and raised in Cleveland, my entire life going on 37, well, going on 38 years, I've dealt with the rise when we had police patrolling, being able to get out at the neighborhood to be able to coach baseball teams, power leagues to be a partner when we had over 2,000 police officers.

Now we've known we have our challenges since the early 2000, and we're down to around 11 uh 50, which has been a tough hiring process throughout the country.

But I do not want to just say that we need police just on the patrol, we need every tool to be able to solve a crime.

When I look at some of this data that was presented from the prosecutor office, it's shocking to me because most of the crimes that was being committed was happening in War 5.

Now, everyone that don't live out and live in Cleveland or born and raised in Cleveland, rather you moved here, you said you made it home.

There's a different feel for me when I'm actually home to me.

I didn't come here when I came out of um the hospital.

I moved straight into King Kidney projects, and it was one of the roughest times in the 80s when we had the crack epidemic when we had a lot of drugs going on.

So when I'm talking about crime that's going on today, I think we have to make sure we start about talking about the public safety and making sure it's something that's seriously that we discuss.

And one of the most important things is we need to make sure we have the tools in our well box for the police officers to do their job.

They're not they're not gonna always get everything right.

We're not gonna always be right.

But one of the questions that that's concerns me is people just don't like the flock company.

I get it.

I heard that it was an RFP process that went out in 2023.

During that RFP process in 2023, no one mentioned how bad Flock was back then.

And it amazes me now that over time, since they've been here, it became the worst thing.

And everybody giving all of their opinions and their facts or whatever they think on how it is just bad.

And I get it, and I understand that.

If we don't go with Flock, my question I would ask in the near future, is there an opportunity through the chair for us to do a new RFP process to look into another technology?

And that's just mainly a yes or no question, please, through the chair.

Through the chair, Councilman Starr, yes.

All right.

And if that if so, what do we say if that company then becomes something that people say is tied to data sharing with the federal agency?

What do we do then through the chair?

Through the chair, it's the it's the safeguards that we have in place, regardless of the company.

It's the safeguards that we have in place through the division of police and their policies and the accountability measures that we have in place.

Thank you.

So one of the things is whether we go with Flock, whether we go with any other company that does license plate reader, we as a city of Cleveland can put safeguards in place to ensure that there is no data sharing information.

And through that, I would like to make sure I ask this question from that standpoint.

Um what protections are in place to reduce the risk of wrongful stops or arrests resulting from inaccurate license plate reader data?

Do we have anything in place through the chair?

Through the chair to the council member.

Um you look at that, it's just one of the tools of the investigation, it's not the ultimate result.

So everything that we get the information from there has to be fact-checked, investigated, and there's other resources.

It's not the final, the only entity that would cause someone to be convicted of a crime.

It's part of an investigation.

Perfect.

And through the chair, can federal agencies, including ICE, the FBI, DEA, ATF, or Homeland Security access Cleveland's flock data directly or through information sharing and agreements right now to the chair.

Chief?

Through the chair to the council member, we have shut off all outside access beyond the Cleveland Division of Police and our fusion center.

And through that through the chair to the chief, when did we shut that off?

Because was it shut off when we initially started in 2023, or when did we shut it off?

No, so the the latest safeguards we put in place were in June.

The immigration was in November of 2025.

You know, like any other software that's out there, you find out you know what the issues are as the software progresses.

Okay.

This just became a topic last year.

All right, and then basically, so my next question was does Cleveland have the authority to prohibit data sharing with agency when it comes with conflict in the city policies.

Thank you, Chief, for answering that question.

Um, and then also I would ask has Cleveland conducted audits of flock usage, um, such as improper searches or policy violation.

Have anything such of that been identified since using flock cameras to the chair?

Through the chair to the council member, um, we do collect do audits internally, and we also have worked with flock since early last year to have them flag anything that they would consider a concerning search to notify us.

Um, as far as that is concerned, we have not identified any issues.

And then what disciplinary actions occur if an employee improperly accessed or shared data?

Do we have any guardrails on employees who's trying to search and look for their their baby mama or girlfriend that don't want to be with them no more?

Do we have anything in place and guardrails for that or accountability measures in place to prohibit that or hold people accountable if they were using it for their own personal use usage through the chair?

Through the chair to the council member, yes, we have strict policies in place for accountability.

Um, it could be up to and including termination uh for misuse of our criminal justice system information.

And then definitely from a future policy standpoint, if this council reviews or expand this program, um I will ask to the administration would y'all support annual public reporting on things such as number of searches conducted, crimes solved with flock assistance, data sharing requests, policy violation and audits, um, as well as privacy compliance within this new this new contract.

If if if we are able to expand this program, chair to councilman.

Uh we are working now on a trans transparency portal uh to make sure that the information you're talking about will be uh available uh publicly.

Yes, so just just from that from that standpoint, um, like earlier before we went on break, you know, I've we've sat here and heard about over 25, maybe 30 different testimonies, and rather you on the yes or rather you are against, it's everybody's opinion and their thoughts, and that is important.

Um, but also when people are speaking about what is going on elsewhere and how people are using technology, and they can't even ask, ask answer one question about who you are.

Are you really here for Cleveland, or are you just talking because you want to be on TV?

And that ain't what I'm into.

I'm into making sure that we have safe neighborhoods.

And I'm not gonna, and this is not a shot at anybody else, but when I'm born and raised in Cleveland and understand Cleveland, what do I say to residents where we said we had license plate reader?

When I'm looking at seeing when people were shot at downtown, I'm looking at when people were shot at and a crime and a homicide took place in war five when we use license plate readers to be able to track the car that actually performed the crime.

This ain't me saying I was looking for the police officers to be there.

And what we got to stop saying when we talk about intervention versus prevention, police is responding once something actually happened.

That is the that is the hard truth that everybody wants to say it's up to the police to do XYZ.

No, when something happens to you, you call 9-1-1.

You don't call 9-1-1 because I think they are they they arguing.

I think they are arguing.

Like there was a case that took place yesterday downtown where it was an argument going on, and guess what?

It came through the radio, and the police officers was able to get there because who called in was not accurate on the description of what happened.

And guess what the police did?

Went to the cameras, and they was able to figure out that it was nothing about no wheelchair.

There was not no real altercation, there was not no gun or anything.

It was a dispute, and somebody ran away.

But the person who called it in said everything that was opposite of that, which that could have ended into a serious situation if we didn't have cameras in place.

So my question is, and my just my last point is when I look at the amount of crimes that have been happening, robberies on East 55th.

When I look at stolen vehicles in War Five, when I look at street takeovers that everybody was so mad at, the reason why we was able to identify and arrest 22 individuals in street takeovers that was happening in the city of Cleveland, it was through technology usage.

Like I said, I'm not here for flock or other any vendor.

I'm not I'm not open to that.

I'm just saying, what do we have from a technology standpoint?

And if we've been using a tool to help solve crimes, then we'll do a disservice to the police and our residents if we just say we got rid of it.

Now, if we said that flock has some issues that need to be dealt with since their inception, I think 2016, 2017, then let's go ahead and roll up our sleeves and figure out what we need to do to hold them accountable.

But I don't believe we should not just die on the hill that we say we don't want flock just because we don't want flock.

Like I that's that that is horrible for us to do that, and I want to make sure that Cleveland remains a safe city, especially in War 5 and I yield.

Thank you, Councilman.

You kept time.

I appreciate that.

Okay.

Uh um council.

I'm glad you're practicing.

Um councilman Conwell.

Thank you very much.

I am so glad to the chair to the safety director.

If we had had this data in early June, in the middle of June, it would have helped us out.

It's the only piece that I didn't like is that it was brought to us in the final hour.

And I told people that if you had a body to us, let's say in January or February, and if it's something that um did not click with us, and you then we would have told you to bring us more information.

You should, uh, Mr.

Chairman, and all safety um um projects should be brought to us in advance, director, safety director.

In advance, it should be either quarterly or semi-annually.

So when you see flock, flock is is a through the chair is a moving piece.

Things are always happening, there's lawsuits in other cities that's going on with Flock.

Is other is the um the um the chief mentioned uh you got some strong assumptions and you have some false assumptions, but you should bring those things to us so we know so we can let our bosses, our board of directors, our uh uh um community know what's going on, and if there's some changes uh that we have to make, let's not make it at the last minute and at the final hour.

That's really through the chair, that's insulting.

It's insulting to bring it to us the last minute.

And that's why I voted no the last time because I needed data.

I needed data so much.

When I left the uh the safety committee, you know, I personally, and and the chair, the chair no, I personally went to visit with the prosecutor.

I went to see him, I knocked on his door, went down to the um justice center so I can see these crimes that they you guys did a good job of narrating.

I went down and talked with prosecutor.

He knows, isn't that isn't that true, Chairman?

Yes, council uh uh Michael Matthew.

Because I want to know what's going on, and I shouldn't have to go out to try to seek to understand what's going on.

If you want us to vote for it, you should give it to us.

And when you come to the like right now, this is lovely, this is beautiful.

You narrated well with the numbers.

I'm gonna go back and look over some of them again because I like numbers, but that's important.

That way we can evaluate what you're talking about.

And then you see that some people don't like flock because of the evaluation process, they might.

I don't know too much about Flock.

I studied it, I went on online, I read, I studied, but if you give us things ahead of time, that'd kill some some assumptions through the chair that you mentioned, Chief, and that's very important to me.

Um let me go ahead on with this.

I wrote down a couple of questions.

Flock with the cameras, I know we read license plates.

Can the cameras see through the chair inside of cars as well, through the chair to the safety director?

To the chair to Councilman Conwell.

The uh cameras are situated, like I said, about eight feet or a little higher in the air, and they're uh situated and pointed towards the vehicle license plates.

Uh so it's not uh looking inside the vehicle.

It's not uh that's not what the purpose of the particular cameras for us actually capture the vehicle and capture the license plate itself.

Yeah, because when they mentioned invasion and privacy, I'm thinking that they can even see on the inside of a vehicle through the um through the windows, but you're telling me through the chair, you say no.

Um chief?

Uh through the chair to the council member, it's capturing a picture or video is what it's capturing.

Yes.

Uh we had just recently saw an investigation where um there was an individual leaning outside of the vehicle firing a weapon.

Yeah, and the flock camera captured when it was capturing the plate, it all also captured that image.

So when you see that, it does have the potential sometimes of capturing an image of somebody in the vehicle, not at all times.

But I you know, it's not looking in to capture the inside of the video the vehicle itself, but sometimes it does capture an image of who's inside that vehicle, it may be in that photo as well.

Okay.

Councilman.

Councilman, director, through the through the chair.

Um if you remember how the traffic camera tickets were, and it showed it.

Showed a picture of the vehicle, you know, and also of the plate is the same.

He was this great councilman and brought it to city council.

I'm not gonna mention his name to the chair.

But but it's it's similar to that, you know, where it would be incidental image.

Taking a picture at the back of the camera.

Sure, it's it's the councilman commell.

Again, it's not the main function, the purpose is not to capture individuals inside the car, but incidentally, it could potentially capture someone similar to what the chief just mentioned.

So through the chair, um the way I look at flock also, and someone, some people say you take cameras, it's after the fact, but with Flock, I'm looking at prevention.

So if they if a crime is committed anywhere in the city of Cleveland or it goes to another county or Cleveland Heights, whatever the case may be, some of these guys trends, they commit trends, and um if you could stop the trend from happening in the long run, that's a good thing.

So it's not only looking at the crime that is at that real-time moment.

We're looking at prevention to the chair, to the safety director or the chief.

Uh through the chair to the safety or to the committee member, I'm sorry.

The incident we talked about with the stolen U-Haul is one example of that.

There was somebody, a group of people on a crime spree.

You know, they hit our city here, they traveled outside of our city, they went up to Michigan and were continuing this crime spree.

So though it didn't prevent the aggravated robbery here in Cleveland, it prevented future crimes.

So when we look at that, any crime is too many crimes.

Right.

But if we could stop a repeat offender, if we could stop the next victim, you know, that's what these tools do for our men and women.

Yeah, and then it also through the chair with people knowing that you're watching, and they see the prevention.

See, you gotta let people know those things.

Then I think that in that culture, that would also help with prevention.

And do you track prevention through the chair?

Uh through the chair to the council member.

Um, I would say no to an aspect of is that one of our focuses on our crime stats?

No, but we have been able to, you know, some of the investigations like our street takeovers.

Those were we can consider that a trend, you know, because that's something that's happening, you know, across our city, across our state.

So when we look at that, it was a trend that was happening, and we know that there were multiple crimes committed as a result of a vehicle.

And that is what these investigations lead to.

You know, you were you gonna say some you know what you could correlate this to through the chair to the chief, like you had a body cameras on as well.

You could do teachable moments with um to the chair with flock also.

You see the trend happening, you go back and you train your police officers because you looked at lessons learned, and you could use those as teachable moments to the chair to the chief.

This is what I see.

Uh through the chair to the council member, if you look at the work of our real-time crime center, and Sergeant Dahlia Lopez is here with us today.

We have our officers and analysts assigned, and that's the work they do every day.

Yeah, that's right.

They are looking at the city cameras, the body cameras, the flock cameras.

You know, they're looking at all of that, and they're assisting our frontline officers and our investigators, and what happened and how to solve these crimes and where they need to go and where we need to deploy our resources.

And that gives uh an entire image of the crime that occurred, which helps in everything we do.

That's what I was thinking about, Chief, when I was studying it.

Um, when you were the commander in the third district, you were very, very good.

I would talk with you, you followed through, um, Chief.

You executed well, you're very, very good.

I have a lot of respect for you also with um safety director Drummond.

I call him sometime early in the morning, though, and we talk about things, and uh it's very, very important with the safety.

Um, did they give you through the chair any their training videos?

So if I look at the training videos of Flock, uh, it would teach me to understand it better, how they train their employees to use Flock and how it connects with um you guys as well through the through the um chair to the chief.

Uh through the chair to the council member.

Um not all of our members are trained in the usage of Flock.

We have a you know, just uh a known number of officers who are use the technology itself, um, and we have you know Sergeant Lopez may be able to speak a little bit more on it, um, but they can talk about what that training looks like if you'd like to hear more from her.

Okay, is it possible?

Um I got one yes, go.

Yes, yes, sir.

So currently we have a how-to video as well as our general police order that officers have to review, have to watch, get a certificate before they're allowed access to the system.

We are in the process of updating the training because our policy states we need to on an annual basis.

So we should have that done before October.

Before October, that's when it's due, that's when the annual um deadline would be.

Okay, do the chair are we allowed to um look at it or to study it?

Um council members would have seen the training, because training through the chair tells you a lot, and training is ongoing, and when you you you see flock in other areas, and it's a moving piece.

Absolutely.

I I don't see a problem with it.

Through the chair to the council member, we we can make that happen.

All right, thank you.

And then one last question one.

You got me 25 seconds.

I have 25 seconds left time, Mr.

Chairman.

Drunk driving.

Can we use it for prevention with drunk driving?

Uh, also, I'm just maxing you that I'm just thinking outside the box on it through the chair to the council.

I'd have to think through that a little bit deeper.

Um, I don't know how it would prevent.

Um, it could help, you know, with the prosecution of, but uh, I'd have to think through that a little bit.

Thank you.

Um thank you, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

All right, Councilman Joe Jones.

And Councilman Jones has requested if Flock could please any representative Flock could come to the table.

And Sergeant um officers, if you could just let these folks come up, the the four officers if you could.

While they're coming to the table, I just want to just add to the some earlier testimony of the young man, unfortunately, in my neighborhood, uh, who was shot.

He was shot in the head, and he died.

And an officer's don't go away.

Keep going, councilman.

He was shot in the head, Mr.

Chairman, and he died.

We have another situation where um person broke into the vic victim's apartment in my neighborhood, and you know, uh, that person was killed also in their home.

Um we know that, and we've heard the testimony of the police.

We know that this is a uh piece of legislation that Mayor Justin B has brought to the table uh for the citizens of the Cleveland to be a tool to help keep us safe.

I'm supportive of the two, Mr.

Chairman, but as many of the testimony that we've heard, uh unfortunately has been uh through the moral decay uh of the people who are running the program.

And so I wanted them to come to the table, Mr.

Chairman, because you know, we have a number of stories, and we don't want what has happened, unfortunately, uh, across the nation dealing with uh politics because this is what this is really fundamentally about, and this is the reason why we're having so much discussion is because at this space in time to use this tool to track someone across multiple states because they wanted to have an abortion in another state, and they use your technology to do it is a blatant violation.

And when it comes to our city and my neighborhood, and the reason why I'm on the line on supporting this is because our community has been override by crime, and the crime is bad.

We've lost businesses because of break-ins and thefts.

We're dealing with losing another business in my neighborhood, Walgreens.

And so we in our neighborhood have been victimized for quite some time.

So we appreciate the two, but we don't appreciate your politics.

And so with dealing with the citizens in my neighborhood, they're concerned about their information being collected.

And just for the audience who is here listening to this, uh we know that Home Depot, Walmart, other stores have driver's license readers in their parking lots, so they can track their customers.

And they use that information for whatever purpose.

So now the question I would ask you is how would this data ever be utilized in any way?

What's your thought process based upon uh the data and what has unfortunately transpired uh with your organization and your corporation uh uh dealing with the federal government in issues of abortion, in issues of ICE, uh controversial situations uh that are very volatile in our country.

Okay, whoever from of the FLOC uh can answer that and please identify yourself and what position you hold.

Uh through the chair, my name is Trevor Chandler, Senior Director of Public Affairs for Flock Safety.

Uh and through the chair, thank you, Councillor, for that question.

Uh first and foremost, it's important to note that Flock does not have politics.

Uh there are thousands of agencies across the country uh that use the Flock license plate reader tool in all public safety technology according to their laws and values.

Uh and those val those laws and values are different in Cleveland as they are in Texas, as they are across the country.

And so the instances that you have discussed uh were in regards to those states' laws and values.

Flock has seen and appreciates the tension that our political moment is in uh with differences between states, between localities, and of course, between the federal government.

That's why we have taken a proactive stance and not simply stood back.

We introduced the filters for repro both reproductive health and for immigration purposes, specifically because of that.

Uh, we have also sense in regards to the federal sharing have prohibited any federal agency from having access to either our national lookup tool or our statewide lookup tool.

If a federal agency uh would like to partner with a specific city or specific agency, uh we now have a three-gated system.

First, that city would have to opt in to sharing with a federal agency, period.

It doesn't do anything, it just says they're willing to do it.

Then that federal agency, say it's a national park, would have to make that request to that locality, and then that locality would have to accept it.

Uh so as you heard today, uh CPD is not opted into national, uh, the national search function anymore, and uh according to city law and city regulation would not be allowed to establish those sharing relationships with federal agencies.

Uh so the the tension that you cite is real.

Uh it is the the concern you cite from your voters and from your residents is real.

Uh and it varies from community to community, and we respect that, and that's why we've worked to make Flock the most customizable and transparent law enforcement tool so that community safety does not have to come at the expense of community values.

Is there and Mr.

Chairman, I'm I'm thankful that the the distinguished gentleman has said that.

I I've looked at the proposed amendments that are here.

I know that we have a 10% penalty, but we want to make sure that you know, Mr.

Chairman, my vote is going to be based upon a stiff fine and penalty.

And um if they violate that, they should have a stiff penalty, not a 10%.

Because once you go to court and you need to get your own attorney, uh $2,500 penalty um is not sufficient.

Um, and so Mr.

Chairman, I would say that we should have at least a one million dollar penalty for every violation that the company you know engages in releasing information, selling information, or giving information to any party.

Um, this is proprietary information.

This is our citizens, this is taxpayers' dollars.

And so, as elected officials, is our and as the administration is our duty and our function and our responsibility to make sure that we're protecting our taxpayers.

And so, Mr.

Chairman, what a billion dollar company, uh $2,500 penalty is not enough, $25,000 is not enough.

Uh they should have at least a two million dollar penalty for every single violation.

It sends a strong message.

And and if they can uh you know uh do this, Mr.

Chairman, you would have my vote.

Okay, but we're not at that point yet.

I want to discuss that put that on on the table.

And we will discuss that.

It it is it is where I stand, um, and um I'm all five fingers down and five toes down on the ground on it.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

Any other um you had any qu other dishes?

Council qu okay, thank you.

Councilman Slife.

Councilman Slay.

Multitasking.

All right.

Um I I do have a number of questions, but before we get there, I just kinda since I missed the last meeting, I I do want to take a moment to lay some stuff out.

Um as I see it, there's basically three basic viewpoints.

We we flock as it exists, uh, which I think there seems to be nearly you unanimous agreement that uh flock as it exists right now is not ideal.

Uh the other is opposition to flock and LPR readers outright, and and Mr.

Chairman, I'll I'll just point out while I think there seems to be some consensus among this body, maybe not all of us, that this is not about the technology, this is about the company.

The advocacy letter we got from 700 plus um individuals, 40% of whom don't live in the city of Cleveland, uh their website explicitly states removal of all LPRs permanently.

So I so I want to say that there is a a aspect of our community that does question uh the technology outright.

Um but I am a member of the middle path.

I understand that there's a a need for technology.

We live in a technological world, and what guardrails can we put in place to ensure that uh our data are not being abused or uh given to other entities without our knowledge, and frankly, I think that that's something that we should be asking for for any contract, whether that's Flock or ADP who does our payroll or or any other outside vendor who has exposure to sensitive data.

Um I know it doesn't seem this way right now, maybe, but I I do see this as an aspect of the council process working.

The fact that we don't give the administration broad authority to enter into multi-year contracts and we require them to come back for future legislative authority, I think is to identify moments like this where something changed, something occurred that was unanticipated, we recognized gaps in our own contract, and this is the opportunity for this body to say, but for changes to the contract that correct these issues, the administration would no longer have authority to proceed as as they had.

So to me, this is can we put guardrails into place to secure our data and preserve our collective ethics?

Uh is Flock fundamentally flawed, and if we find that Flock is to be fundamentally flawed for some reason, is there an outside vendor?

Uh just quick question to the chief of police or maybe to Mr.

Jones, Axon Insight and then another entity responded to the original RFP.

Do you know if they have contracts with ICE?

Larry?

Uh through the truth of the council member, I'm not aware of that.

Okay.

And I ask because that I have heard this talking point that ICE is not in contract with Flock that is makes them allegedly unique.

And and I that that that that's a point worth knowing as as we sort of unravel all of this.

Um I I have to say, and I know I'm using up a lot of time on this, but I've been frustrated by a lot of the rhetoric to date.

I'm very satisfied with the uh statistical analysis that was provided to us.

This is something I've been asking for for a long time.

I think too often we rely on anecdotal evidence, and um I use the example of the community I grew up in.

There was a question, is there a cancer cluster?

And the state came in and determined it was above average but not statistically significant.

The statistical significance of the data is incredibly important to me because that it lets us know whether we're cherry picking or not.

And the fact that the report shows through two different statistical analyses that there is a significant improvement in solve rates, understanding a lot of the externalities that come with doing doing specific things about one tool, I think is compelling.

And and I'll admit, and maybe anger some people in the process.

I I do find a lot of the opposition to be appealing to a motion, uh, to be using old data to be misrepresenting processes, and I mean, even in um in the testimony we're heard today, it it really annoys me, I have to say, when people say tools don't prevent crimes, because this is an investigative tool.

The police don't exist merely to prevent crime from happening as Councilman Starr said.

They exist to investigate crimes after they've happened.

Uh there's a lot of mention of the Fourth Amendment.

This isn't a novel idea.

It has been litigated in court and determined that license plates on public roads are public data.

Uh the logical conclusion of that argument to me is we should just get rid of license plates altogether, uh, which I don't think anyone is advocating for.

Um I'm frankly more concerned about the phones in our pockets and our reliance on them than I am about license plate readers.

And I just have to say, not to stir the pot or anything.

Um you would never stir the potential.

No.

The the the I I don't have the exact quote, but the implication at this table that we should model ourselves after the People's Republic of China, which Amnesty International has found to violate human rights repeatedly uh to attack dissidents online, to surveil them, to um imprison political dissidents, to prohibit religious expression is what a statement.

That's not something I agree with.

So I I want I want to just say that my questions, and I'll have to get back on because I'm not going to get through all of them, really do pertain to how we can create guardrails because I want to be satisfied that that we can.

Um my first question, a plain dealer article came out last night speaking about immigration searches within Cleveland's Flock system uh in 2025, and it was noted that in November Cleveland turned on the filter that prohibited immigration searches.

Have there been any immigration searches within Cleveland's Flock system since that filter was put on?

Whoever can answer that question.

Chief.

So to the through the chair to the council member, there's been no immigration through our city searches.

When we pull the data, it's pulling everything.

And it it's when these reports come in, and that's where we're trying to explain, and it's just the message is not clear.

Um for you in particular who likes to look at the data, um, it may be important for you to sit down with our team to go through and answer a line-by-line question of the that data we provided.

Okay.

And I have I have had the opportunity to look at a a data download and with assistant director Shachner, and I did will say I had him control find the words immigration and reproductive reproduction, and it came up zero in something like a million rows.

So that but that was only a 30-day window.

Apparently, you can only download 30-day buckets at a time.

Um during the Fourth of July parade in my neighborhood, someone was holding a sign that said, if flock is on ice is watching.

Do you care to comment on that?

Uh through the chair to the council member, you know, there's different opinions everywhere.

As we know, within our city, we have been fortunate that we haven't had the immigration enforcement that has we've seen across the country.

Um we have not seen that aggressive approach here, and I hope to never see that aggressive approach here.

And I just want to continue to say that it's just, you know, what our focus should be on is what's happening here in the city of Cleveland.

This conversation has changed to what's happening in different states instead of what's happening here.

And we have not seen that.

You know, there are am I gonna say there's not an immigration officer within the city of Cleveland?

I can't answer that.

Not that I'm aware of and not that's been reported to me.

But I can say that we haven't had those enforcement efforts here.

Okay.

Uh can an immigration officer access either live footage through the real-time crime center or flock data at this point uh via their own independent login uh in the flock system.

Okay, thank you.

Um probably my final question in this moment that I'll come back on.

I know one of the one of the one of the theories is that you can block specific words, but you can do searches for other or somebody could uh maybe put in the searches for like a hit and run uh and and really it's about something uh else.

Uh this is called sort of the side door of entry.

How do we kind of quality control searches within the Cleveland Division of Police searches external to the Cleveland Division of Division of Police to understand if there's some malfeasance in how the search is being conducted that would allow someone to have a side door like that.

Uh through the chair to the council member, when we look at that, we have audit features in place.

Um when we have a couple different roles for that.

One is a complaint that comes in.

If we receive a complaint from, and I'm just gonna use the analogy, everyone kept using an ex-girlfriend, ex-boyfriend.

If someone made a complaint that says, you know, they ran my information, that is a criminal investigation that is handled by our internal affairs unit.

Um it doesn't matter if it, you know, if it ends with nothing or if it ends with something.

We have measures in place for complaints of misconduct and for also random audits of misconduct.

Um when we look at every system we have from just you know, our leads database, our Oleg, which is a state database, they send us information that if the yeah, I'm just gonna use the name Jones.

Umficer Jones ran 20 Joneses, you know, so Oleg will send us an audit sheet.

We have to go back and fact check that to see if any of them are related to the particular officer.

And if they are, they have to answer to that.

And this is the same with the circumstances.

Okay, thank you.

As as I close this, and I if you could put me back on, I do want to just lace one thing out.

Many allusions have been made to former councilman McCormick, and I want everyone listening to know that under Ohio ethics law, the revolving door law, it is a a criminal activity for a public official, a former public official to engage with their workplace uh for one year after departing from that that that entity.

So I appreciate uh um the the the I I understand how how it it looks strange and what the implication may be.

Have you had any direct conversation with former councilman McCormick uh within one year of him being on Cleveland City Council?

The chair have not.

Have you had any communication with former councilman McCormick after that period?

I have not up to today.

I have not.

Thank you.

Has anyone from the city of Cleveland?

Through the chair to the council member now.

Okay, thank you.

If people are going to insinuate misdemeanors and felonies, I think that they should bring evidence.

Thank you.

I would concur with you, and I don't believe any member, unless someone would like to correct me.

I'm not aware of any member who has been engaged with him on this subject or this discussion.

I'm not aware of any.

And I would think if if there was, it would be me, because I've known him since he was a kid.

And so I've had no engagement with him at all on this issue.

Okay.

I apologize.

Um just speaking back on some of the statements that were made today.

Uh can I just comment on one other statement that I heard here today?

Uh so one of the um community members mentioned uh the officers, you know, the officers being investigated um on the flock cameras.

I want to provide some clarity to the council members and for our men and women.

Um I want to be clear that Flock has been used for criminal investigations related to some of our members.

Um this is, you know, when you look at uh overtime usage, you know, or somebody leaving work early, those are criminal investigations.

Uh and when our internal affairs investigate somebody, a complaint of misconduct or criminal misconduct involving a member of the division of police flock has been used.

So somebody mentioned that today, um, but I wanted to be clear that that is a criminal investigation, and our men and women are as accountable as our community is.

Well, and I'm glad you said that because no one's above the law.

The other question that was posed to me before I call upon councilwoman Hudson, I received calls from some folks at over at uh the courts who said that FLOC uh the license plate readers have been used to exonerate people as well.

But we have never been given any data to that effect, and if there is that, we I would hope to receive it before we get to the finance uh component of this.

Councilwoman Hudson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um first I just want to quickly thank everybody for being here today again.

Um and I want to uh reiterate that um, you know, I I absolutely support our law enforcement partners, and I know that the work you do is incredibly hard.

Um I have spent the last um 20 gosh, almost 24 years living in a neighborhood that for for much of that um has has not been safe.

Um I raised my children in a neighborhood that has been riddled with gun violence.

And um I know what it feels like to want to um you know, you want to do everything, you want every tool available to uh to keep your family safe.

Uh it it when you have kids, it it adds a different layer to that to that want.

Um but at the same time, um city council, it it is our responsibility to make sure that the technology we're using that there are checks and balances um to ensure that our citizens' constitutional rights are not violated in our attempt to keep our city safe.

And just to just a few minutes ago, Chief Todd, you mentioned ICE's presence in the city.

And Ward 11 has the second highest uh percentage of Latino residents in the city of Cleveland.

Uh a week ago, Sunday, uh resident of Ward 11 was a father, um, a small business owner uh was detained by by ICE on his way to work on Ridge Road by Dave's Mercado.

And um he I I he had reached out to my office previously because he is also a uh provider of uh the senior services where you where you remo people's lawns um as part of the city's uh program with the Department of Aging.

And when he reached back out last week to let us know what happened, um I was absolutely devastated for him.

He's an American citizen of Puerto Rican descent.

Um he owns a landscaping business.

I do not know why he was profiled, but he was.

Um ICE is here and they are um targeting our residents for reasons that I don't know.

Um we are at a place in our in our country that I never thought we would be.

And so we have to be very, very careful um with technology such as this.

Um with that being said, I have a few questions.

My first one is for Flock.

Um yesterday from Albany, Georgia, where five police officers were fired for misuse of license plate data?

Through the chair, yes.

Do you know specifically what they were using the LPR data for?

Uh through the chair, no, I don't know specifically, but I do know that that instance uh was uh made aware to the agency through Flock's audit assistance tool, which flagged the irregular search behaviors.

Okay, thank you.

Um and then um for uh CPD, is other an option for Cleveland's Flock search system?

Well you can answer that question.

Through the chair, no, that was removed.

Uh there is an offense list and one has to be chosen.

Other is not an option.

Thank you.

Um when was that removed?

I'd like to say mid-May.

Okay.

And then also is a case number uh required when you are doing a search through the chair, absolutely.

Okay, and is has that always been part of the system?

So it was not for some time.

I cannot state exactly how long, but it is a mandatory field now.

Okay, thank you.

Um and also um, you know, 30 days data retention seems like a long time for me.

Um can you how was the 30-day data retention limit determined?

Okay, we'll make sure okay.

Who can answer that question?

Through the chair.

Uh given multiple options, we felt that was the most reasonable.

Oftentimes uh it takes detectives several weeks to develop leads that they can go back and view different aspects of it.

You know, if say someone gets robbed, it may take a little bit to track down a victim.

Say a victim is hospitalized, it may take several weeks to be able to get a statement from them because they're intubated or things of that nature.

So we have to expand that time frame to a reasonable time to where we can properly gather other evidence and then go back and reflect on the tools that we have.

Thank you.

And then um, let's see.

Uh is a warrant currently needed to search historical data captured by Cleveland's flock cameras.

Whoever chief or whoever can answer that clearly.

No, would you be opposed to requiring a warrant for searching historical data?

Uh through the chair to the council member, when you're looking at that uh warrant requires a lot more information, and flock is one of the tools that helps us get to that point.

Um so when you talk about this is part of an investigative lead, and you know, our leads are not what gets us to warrants.

Uh so I think that would hinder some of the investigative work.

Okay, thank you.

Through the chair.

Can I just a uh quote just a clarifying question to the councilwoman?

Do you are you asking for CDP to get a warrant or are you asking about outside agencies getting a warrant?

Um either.

I don't both.

I mean, if my understanding is that if it's an outside agency that wanted access an outside agencies that are not, we're not in any MOU, they're not receiving, we're not in any sharing relationship, any outside agency would likely need a warrant to access ours without consent from us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And um Assistant Director Scheckner, I have another question for you.

Um Are you aware of the uh Chatry v United States Supreme Court Supreme Court ruling from a few days ago?

Is that the geofense?

Yes, it is.

Yes, I'm aware of that.

Okay.

And um so for for for those of you that this ruling um that sweeping up cell phone location data from tech companies constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, requiring probable cause and a warrant, thus limiting law enforcement's use of broad geofence warrants to track multiple devices near crime scenes.

Um the key question under Chow Tree is whether the specific warrant was too broad and ultimately unreasonable.

Assistant director Shatner.

Shachner, um, are you concerned about this ruling and its uh possible future implications for flock cameras or ALPRs?

Through the chair uh to the councilwoman, I'm not that concerned, um, just because it seems to be the prodigy from Carpenter and from other cases that have gone through the various districts that are using somewhat of a mosaic theory um in terms of um data collection and being able to determine people's personal details through that data collection.

Um the distinction between license plate readers and cell phones and cell phone data, which was uh distinction made in the carpenter case, was that the ubiquity of cell phone towers at the time the carpenter was decided in 2018.

Um you can't really go anywhere in the country with your cell phone without hitting a tower.

You can't really go anywhere in this in the country without your cell phone hitting a tower without having some sort of service.

Whether you're roaming or not, hitting uh tower.

And there was an understanding, like yes, it's a triangulation or you're in a cone, it's not really pinpointing where you are.

But it had to do with that density and how often LPRs are not currently at a in a place, although you're seeing a lot of them, it's not currently in a place or area where you can't cannot avoid them, right?

Uh so it cannot track your movements with that sp specificity across the nation.

So I think future tests or because as you know, Supreme Court likes bright line rules, it's going to be very difficult to come up with a bright line rule of when LPRs reach that level of density that you will need a search warrant.

Um City of Cleveland has a hundred of them.

I don't know at what point it would be where the density would hit where in within the city of Cleveland it would be ubiquitous enough where it would be considered uh privacy violation.

Um I think it won't I if I had to guess with the Supreme Court, I would guess that um a future decision would be based on in the country of how ubiquitous license plate readers and the density of licensed place readers throughout the country instead of a certain locality.

So perhaps um through the chair, perhaps a city-based system would be allowable versus a nationwide system like what Flock has.

I think it's gonna be very through the chair.

I think it's gonna be very fact-specific.

And as Carpenter stated, and I believe um I I don't remember the name of the K Chowtree stated uh that it was a narrow finding for the specific type of technology.

Thank you.

Okay.

Councilwoman.

Um thank you, Mr.

Chair.

That that is all of my questions.

I just want to uh reiterate, I am I fall into I actually fall into the middle category where I am not the against the use of technology.

I just um feel like we need to be very careful um with how we're applying it and the guardrails that we set.

Thank you.

I think all of us are in that same situation.

Councilman's life and their work at all.

Okay.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Uh through through the chair, is it fair to say that the real-time crime center surveillance cameras uh are at least able to be used for proactive surveillance, whereas you use I guess in theory LPRs could also be used proactively to identify vehicles for the sake of identifying vehicles, although what I'm hearing from all of you is that it's a reactive tool to identify vehicles after an alleged crime has been committed.

Is that is that correct?

Uh through the chair to the council member, when we talked about it, there's 3,000 cameras within the city of Cleveland.

We don't have the manpower to watch 3,000 cameras.

A lot of what we do is reactive unless there is a particular crime hotspot, something that we are focusing on where we dedicate resources to, you know, we know that we have had these certain crimes in this area.

We have the analyst keep a better eye on those particular cameras.

So they would zoom those ones up more often.

As far as uh proactive flock, I don't know how you could proactive flock um some of these cameras, you know, unless we are it's more of an investigative lead as you know a tool for us as opposed to you know a proactive measure.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I ask because I under I I hear concerns from the community that people can be feel that they're being watched going about their daily life.

And I want to suss out uh I guess the only so I'm hearing from Sergeant Gomez that there has to be a case number, there has to be so Lopez, I'm sorry.

Gomez over there.

Sorry, sorry about that.

That there has to be that there has to be uh that there can't just be a search for the sake of search, it can't be surveillance for the sake of surveillance, it is surveillance tied to an active investigation.

Correct.

And and I guess the only way I could presume that flock LPRs could be used in a proactive manner is if that didn't exist and if somehow you knew my license plate number by heart and you had somebody who was just watching screens all day waiting for my license plate number to come across.

Um I wanna, and maybe this isn't useful, but it's useful for me.

Um if uh after a Browns game, uh a five foot eight white man with glasses and a beard uh punches someone, uh I could potentially get momentarily detained as a person of interest based on my appearance.

Is that correct?

You should be, but anyway, but it's possible.

Um the goal is so license plate numbers in Ohio are not are less randomized than we think.

If you bought a car in the last year and you didn't get a vanity plate, your license plate probably begins with K or L because we've been going through the alphabet.

So I guess what I'm interested in is understanding absent license plate readers.

If after the Browns game I witness a hit and run and I call 911 and I say it was a white pickup truck and the license plate began with K.

That's that's a whole bunch of trucks.

And and what I'm trying to understand is if people feel uncomfortable that they're just going around and pictures of their plate are being taken.

How is how are people being excluded from searches to recognize that they are not the correct like at what point does invasiveness stop and we move on?

Versus I imagine a world where there's not LPRs and now we're having to go through a more elaborate process to do investigations behind everybody who is at the Browns game who drives a white truck who has a license plate that begins with K's, and that that actually feels in a sense more invasive to me because you're having to dig into the details of my day rather than excluding me quickly.

So through the chair to the council member, I I a point was asked earlier.

Why can't we use the current cameras we have for license plates?

You know, why is that capable of reading the license plates?

That would take manual work.

You know, when you look at it's it's automated license plate readers, which means that takes the people manpower out of the the equation there.

The situation you identified, first we would look at our cameras, city cameras, to see what actually happened.

Okay, we track that individual with city cameras back to a parking lot.

And then we see do we have a vehicle exiting the parking lot that matches that description?

That's how the investigation goes forward.

Um it's not there's no way to just randomly select um a vehicle that's on the west side that was involved in a crime down here.

Everything has to be tracked back and it's back based from there.

Does that so what uh to put it differently, you're suggesting that the LPR system is a secondary tool, relying on some primary tool to partnership with our cameras.

And I I think the best if you really want to hear a clear definition of that, the investigative research specialist from our homicide unit who is here, Vesna, that's all she does all day long.

And it's just, you know, if I don't know where she went.

Was that Ms.

Piscotello?

Yeah.

Come on up.

She could be.

She could I I'm sorry to get in the weeds everybody, but I feel it's important to understand the questions come down to uh if if we can never fully get over our mistrust of FLOC for whatever reason, what guardrails and procedures policies do we have in place internally to do our own quality control of ourselves and others to guard against what are what would effectively be data breaches as I understand them since we aren't in a national sharing network.

I don't I don't know if you I need to repeat the question or if you under uh stand uh what I'm but I'm interested in understanding how we are using this tool uh to eliminate uh to to identify and also eliminate people who may initially a vehicle may match, but they don't.

These people are not being surveilled beyond a certain point, and also just the general quality control processes that give the administration confidence that this tool would not be misused.

Through the chair to the council member, uh the homicide unit identified several cases um that had been they've been adjudicated.

So what I'd ask is for Vasna to just talk the specifics of how she got to that.

Please identify yourself for the viewing public.

Pull the mic very close, make sure the green lights on.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh, Chairman.

Tell us who you are.

Basta Piscatello.

I am the investigative research specialist in the homicide unit.

Um example that I can think of uh was the homicide of Alison Appling in January of 24.

Um it happened in her apartment complex.

She was coming back from Target in a ride share with her two children in her car.

A male approached her vehicle.

Uh the detectives obtained the private surveillance from the apartment complex.

Uh a male approaches the vehicle, shoots inside of the vehicle while her children are inside with her.

She dies.

Uh the male runs to a black pickup truck and exits the parking lot onto Detroit Avenue, turns down Berea Road.

Uh so we have cameras, real-time cameras at Detroit and West Boulevard, which I was able to look at first.

Uh I was able to get a little bit of an image of the vehicle.

I further was able to watch video from the apartment complex with the detectives.

That vehicle was there all day long, so I was able to track it on our city cameras earlier in the day.

It went to a gas station.

Um from there, we were able to uh see more details of the vehicle.

There was all kinds of bumper stickers on it, there was no license plate.

Uh there's two males in the vehicle.

Uh we were able to get pictures of their faces at the gas station.

Um I then went through Flock to look for black pickup trucks.

I believe it was a Ford.

Um it was an older model to see any that would match that description.

I was able to locate one through historical data.

Um I want to say it was maybe like two weeks prior, uh, in the Cleveland area with a license plate on it.

So when it had the license plate on it, we I provided that information to the detectives.

They were able to run the plate, see who it came back to, and the investigation went on from there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

It's that's I think that that's understanding we all can't stand over people's shoulders while investigation.

It's useful to hear how the tool is working.

I will I will end there, but my request to you uh to the uh you councilman is as we move towards your proposed amendments, if we could get a refresh of the amendments from two weeks ago to remind us where we are at this moment and then and then understand what's being proposed on top of what's already been amended, because if I'm understanding it correctly, much of that is based off of what has happened in adjoining municipalities as they've also attempted to uh pull in the reins on the kind of the the full use of the system.

And based on internal recommendations by members of the of the body as well who make comments and and suggestions.

Uh councilwoman House Jones.

Thank you.

Um through the chair to the team here.

Um I know we have gone through um various cases where uh the technology has been used to resolve um or identify um alleged suspects.

Um in this work, um have we done the root cause analysis for the alleged suspects, which basically is what what was the reason why these um things happen, what happened in their lives to have them allegedly um uh be the perpetrators in in these crimes?

Uh through to the chair to the councilwoman, as you know, we're just police officers.

And that is a part of what the violence prevention office uh through the mayor's office does.

That is not a part of law enforcement work.

We are the responders to the calls, and we don't have the capabilities of finding the root cause of where this violence occurs.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, I'm gonna come back to that.

Um a question around um, we've had this conversation about um police officers, they need to have more police officers, things of that nature through the chair to the tenement collection of penny body years.

Does anybody have an idea when we come to urban cities?

Um what are some of the top urban safest cities as we identified in in the US?

Is anybody have any ideas of what what those may be?

Would anybody have that information from the administration?

Through the chair to the council member, I know that um Kansas City, Boston, um, you know, those are some of the cities we work in partnership with.

Um, part of the organizations that I am involved in are with the major city chiefs about the uh how we proactively address crime in our neighborhoods.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

So when you do like generally um, as I just did some research, when you talk about some of the safest cities in America, um they have listed Virginia Beach, Virginia, San Jose, California, Irvine, California, El Paso, Texas, right?

And then when you do, like, usually what are some of the unsafest cities and and in US, you have it's listed as Baltimore, um, Maryland, Memphis, Tennessee, St.

Louis, Missouri, New Orleans, Louisiana, Detroit, Michigan, and I'm gonna throw Cleveland in there too, right?

And so when you look at, like, I'm like, okay, whatever.

And so you look at, well, how many police officers they have, or what's the ratio of police in the safest cities versus the unsafest cities in America?

And what you will find is that for the safest cities, there is a um astonishing lower amount of police in the places that are supposedly listed as the safest cities versus the cities that are uh listed as some of the unsafest cities in America.

Then you couple on the household income, and usually we'll see usually like a uh double, triple or more of household income.

Then you layer on race, and then you see an astounding difference between the places that usually are considered the unsafest, are the cities that have a much more diverse um um many more black people, um black people, and I'm saying black people in particular, compared to the places where you're talking about anywhere from 2% black people up to 19% people, right?

And the safest cities in America.

And I'm bringing this up because it's like this is not like a singular conversation.

This is a a conversation regarding intersectionality of race, um, economics, and there is even conversation about like what we're there, where we didn't have this um conversation in 2023 when this technology or this company was being utilized, right?

The context is very different in 2026 when you have an openly hostile federal government to black people and those who are uh international, it is not the same.

And this this federal government cannot be trusted.

Uh it just cannot be contrasted.

They have shown the extents that they will use, they don't care about laws.

They openly violate laws, the constitution, and they dare people to challenge them, and most people don't.

And I am not confident that the city of Cleveland, if this federal government does what they have been doing, violating the constitution, that this city of Cleveland will actually go to the extents to defend Clevelanders.

That's that's that is what I am afraid of because I have yet to see demonstrations that we will actively do it when it comes to um public safety.

Um I am it's just it's just like I said, it is very just disturbing just where we are and as much emphasis that we have spent on this conversation, and and and uh the varying amounts of communities who are for it and those who are against it, it would really be nice for us to have this much energy and go into like root cause analysis.

We talk about protection, but you can't get protection without investment.

That's right.

You can't get it without investment, and we are not seeing the level of investments to prevent things.

Like, okay, we we solving crimes, but we're not really putting the work to prevent prevent them.

And like I said, I've consistently asked, well, what's the root cause analysis?

Who are the perpetrators?

What are the places where things are happening so that we can actually just have more relief, you know, in places that have been generated generationally disinvested.

And like I said, I'm going to continue to stand that this federal government cannot be trusted.

When when people break the loose, even federal government partners break loose, break rules, don't abide by the constitution, this this judicial system will not protect black people, and many of these systems are not gonna protect black people.

And it is being shown literally this year and a half of this person that is occupying the white house, it it's just sickening.

It is sickening.

And I just like I said, I I I've stated my piece, but I just really wanted to bring this to the surface because people just throw out so much stuff, you know what I'm saying, about the need for more policing.

Policing do not make you safe.

They they uh I mean, and again, this ain't no shade to y'all, right?

This is not what I'm saying.

I appreciate it.

Yes, I call the police quite frequently, you know what I'm saying, to to do you know, to do your jobs, but this over reliance on police to make our community safe, it is not working.

This is not working, and if we as a system cannot think broader about truly creating truly safe communities where in the history of this country, it ain't no there has been no historical evidence, none where black people in a concentration live that this model has proved to be successful, that black people are thriving.

And I just frustrated.

So this whole connection to all of the things, and again, it's just like something something really has to give.

So I yeah, I know where I'm gonna be.

I know I ain't gonna vote for this, but I know it's gonna pass.

So here we are.

Thank you.

Our last one up.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

I you know, heard a lot of the testimony um here today since this morning and been through a lot of paperwork, and um, and I'm I'm appreciative that uh the representatives of flock are here, and I'm also appreciative of some of the the comments that brought out the safeguards, um uh as relates to um uh the system.

So, but I would like to hear a little bit because we touched a little bit of it, what are the safeguards, how would this information be used on the administrative side?

Um, and then what are the safeguards that uh uh the organization that's here because apparently uh that this is only a six-month scenario, correct, Mr.

Chairman?

Well, we're gonna talk about the amendments in a moment.

Um but it's the contract is for six months.

No, it's for a year.

It's for a year contract, yes, not six months.

That's what they're proposing.

We're proposing something different.

Okay.

So then um the proposal is for a yearly contract, and uh Mr.

Chairman, and we're gonna talk about that in our moment, yes.

In a moment in terms of the the various different um uh amendments, amendments that you're gonna put for us.

Um the second piece is after the contract is up, Mr.

Chairman, um, how does the process work from here?

To the director, chief?

Uh through the chair to council, the council member.

Um our goal is to put out an RFP for our technology to make sure that we have the best technology in place here, and that would, you know, one set selected would come back before the body.

Um but in the meantime, we know that process is lengthy as we are asking that we not lose the technology we currently have in that process.

I see.

And so right now the what we're talking about is 250,000 for this year, or what was the total?

250,000.

So it's 250,000 is is what the administration will play Flock up for one year uh in the city of Cleveland.

Through the chair, Councilman Jones is correct.

And and then if you could, Mr.

Chairman, you know, I don't have much after this, we can go straight on into the amendments.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, to the administration and to uh the representative, I'm sorry, distinguished chairman.

Can you say your name again?

Through the chair, uh Trevor Chandler.

Mr.

Chandler.

Mr.

Chandler, yes.

Mr.

Chandler, if both sides could briefly talk about the because what's important to me and the population I represent is to make sure that the proprietary information that's collected, these drive these driver license plates, that that information stays in use only for the purpose of the law for the s for the the police department and law department of the city of Cleveland, and that's it.

Um and that's where we stand at on that subject matter.

Can you talk about the safeguards that are in place not to distribute or give or hand out any of this information?

What what is the policy uh of your your organization?

Well, Mr.

There's also uh what they can state, but we also have the filters, which you need to state too.

So that's correct, Mr.

Chairman.

And I'd like to hear about through the chair uh to the council member.

Uh so it's important to know when any city or agency gets set up, uh there is no sharing enabled.

So uh we use the AWS GovCloud, which is what a lot of municipalities use.

Um AWS GovCloud, uh so Amazon Web Services, uh we we utilize that.

And you uh this city of Cleveland has their own section.

It is not uh co-mingled with any other agency or any other city's data.

It is uh started as a box, and only the city of Cleveland gets to choose who they share with.

And so that is CGI certified, so that's the FBI's uh criminal justice information services uh encryption standards that they continually assess, in addition to any number of encryption standards that I'm I'm happy to go into as well.

So uh it is fully encrypted.

Uh only the city of Cleveland decides who they share with.

Uh it's also very important to know that Flock has never been hacked.

Uh there has not been a data breach.

A lot of what you hear in regards to instances of sharing have been instances where cities didn't realize what sharing settings they may have had, and we worked with them to address that and uh provide additional measures to make sure that that's clear and that they control who they share with and how they share, and that they can adjust those accordingly.

So just so I'm on the same page here, you're saying that that a certain system, uh digital system is set up where that the only access and usage will be from the police department in the city of Cleveland only.

Yes, If no one else has that capacity to have that technology or that information uh once it's collected, it just goes straight, it's just dealt with by them.

What about your organization?

Do you have access to this data?

Yes, our contract allows uh for access for a limited number of services, including maintaining uh the uh maintaining the access.

If there's a corrupt data file, uh we have C just certified engineers who are uh provided access in order to uh correct any product um any product issues.

And so those are C just certified, they are able to go in and and fix those issues.

But you are correct.

If uh the city of Cleveland decided they didn't want to share with anyone, they're just gonna shut it down.

They only want to use it within the city.

Uh only the city of uh Cleveland and your authorized uh designees would have access to that.

Uh there is no default sharing within Flock.

Flock will never decide to share your data.

Uh we are it is contractually yours, you own it.

Flock does not.

Uh we are the people that per uh provide the access to it as part of the services, but is contractually uh ironclad that the city of Cleveland is the are the owners of your city of Cleveland's data.

Thank you.

So all of this talk about selling the data uh is not true.

It is not true.

Uh unfortunately in this day and age, uh a lot of uh YouTube uh videos and TikToks are able to get many views uh before the the truth can get out of bed in the morning, and uh it is not true.

Flock does not sell data, period.

So you never shared it, period.

No.

I see.

Okay.

And so then the next question would be uh ICEs uh my colleague covered some of this.

Yes.

Um have you uh participated in uh any state governments or any uh federal governments requests for information?

So there was a period through the chair, uh through the chair to the council member.

Uh there was a period that precipitated a lot of this conversation where we did a uh pilot project with customs and border patrol and the homeland security investigations team focused on human trafficking and narcotics trafficking.

Uh we have been very clear, we did not communicate this effectively like we should have.

And that's when you saw we saw cities uh because of the transparency features of the tool said, why is there a search from HSI on our audit log?

Why is there a search from CBP on our audit log?

That's what started these really serious conversations, and that's what resulted in the significant changes that we made.

Uh the biggest one as it relates to uh federal engagement is that federal, no federal agency, whether it's a post office or a national park, has access to the national search or even the statewide search feature.

These national these uh federal agencies can now only establish a sharing relationship with a local agency.

If that if it's within the laws of that agency, if they specifically raise their hand in the system, say we are willing to have those sorts of relationships, and that they accept specifically a one-to-one sharing relationship.

Uh so there was a there was and continues to be this serious conversation around immigration.

Um I'm proud to say that Flock didn't we we didn't curl up into a ball and say we're not dealing with this.

We leaned into it and we actually became an industry leader in providing local customized public safety access while limiting any federal access.

Okay.

Did you want to say something?

Distinguished gentleman, I saw you quote the mic.

Yeah, to the chair.

Um I just wanted to add to that to that point, Vaughn Rowland, director of government relations at Flock.

Um to that point to Trevor's point, my colleagues' point.

Um products and safeguards that we're discussing right now came from us addressing the issues that you're bringing up.

They were built in-house because we wanted to ensure that the policies reflected the areas in which they served.

So many of these products, I would say last year, many of them are just starting to be built out, and we're rolling them out and constantly doing education campaigns internally and externally about how these tools work.

So I just wanted to ensure that that was wasteful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council wrap it up.

All of what has been talked about at this space of time, your organization has uh put safeguards in place so that these situations don't happen and that the people who have used is your customers.

And you haven't had any data breaches, you haven't had any ICE issues or incidents, all that stuff is uh pure hearsay.

Through the chair, I think the the best evidence of that is the fact that since CPD put these filters in place, you have not had these immigration uh searches go through uh is part of the proof that we have invested in tools uh not just uh to put a bow on something, but that is substantive to address uh the community concerns that are here and in communities across the country.

And Mr.

Chairman, if the administration can talk about the safeguards that you have in place, who has accessibility or access to uh this data?

Okay, through the chair to the council member, we have a select number of officers, detectives, and supervisors that have access to the system.

I don't even have access to the system.

Thank you.

Um I can tell you that we have put the filters in place so that it is not used beyond the division of police in our fusion center.

Um that's to make sure, you know, the the first partnership was to remove the 28 C287G agreement cities, and then it was just easier for us to shut everybody off.

Okay.

We don't want to lose the tool.

So if we have to shut everyone off to not lose a tool to make sure that we can hold ourselves accountable, but if we're not allowing anyone else to access it.

Thank you, Councilman.

Um time is up.

And Mr.

Chairman, just you know, because I guess we've gonna go into amendments have to be.

I want to retract my earlier statement given the fact that you know it or the new testimony here from the organization.

Yeah.

Um I think that there should be penalties.

Um Mr.

Chairman, we have to have a motion first.

Okay.

And I'm gonna call it.

I want to thank, I want to thank the uh everyone who came here today to testify uh pro and con.

Now you understand why the council president wanted this heard outside of a committee at the whole, because just the sure time frame and the data and the information that we had to collect, and I appreciate all the data collection.

Councilman Conwell, you'd make a motion.

Councilman, Council President, you did a great job.

I want to say that uh to the chair.

I want to make a motion to reconsider the vote to not recommend.

Thank you.

There's a reconsideration, Councilman Jones.

Thank you.

Madam Clerk, this is to reconsider the legislation for another vote.

Uh, Madam Clerk called the roll.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

CCA is welcome to the case.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Now, um, due to the concerns and issues that have been raised, um, which I have expressed those to the administration as well.

I want to thank all my colleagues who have submitted ideas, thoughts, concerns.

We do have an amendment.

Um, and I'm going to ask the uh law director, council's uh not law director, council's uh legal um person, uh Rachel Scalish.

Yeah.

Um got to be politically correct here.

The lady to read the amendments that have been put forth based on suggestions and recommendations of members of the body.

Would you care to read the amendment?

Put the mic close to you.

Yeah.

Okay, and the amendments to the previous amendments are actually incorporated in this amendment, so I will let you know what you voted on last time.

Um the first amendment.

In the title and at the last line of section one, delete one year and insert six months.

And in section one, delete two hundred and fifty thousand and insert one hundred and twenty-five thousand.

Okay, keep going.

After section one, insert new section two, and this was voted on and approved two weeks ago.

Yes.

Flock safety shall not sell, share, publish, or exchange any data obtained through the Flock Safety Automated License Plate reader solution contract, ALPR contract, authorized by this ordinance for any purpose other than law enforcement purposes.

This part is new.

Flock safety shall not access, use, preserve, or disclose any data obtained through the ALPR contract to any third-party government authority or other third party except pursuant to a valid search warrant issued by a court of competent jurisdiction upon a finding of probable cause and describing with particularity the data to be produced.

Flock shall not disclose data obtained through the ALPR contract in response to subpoenas, administrative requests, informal inquiries, preservation letters, national security letters, or any other legal process that does not constitute a search warrant unless required by applicable law.

Any disclosure is strictly limited to the data identified in the warrant and shall be produced only to the requesting law enforcement authority named in the warrant.

Flock shall not voluntarily disclose data based solely on a good faith belief, contractual enforcement interests, investigatory convenience, or generalized public safety concerns.

Unless legally prohibited, Flock shall provide prompt written notice to the Director of Public Safety prior to disclosure and shall afford the director a reasonable opportunity to seek protective relief.

Flock shall further use commercially reasonable efforts to narrow, resist, quash, or otherwise challenge any legal process that exceeds the permissible permissible scope set forth above.

Any violation of this provision shall constitute a material breach of the contract authorized by this ordinance.

Number three, and this one was in the previous um uh approval of the amendments.

The contract between the city and flock safety shall include a financial penalty of up to 10 percent of the amount of the contract for violation of privacy and data sharing provisions.

Number four, this is new.

The division of police shall establish and maintain a transparency portal, an online web page by which the public may access information about the division of police's use of ALPRs.

Number five, delete section two and insert new section three.

At the end of new section three, insert, and this is old, the director of public safety shall provide written notice to the clerk of council whenever any per purchase is made through the cooperative process, which notice shall include the details of such cooperative purchases, and this is a new sentence.

The safety director shall submit a written report quarterly to the clerk and the safety committee on the use and monitoring of the ALPR system.

We would need to then renumber Section 3 to new Section 4, renumber Section 4 to new Section 5, and then this uh amendment would re would remove the previous amendment and replace.

Okay.

Um this came about again as individual um concerns, uh concerns that I expressed uh to the our um uh Rachel that I expressed on behalf of members who called me and talked to me at length about the proposal, uh the concerns that many members of the body had as it pertains to outside access to the administration.

Do you have any comments, questions, concerns?

Uh through the chair, uh appreciate the amendments.

Uh the one uh part of the amendments relative to the six months.

Um, as you are aware, uh the RFP process uh takes uh quite some time.

Uh the six months would not give a sufficient amount of time to actually go through the vetting process of the RFP to select a vendor of a potential new license plate reading properly.

I understand this, but it this is a compromise.

And I'm I'm trying to, there are great concerns about the vendor.

And as I expressed to you in our in our weekly meetings.

There is great concerns about the vendor.

I I don't see why in six months if it's an RFQ, RFP, why you cannot identify a vendor.

Um and I I you know I think this this should be a priority.

This should be a priority of the administration.

They seek out another seek outside vendors, other individuals, because the issue with Flock has been it's not the license plate readers.

I want to say this again, it's not the license plate readers.

I can I can point to testimony um where these have been beneficial in identifying people, in fact, in my own ward, um that have been involved in violent, horrendous crimes.

But there's this issue with Flock.

And it's and and for anyone to ignore that would be um badly mistaken.

Uh so the chair, yeah.

You understand it is a priority for us, but it is uh uh it's a consuming process.

It takes time, um, and that's not to make excuses, that's just a reality.

Um Commissioner Jones can get into more of the detail.

Uh through the chairs to the council members.

So just to walk you through um, I've done a new number of uh public safety RFPs in the process.

So out the gate, we're looking probably I would say at least 25 days for me to draft the RFP, and that's coming up with the initial draft, sitting down with the division, the director making sure that everything that was uh communicated at this table and as well as the needs of the division and the different units are captured.

After that, we go through the administrative process of getting um a proposals list approved by our CRC.

After that, we go out on the streets with the RFP.

Uh typically for RFP of this nature, I would at least want to advertise for at least 30 30 days, more so if we could 45 days.

This allows us to do that that complete canvas, and it also gives the vendors a chance to propose a uh complete solution.

Um within that 45, 30 to 45 day time frame, the vendors actually read our RFP, submit questions back to us, depending on the questions they submit.

We may then have to make an amendment to the RFP to provide either additional clarification or add additional features functionality.

So once RFPs come in, um we work with the director of the chief, we put together a committee.

That committee is then responsible for reading all those submissions.

Sometimes you get lucky or not lucky, you get uh let's say one to four RFPs.

We've had instances we've had 12 RFPs.

From there, we have to go through scoring of the written proposals.

We create a short list based off of that.

We invite those folks to actually come in and do an oral presentation demo of the solution.

Uh given this um solution, there may be an extra step.

So in the past, the safety director and I have had actually went out for body worn cameras, we did site visits.

So we actually go out to selected cities to see the technology, see the issues that those folks are dealing with, and that helps us better come back to this table and also for the implementation.

After that, um we would come back with a recommendation, come back before this body.

You still have the contract negotiations.

Um, given that the things that this body wants in these contracts, that's going to be a back and forth with their lawyers or the law department.

Um so six months, in all honesty, that would be pushing us to try to get that complete process.

Larry, you're very competent guy.

I've known you a long time.

Um so I am assuming I have to assume we're this is not our first rodeo.

We have license plate readers already here.

So we're trying to come up with a reasonable approach.

I'm I'm I am the council president I have talked about this uh at length.

We understand the outside concerns.

We listen to the people who were opposed who are posed to this period.

Period.

They don't want nothing.

Zip Nada.

We're trying to come up with a system that supports our men and women in blue and addresses the violent crime in our neighborhoods.

We believe this is a compromise.

I would hope the administration would understand it's a compromise.

We're trying to get this piece of legislation passed.

Capiche, I mean, I don't know what else I can say.

We're trying to get it passed, and you have to understand it.

This is a priority of the council.

We want license plate readers, but there have been serious questions raised about the vendor.

Those are legitimate concerns that have been raised at this table and by people who've come to testify.

So all I'm saying to this is uh you can't have it both ways.

You had six months.

You had six months to do something.

You could have gone out for an RFQ RFP before, and you chose not to do that.

So I'm trying to be reasonable.

And I'm trying to, I'm trying to get move this because we still have another committee process, and there might be some additional discussions and amendments.

I'm trying to move this.

Okay.

So and we can make amendments between between now and the finance.

So I would hope that you would hold off on your on your uh uh your recommendations between now and finance.

Okay, what what what part would you recommend?

Um definitely something that I definitely believe should be included in this um legislation is an amendment to include a section for wrongful stops and arrest prevention safeguards.

So that for it is included within this ordinance of what we're trying to reduce.

Some of the things that you heard from um members of the committee as well as the view in public was making sure um people are not just being stopped for wrongdoing or the tools are being used for personal gains as opposed to um putting some guardrails in there.

So I definitely have an amendment I would love to.

So what would you like to propose, Council?

Um just just from context in for um a section being added, which will be include wrongful stop and arrest prevention safeguards.

Um I definitely will send this over, but the division of police shall establish and enforce written procedures governing any law enforcement action arising from an alert notification, search resort or other information generated through the automated license, plate reader system authorized by this ordinance.

No ALPR alert, notification or search results should stand alone, constitute probable cost for an arrest, search, seizure, or vehicle stop before initiating enforcement action based substantially upon ALPR information and officer shell whenever reasonably practical and consistent with the immediate threat to public safety.

And I and within there, I have more information that can be included within the section that I definitely would like to send over to make sure that is included because those safeguard rails is important.

Could I could I uh uh uh ask for your indulgence here?

Uh because we have this piece, we already have amendments here.

Okay.

So if you could prepare those to go for uh we could go forward between now and the finance table, uh, because I think those are reasonable.

Uh but I'd like to hear back from the administration what your thoughts are about those as well.

I can you don't have it in front of you, but I'd like at some point to hear what your comments are.

Uh through the chair to the council member, that's pretty similar to what our current policies are.

Oh, it is.

But we can provide that for you.

Oh, you will.

It's part of the law and it's part of our policy.

Well, then we can address it.

So then and with so we can then add anything additional.

Yeah, through the chair.

So with that information, I want to make sure it is actually included within the legislation so we can make sure we understand some of the guardrails that may be already in place, but making sure it's attachment to legislation so anytime someone pulled this up, they can see some things that actually attribute to those safeguards.

So let's share the house member.

We'll send you over our power.

And Mr.

Chairman, I support my colleague Richard Starr's case.

I understand it.

We will we'll and I would ask, so we're let's we're going to vote on this the initial amendment.

Um then you want to send that order before finances?

Okay, good.

Mr.

Chairman, discussion on this amendment.

Yeah.

I'd like to increase the penalty, so I'll move back uh five fingers and ten toes off the two million.

And uh there you can't do two million.

Well, I know you can't.

I'm just making sure, Mr.

Chairman, for the record, right?

Yes, it's 10 percent now.

Um penalty if uh Okay, if this agency or organization discloses or give out any of the proprietary information uh that they collect from the citizens in the city of Cleveland in any kind of so in section three, Councilman Jones is recommending that the 10 percent be removed and be 25 percent.

Is there any objection to that on this side of the table?

No objection on this side of the table.

So, madam, uh to the our um uh racial, it's gonna be 25 percent in section three.

Okay.

Let's let's vote on the amendment that is before us.

Madam Clerk, would you call the oh someone make a motion?

Excuse me.

So make a motion.

I'm I move to accept the amendments as read by Mrs.

Scalish and uh I'm further amended by Council Jones.

Is there a second?

Thank you very much.

All those in favor of the amendments that have been read, Madam Clerk.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Jones?

Yes.

Yes.

CCA is thank you.

Now, you've heard uh the second uh um amendments that are being proposed between now and the finance committee.

I want you to work with councilman star and our attorney, and I'll be working with Councilman Starr as well.

Yes, wait a minute, to make sure if you're doing this already, then there should be no problem with incorporating that into the legislation.

Understood.

Well, yeah, commitment on that.

Yes, Councilman Slate.

And and um in advance of that, I would also like to explore, and I don't know if this would be incorporated within Councilman Starr's uh amendment or it would be another one of a like an online data reporting portal as I've seen other communities have.

So if if we could just get some clarification on that offline, and then I will say I am interested if if Mr.

Jones could uh lay out the argument for the RFP process versus six months.

I think if the argument has been that this is a critical investigative tool, I wouldn't be I'm not sure I want to end up in a situation where we have a lag between well wow as we're switching vendors and if there's an understanding of what it takes to put out an RFP and perhaps there's some uh uh there's some middle path where we can uh restrict to six months unless there's a demonstration that an RFP is out or a process is being had, and at that point we could continue it further out so that we have continuity while that selection process and and contracting and what have you would be occurring.

So I I'll just say that I'm open to that, but I think that it would be premature to uh throw that amendment out right now if Mr.

Jones is able to provide that information so we can consider it at committee of the whole.

Let me just reinforce this.

This is a priority.

This is a priority.

We're in this situation again.

You folks had the opportunity to go out with an RFQ RFP long time ago, and you didn't do it.

So it was bounced over to us.

I think we did the best job we could based on the data that we have available to it.

And I want to thank again everybody.

I want to thank the director, the assistant director, the chief, and everybody came to the table today because this made a difference with the data that was collected and presented to us.

We want we want uh license plate readers to do what they're they were originally intended to do, and that is to identify people involved in violent crime in our communities.

And we've had a list uh we all can attest to where they have they have worked, but we want to make sure people's rights are being protected.

That's the other side of that equation.

You want to make sure our citizens' rights are being protected.

So without yes, councilman, yes.

Yes, yes.

You know, I mentioned earlier in my presentation to the safety director and the chief.

You you just have to go out to the residents and you and you talk with them about it also because uh we received a lot of um phone calls and people were very, very about flock.

However, you gotta go out.

Do you have an outreach person through the chair to the uh to the chief?

Who can you have people who can talk about this in the neighborhoods?

Through to the chair to all the council members, your district commanders.

That is what they're um they are your point of contact for everything related to the division of police.

They can talk about flock.

They can talk about the flock and the license plate reads to our community members to you, they can give you all the information you need.

Because they've been beating it up in the uh in the community about flock, and all the way you know, talking about you guys, but you need someone to go out to talk about it, and that'd help out a lot.

Through the chair to the council members, I will talk with our command staff to make sure that they have all the information to present it properly.

All right, thank you.

I want to thank again everybody who came today for this very important meeting of Cleveland City Council Public Safety Committee.

Madam Clerk, call the roll on the legislation.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

House Jones?

No.

No.

Jones?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Legislation stands approved.

It's read will be going on to the finance committee.

As amended, excuse me.

Thank you.

All thank you again for everybody's here and those the viewing public as well.

Thank you.

Committee stands adjourned.