Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The Des Moines City Council met in regular session on June 25, 2026, at 6:00 PM. Mayor Yoshiko Grace Matsui presided. All council members were present. Agenda items included significant public comment on the city's Flock safety cameras, the recognition of Sergeant Eddie Ochart for 25 years of service, financial reports for 2025 Q4 and 2026 Q1, an update on the Strategic Plan's Economic Vitality implementation, and the first reading of an ordinance to expand the speed camera program. The consent agenda, including the adoption of the Strategic Plan, was approved unanimously.
At this time, I would like to call the June twenty-fifth, twenty twenty-six Des Moines City Council meeting to order. Councilmember JC Harris will lead us in the pledge. Please stand if you are able. When I call your name, please come to the podium. I live in West Seattle. I work with Chris over there protesting on the weekends with the Trump stuff. So I'm here to protest the flock cameras. We don't really know where the information is going. So I don't I don't trust that. I'm not a paranoid person. I just know that this is not how we treat people. You know, immigrants being followed, you know, so the flock cameras need to be be out of it. Um I'm not going to talk real long. One of the things that I wanted to do was to misquote kind of Ben Franklin. Um I'm going to paraphrase, but basically, he said for people that want to give up freedom for security, they will have neither. And I think that's kind of where we're at in our country right now. So I want to thank you for your attention. Thank you. Melissa Folletti, is that right? Melissa Falcetti. I'm a resident here in Des Moines, live right down the street. And so I'm also here to talk about the um about the flock cameras. And I want to say first, thank you, because I do recognize that the police department here has been doing a lot with transparency, making things available. There's clearly a good faith effort to do a good job with this, but there's still a lot of privacy concerns, a lot of other concerns. My personal thing as a former stocking victim is about privacy and malfeasance. There um there are many cases so far across the country of people misusing this system in order to stalk people and harass kind of their perceived enemies. So this morning I went to the um the flock transparency portal for Des Moines, and I downloaded the last 30 days of data. And so 50% of them had no reason for the search listed. 17 searches were categorized as sex offenses, not a single one had a reason listed. Um in November of last year, there were two official statements. The Des Moines Police Department has verified that no federal law enforcement partners have access to our flock data, and if these measures, which were the upgraded safety concerns, these measured effect effectively close any front door, back door, or side door pass to our data. And yet on June 8th of this year, um, there was a reason for a search that said OSA to ATF or unlawful firearm sale. ATF is a federal agency, and this is what's called a side door search. So what it means is ATF as a federal agency doesn't have access to the data, so they contacted somebody who does and had them search for them. So that's the sort of thing that we're worried about. All these things that have no reasons listed. We don't know how many of them were side door uh searches. We don't know how many were done for personal vendettas. Um the chief on the February 12th uh city council meeting did a great presentation about this.