Okay.

I think that's everybody.

Right.

It is 5 30.

See if he gives me that.

Okay.

It is 5 30.

So we'll go ahead and get started with the City Council special meeting for Tuesday, August 19th.

We have two uh two items on the agenda.

The first one is a discussion regarding use of Flock cameras for the police department.

And we have uh Deputy Chief Jackson here to talk about that.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for having us here tonight.

With me, I have Trevor Chandler with Flock.

We kind of want to go over some things about Flock.

Before I do, I kind of want to give you a little bit of background while we brought this back.

This is probably like the second third time we presented this here.

And um I'll start with my job here in Norman.

One of the one of the reasons why I got into law enforcement, one of many was that I wanted to make the community wherever I work safer than when I left and when I started.

And so bring Flock back.

I think this is one of the tools that would help us accomplish that.

I've got family that those are my granddaughters live here.

And um I think this is a tool that would help keep not only my family but your family's state and square.

And so with that, uh like there's a lot of misinformation floating around about Flock, what it does, what it doesn't do.

And so I brought Trevor here to kind of enlighten everyone uh to what Flock is and what it isn't, so that moving forward, people here at the council can make an informed decision about how they want to proceed with the Flock um program.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Trevor.

Thank you.

Uh yes, everyone, I'm Trevor Chandler.

I'm the director of public affairs for Flock.

Uh I'm actually I'm really excited to be back in Oklahoma.

I worked here uh briefly, I worked for the human rights campaign for six years, and as part of that, worked on the Freedom Oklahoma campaign to help uh be a part of the campaign to bring marriage equality here, but pre-uh federal marriage equality.

And so it's just really cool to be back in town.

So uh pleasure to be here with you all.

Um again, I know this is a study session, so please feel free to ask questions in the midst of this presentation.

Don't feel like you have to hold on to them to the end.

My my main goal here is to get the the basics done.

Um, you know.

I didn't get that.

Could you try and get it?

Oh, okay.

Well then, look at that.

That was my voice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um I had it, I had it on uh silent mode too.

Um do not disturb.

Big brother.

I know, Siri, right?

Big Siri.

Um so um uh you're gonna you you are gonna hear from your department about you know success stories and the practical aspects.

I want to make sure that I'm spending your time wisely by focusing on the technical aspect about data security, the product itself.

Um nothing is off limits for questions.

Um anything you have, uh please please let me know.

So um any anything before I dive in, anything someone wanted to make sure that I absolutely touch on or uh Yes.

Yes, I want to know if Block is working with ICE.

Correct, no, we are not.

That's not what the ACLE says, but uh the ACL, you never said we're working with ice.

Uh I could go into that.

Um I'm reading an article about it, right?

Yes, so there's some departments that decide it's part of their values and their community to uh participate in immigration enforcement, and what we are able to do at Flock is customize it to make sure that the communities that don't share those values don't have to participate in that.

And so we have it's very customizable, including auditing and transparency protections and also reading about women who are worried that they're being tracked for self-administered abortions in states where it's illegal like Texas.

Yeah, and that's actually an article, our blog post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the ACLU picked up, uh which is completely false.

So a woman self-administered abortion abortion.

Yes, because she was a missing person who self-administered an abortion and her family listed her as a missing person, and they were afraid she was actually gonna bleed to death.

And so she was never under any circumstances being sought because she had an abortion.

Well, yeah, I'm happy to have that conversation, and I absolutely believe in factual-based conversations.

Um, and in that case, the sheriff absolutely said she was never being searched for uh because of her reproductive health care choice.

She was being searched for for health and safety reasons, and because her family didn't know where she was.

So if you were an abusive boyfriend and you wanted to track a woman who was potentially getting an abortion, you could report a similar stance that I'm afraid she might be bleeding to death.

Well, I'm I'm happy to go into the safeguards that we have.

So happy to dive into that more.

Well, that's kind of where I'm coming from.

Got it.

Sounds good.

So one of the things with our uh with what we have going at Flock is why why Flock.

Um, you know, there's a lot of uh companies out there, vendors that look to continually upsell and uh create more and more need for their products and increase the price.

This is actually Flock is actually the opposite.

It's a force multiplier.

Every single department across the country right now is having a staffing shortage.

Um and for the foreseeable future, it's gonna go on for at least another five to ten years.

So the question is how do you make the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars with uh fewer officers and work to get the same results that your communities deserve and respect and expect.

And that's where Flock comes in.

It's about uh being a force multiplier.

And so, you know, we have a lot of stories, and your your department um and your sheriff's department has a lot of stories about the fact that this is one, this has been one of the biggest game changers since DNA.

Um, and without without having to increase staffing, there's never gonna be anything that replaces um an officer.

Officers are always the most important part of your department.

Uh, but given the long ongoing uh staffing shortages, what this is gonna be able to do is help your department where they are now uh do more with with less.

And a little bit about Flock.

Uh so we have, I think we're actually over 1,500 uh US employees now.

Uh conservatively, Flock is being used to solve around 2200 crimes a week, which if you extrapolate that out, is about 10% of uh crime solved in the US.

And now we actually need to update this.

We're in over 6,000 communities across the United States.

Um talking about the the partnership as a whole, uh some a couple things we really pride ourselves on is the pricing is completely fair and up uh is up front.

Uh there's no secret upcharges, there's no secret upgrades, whether it's product maintenance, permitting, installation, everything is included and very clear in the contracts we provide, including installation and ongoing maintenance.

We actually have our own permitting team that also assists with permitting.

Um we have the data storage uh through the AWS GovCloud, which we'll go over in a little bit longer.

Um, and again, lifetime hardware and software upgrades.

So uh one of the reasons you'll see that these cameras are leased and not sold is because a lot of a lot of uh you know, vendors will sell you a camera that'll be defunct in two years, and then you have a closet full of dead hardware, especially at the rate of uh how technology is improving right now.

By doing the leasing uh like Flock does, if we come out with a camera upgrade or a software upgrade, uh the contract states that upgrade is on us.

So if we have a brand new camera, top of the line that comes out in the middle of your contract, and uh we're phasing out the old ones, you don't have to worry that we're gonna upsell you and say, oh, now you got a new camera.

Uh it's a new price.

It's all up front, and we take care of any unexpected charges.

What is the price?

Uh the price per camera is $3,500 a year.

Yep.

So licensed plate readers.

Um, talking about what they are and what they're not.

Uh so again, infrastructure free.

If we can attach them to existing plates if necessary, uh or existing posts, but we can also put in our own.

Uh 24-7 coverage, uh, real-time alerts from the National Crime Information Center, that's the NCIC, NICMIC, uh, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Uh, I'm actually really proud to say that.

So NICMIC runs our country's Amber Alert system.

Uh, they find thousands of missing children every year.

And they have touted and fully endorsed Flock LPR cameras as a pivotal part of the strategy to reunite missing children.

Uh, we have a deep partnership with NICMIC.

Uh, we have been credited by them with finding over a hundred missing kids and just in miss with missing persons in general, just in just in uh press accounts, uh, because we don't we are not able to track every single time this happens, but Flock has been attributed with helping find over a thousand missing persons, including uh silver alerts for uh people with dementia, um, missing children, um, the whole the whole uh gamut.

And again, no facial recognition, these are not speed cameras, these are not red light cameras.

Um, and it's not indiscriminate evidence.

Uh, this is, you know, there's a there's a common misperception of license plate reader cameras that it's mass surveillance.

Uh when in reality, it's actually the exact opposite.

It allows for precision policing.

Instead of looking for every white SUV, you're looking for the white SUV.

You're stopping unnecessary police stops that could result in negative police citizen interaction by focusing only on vehicles that are associated with crimes.

Um that's a really key distinction there.

And again, talking about precision policing, this is an example of what your officers will see.

Uh all cameras are positioned to get the best photo of the back of a vehicle.

Uh and in this case, you have a uh you have this license plate, it's red.

Uh, and your this is what your officers will see in creating, you can use obviously the FBI's NCIC and customize that list for the alerts you want to get, amber alerts, or custom alerts that your department chooses.

And so this is an example of what that looks like.

Uh so to find the specific one, does it need to scan every vehicle that crosses its path?

Yeah, so these these uh these cameras take a picture of every single vehicle uh that are in the license plate, the rear of the vehicle.

And so that way you have a data retention period of 30 days to be sure.

30 days.

And so that is kept for 30 days.

And so some cities want a longer retention to help with investigatory purposes.

Um, but the common standard is 30 days, and so that data is held on to for 30 days and then automatically deleted on a rolling basis.

Every vehicle and everybody's registration that's attached to it is scanned and held in a private database.

Just the license plate.

Not the registration.

Yeah, not the registration.

It's very one thing that's very important to know Flock has no access to personally identifiable information.

All the images we're collecting are of license weights.

We do not have what your DMV has, what your sheriff has.

This is separate from all of that.

Um so no PII at all is stored in the uh the flock servers where your data is held.

And your data is held separately from anyone else's data.

A kind of another common misperception is that all the cameras across the country kind of dump all their photos into the same big database.

That's not the case.

You all own your data 100%.

It is segmented in the in the cloud server, it is separated from everyone unless you choose to have a sharing agreement with another municipality.

Uh but you own your data, it is separate, and it will never be sold or shared uh without your explicit permission.

Okay.

Okay.

And then, you know, we always talk about, you know, the next the next uh people ask uh about oh well, what if someone removes their license plate?

What if they use one of those new license plate concealers or put the special tape on it that's reflective and prevents it?

That's where Flox vehicle fingerprint technology comes in.

Um especially with hit and runs.

Uh, you know, if you get hit by a car, chances are the first thing you're looking at is not the license plate to get that uh license plate.

But you do know it was a uh red Ford Explorer.

Uh and you can say, listen when the police come to ask you, you could say, listen, I found a uh I was hit by a red Ford Explorer with a roof rack.

Uh and that's all I know.

I didn't look at the license plate.

Even with that detail, uh, your officers can go into the into Flock and look at the cameras that were nearby that hit and run and look if there was a red Ford Explorer with a roof rack that passed by, and that can lead to an actionable lead for your officers to follow up on.

They can look at the license plate, look who the owner of that car is, and then investigate from there.

One thing I just want to really emphasize that I just said is that these cameras do not establish guilt.

What these cameras do are provide actionable pieces of evidence for your officers to follow up on and establish leads.

Uh the a flock camera is not a judge and jury.

A flock camera provides actionable evidence for your officers.

So again, just because let's say in this hypothetical situation, this red Ford Explorer with a roof rack was caught on this camera at the same time that there was this hit and run, that does not establish guilt, but it does establish suspicion that this car was in that same place at the time and is a lead for your officer to follow up on.

Maybe there were two red Ford Explorers with roof racks.

Um that's possible.

So these cameras do not establish guilt.

They establish a key piece of actionable, objective evidence that your officers can use to follow up on a uh on a crime.

Uh privacy.

Uh so we were talking about this and about data sharing.

So all data is owned by you.

Flock does not own this data.

It is explicit in the contract that uh that our agencies, the agencies that work with us, own their data.

Uh same as you were saying, uh the retention period here is deleted after 30 days.

Uh, no personal data is collected by the Flock system, and all of our data is stored uh with end-to-end encryption, both when it is collected, when it is rest, and when is that transit.

There is no point in the image collection process where this data is not encrypted.

So it's and it's encrypted to CGIS uh standard.

So CGIS criminal justice information services that's FBI certified.

Uh and so we are we're at that level, in addition to a lot of other um uh a lot of other abbreviations that I can list for you and explain, um, including SOC2 type 2 audit to make sure it's it's fully up to date.

Um and uh what your uh what your sheriff's office does is exactly this uh both a search reason and a user number is saved indefinitely for a permanent audit trail, and what your sheriff's office does actually includes the case number in there as well.

So you have the search reason, the user number, and uh the case number, so that when you do your audits, if there is someone who uh is not using the system correctly, um, as was mentioned earlier, and that that is possible.

What we do is we provide the transparency and the accountability features for you all to catch that and to make sure that if there are if there is anyone that is not using your system according to your SOP, that you can hold them accountable.

And so we have at the auditing, yes.

Um just to be clear, you keep saying sheriff.

I want to make sure that we're using the correct police nomenclature because in this public meeting of the city, the sheriff and the police are not the same.

So for the people listening at home, we want to make sure that this isn't something that our sheriff's office controls.

Yeah.

Uh my other question was of the 6,000 plus communities that use this, and you say that we have the opportunity or the choice to share our information with other communities of those 6,000 communities, how many are currently sharing data?

In like in our national lookup, I don't have that specific number.

I can look that up and find it for you.

Um, but it's purely optional.

Uh again, Flock never automatically opts people in to national lookup.

If you want to and you want that capability, uh, you know, especially for human trafficking, drug trafficking, um, uh organized retail crime.

A lot of communities and states choose to opt into the national lookup feature.

But some uh folks want to maintain a little bit closer hold to make sure that the people that they're sharing with share their values and they want to be a little bit more tighter hold on that.

Again, we make it and we make all of that possible.

Some people choose statewide uh sharing where they're just gonna share with every agency in their state.

Some people you can even do it by um mileage.

You say I only want to share with within a 20 mile radius of my uh my agency.

It's purely customizable to you, or you cannot share it all.

Um, there's all these different options to customize it to make sure that your community safety never has to come at the expense of community values.

And we also offer a free uh and optional transparency portal.

Uh, this is an example of what that looks like.

Um, this is in Bartlesville, and so what they have up here so the community can see exactly how their license plate readers are being used.

Uh, it has everyone that Bartlesville is sharing with uh there, shows their data retention policy, the number of cameras, what's accepted, what's acceptable, what's prohibited, what this is, what this isn't, um, including uh they part of the actually choose to put a map of where their cameras are.

Um, so all of these um are possible for what you want to do, and we can even add even more.

And again, this is fully free uh and uh something that we provide uh free of charge so that your community can have a level of transparency and trust when it comes to where these are being placed.

Where is that?

Is that on Barrelsville City website or uh yep, you can choose wherever you want to do it.

Um, and so we we host this, uh, so we provide it and we update it so it's not an additional cost or infrastructure.

And some folks link it directly on their front page, some people have a specific page they want us to like plug into their website.

We're happy to do that.

Uh if we were to approve this, that would definitely be some something.

We'd love that.

We'd be absolutely happy to.

And here is just some specific items about Oklahoma.

Uh, so we have there's already 50 law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma that are using Flock, including Oklahoma City.

Um, I've heard from your officers specifically about kind of the crossover of crime that we see from Oklahoma City between Norman back and forth.

And so that's an important one.

More Cleveland for sale, Dell City.

Um, and so what this is noting is that you all won't be the only ones in Oklahoma that are using Flock.

Um, a couple of stories that we have that you in addition to one your officers have, um, we have uh an incident at the high school within decent exposure where they were actually able to identify the suspect's vehicle.

Um, they saw that there was a matching vehicle, and they were able to quickly locate the owner and uh or the the offender and arrest them.

Uh finding a missing elderly woman.

This is a this is particularly important to me.

I basically grew up on a retirement community that my uh father uh ran.

Uh and my father went out multiple nights of when there was a um resident living in independent living with their spouse who just happened to get their hands on the car uh and drive out, and my dad had to go out and find them.

Um so the these hit particularly important to me.

Uh so this was an 87-year-old woman who went missing after going to her doctor's appointment and was able to be found safe.

Um in the hit and runs.

I hit I mean hit and runs are really um really key to what um what is what uh shows the impact of of Flock.

And so you have an injured bicyclist on the scene.

Uh we see a lot of bicyclists and pedestrian um stories.

And they were, again, they didn't have the license plate because they were just hit by a car, but they did have a description of the vehicle.

And using that, they were able to uh uh query the system, identify a vehicle that had been detected in the area, and they were able to use that lead to locate the vehicle just a few hours in charge of suspect.

Uh yes, you would mind going back.

Yeah, so that I mean this would this this was solely a small selection, so we didn't list every single one.

Just curious.

Uh participant.

Okay.

Yes, that's my question.

Absolutely.

Um kidnapping.

Again, this is why a lot of people choose to share if they want to.

And this is uh in Kansas.

Um, a father walked into the store, uh, daughter uh was gone when he came out.

Uh, and they were able within again the the key here beyond the story itself is the time frame.

Uh the man called in at 6 49 p.m.

Uh to uh report his child missing.

702 using Flock.

Um they learned that the vehicle had entered the Kansas Turnpike, eight o'clock, an hour later, they spotted the vehicle and initiated a traffic stop.

So within a matter of a little over an hour, they were uh able to relocate locate a child that had been uh missing.

And this is kind of this is also important because, especially as it relates to amber alerts.

We have a lot of obviously with Nick McAlot of success stories with Amber Alerts.

But you also have to realize when you put out an amber alert, um, everyone gets that, including the person who stole the child.

Uh, and so what we we have some cases where people get the amber alert saying, oh, we uh we're on everyone's phone right now, so they take off their plates or they switch their plates again where the vehicle fingerprint technology comes in as well.

And that is that is the end of that presentation.

Uh so I would like to add to uh address uh council grant's questions.

I want to thank you for those questions because when you ask those types of questions, it gives us a uh uh thumb on the pulse of what our community is feeling, what they're thinking about this type of technology.

So I want to kind of address that a little bit.

Uh our our policy, I think you all have a copy of our policy.

Our policy uh specifically prohibits the use of the flock, uh the captioning of the tag information for anything other than uh law enforcement purposes or public safety related issues.

So if you have a person like we addressed during the flock PowerPoint that's missing, wandered off, kidnapped, or whatever, that's a public safety issue, that's law enforcement purpose.

We'll use it for that.

When it comes to like medical stuff or trying to track someone because of some medical condition, that's totally outside the scope of what we would do as law enforcement and our policy.

Also, we don't work for ice, you know, and I understand the concern in our community about what's going on across the nation right now, but make no doubt about it.

Uh one of our core values in the Norman Police Department is to protect those that are most vulnerable in our community.

And when it comes to going out and seeking people in our community based on their status, whether or not they're here documented or not, is beyond the scope of what we do.

And so we would not utilize this technology to facilitate anything like that.

Again, that doesn't uh that doesn't uh rise toward our core value what we do as far as our community and providing service to our community, protecting those with its most vulnerable in our community.

I'm sorry, guys, go ahead.

Um I appreciate you articulating MPD's values, but uh, I have a question for Knighton because I'm curious about being able to prosecute.

So I'm reading that there are legislators that have voiced concerns about the legal framework or lack thereof, and that evidence obtained through them, the flock cameras has been dismissed in criminal cases due to lack of statutory authorization.

And then ODOT has requested cities to remove flock cameras because they are only allowed or authorized for very verifying vehicle insurance.

Um I'm curious like do we actually have do we have the framework to do this, even if other cities are, and I'll say one of the representatives I read about his concerns were being taken back to the police department in the Moton.

And then I'll just say I was around not on council, but paying attention to the gray key conversation, and we took a pause and looked into gray key more and then decided not to go with them.

So I just want to put that out there as well.

The just add to that briefly that along that same lines, there is talk about uh cameras being installed in several states without necessary permits or licenses leading to blocked installations, cease and assist letters and moratoriums in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Illinois, and Texas.

Okay.

And I'm I'm happy to respond to those permanent issues as well.

Um there is an al-Pharma statute specifically allows the district attorney's council to use automated license plates readers for the purpose of enforcing our compulsory liability insurance statutes.

There actually is a camera somewhere in Norman.

I've gotten a call before from someone who got a letter from the DA's council claiming that they didn't have insurance.

They did.

I initially thought it was a scam, but apparently the statute does allow the DA's council to use them for that purpose.

There is one district court case, it's out of McLean County if Judge Edwards in that particular case.

In this particular case, one of the people in the vehicle said they were coming from Dallas.

There are licensed plates readers all up and down the interstates in the United States.

I don't know if most people know that.

But accessing that information, the offices were able to determine that no, you didn't come from Dallas, you actually came from Houston.

That information plus deodorant of marijuana in the vehicle gave them cost to search it.

They found 100,000 or so in a garbage bag that had dryer sheets in it, which caused them to believe that it was the proceeds of drug trafficking.

So those two people were charged in McLean County state court.

They filed a motion to suppress the licensed plate reader information.

The district court judge granted that, but she also found that there was probable cause for the search, notwithstanding that information.

So those people were bound over for trial, and that those cases are still pending.

So you have one district court case ruling that says the use of that information cannot be used for anything other than again compulsive compulsory compulsory insurance enforcement, and that ruling is only applicable to those parties in that particular case.

If there's another district court case in another jurisdiction, they're not bound by that ruling.

You would hope that at some point in time you would get a ruling from either the Oklahoma Supreme Court or Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on that issue.

Don't know whether it will come from this case because the issue will be if these defendants are either pleaded or ultimately found guilty, there'll be no basis for the prosecution to appeal that decision.

So there's no let there's no legislative clarity on that.

No, and I'll just add that in 2020, I'm sorry, 2024.

Um it was Representative Gann that said that the bill that failed 1620.

Um would not pass anytime soon, basically is what his messaging was.

It was like it failed in the Senate and it's gonna keep failing.

So that was his opinion is that there were attempts to amend that particular statute.

Um they failed.

So his opinion is going forward, he didn't think that it's gonna pass.

I can't predict, I don't I'm not clear.

I can't predict either, but I'll just say from having been an Oklahoma Municipal League meetings with different mayors and listening to them talk about their concerns around clock specifically and where the components are made and how the data is stored and how protected it is and changes in terms of service that people might not catch.

Uh they're not 100% sold on this.

Well, and the other issue in that case in McLean County, and I I've seen some articles about the alleged belief that use of the cameras is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Um Judge Edwards did not address that issue because of the statutory prohibition she found.

Every other case that I found in federal court has said that this is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

So we're in the 10th Circuit.

There are district court cases out of Kansas, specifically Wichita, on that issue, and those cases have held that no, it's not a Fourth Amendment violation.

Um there are some U.S.

Supreme Court cases on somewhat similar issues that talk about things like I saw I read one that was about some city had a drone program where they essentially flew a drone over the city that was able to capture the comings and goings of everybody during the day.

Um those types of surveillance entities, the court would say violate the Fourth Amendment.

It's somewhat similar to there was a couple of occasions when law enforcement entities would put a GPS device on your vehicle so they could track your goings and comings.

And the distinction that is made between that type of practice versus these cameras is putting a GPS on your car.

I know every place you go.

Um there's a soda my or um concurring opinion in one of those cases that talks about how that talks about familiar relationships, it talks about all kinds of these other relationships that probably you do have an expectation of privacy for.

And the distinction that's being made with regard to flock cameras is they're fixed.

They're only they're only capturing where you are at a specific point in time.

And the courts have made that distinction between again GPS type devices versus these fixed devices that only capture where you're going at one sort of sort of point of time.

So from a fourth amendment perspective, you probably would get a ruling that would say that it doesn't violate the fourth amendment, but then you've got the statutory issue in Oklahoma that potentially doesn't cause the problem.

However, remember that only applies to license plates readers.

Um of the other things that we're just talked about are things like if those cameras have the ability to search by vehicle type, a red SUV with uh luggage rack on the top, there's nothing to do with license plates reading.

And that type of information is just as valuable to law enforcement, can be just designed to law enforcement as actually doing the license plate.

Um you also talked about the issue of amber alerts.

You know, if you're able to locate that vehicle, even if you use a license plates reader, that's not law enforcement.

I mean, that's public safety issue.

So even with the prohibition, if you believe that it's actually a prohibition in the statute with regard to the license plates readers, there are other valuable sort of functions that those cameras will have that don't have anything to do with license plates readers.

So I have not finished.

Okay, so then I have a question for you since you are aware of like all the things the company is doing.

So the other thing was using AI.

Um, and I guess it's now has the capability to determine suspicious movement that might suggest criminality.

And so is that something you can opt out of if you don't believe that an algorithm that could be designed to have bias um should not be a part of the function if we were to even consider this.

Uh so all first that's not what uh we're talking about.

The LPR system is is separate from the system that you're talking about.

Uh it's but uh the so you wouldn't be this would you wouldn't be purchasing that system?

Uh second, but going back, there is a miss uh it's uh misinterpretation to put it generously of what the tool actually is.

Um again, the flocks tools are for folks that have been identified either by or vehicles that have been identified as being uh suspect in a particular crime.

Uh so this is not uh a mass surveillance looking at every people's like minority report where you're looking at everyone's movements and you're seeing where they're going and you're identifying which people based on where they pass the cameras are most suspicious.

It's not as frankly false.

Uh and the article that it was in is false.

What this is is it allows if you have a suspicious car uh that you're able to, or a car that is wanted, you're able that's associated with a crime, you can put it into the system that is not solely LPR if a company or if an organization chooses or an agency chooses to purchase that product.

In addition to that, they would have that functionality.

Um that is not this.

This is solely license plate readers.

Uh, but that functionality that you're talking about is solely what you're talking what you're hearing uh your agency talk about here is if there is a case number or there is a cause for suspicion that they would be able to use that functionality to identify where that vehicle uh might be and uh around a particular uh crime incident.

And then the other part would be oversight of that system.

Is it subject to open records laws?

How would we know um the nature of errors that you have?

You know, again, bias being part of systems built by humans.

Um yeah, what other communities uh bring you guys back before them and ask about security, all the things?

Oh, all the time.

I mean, that's that's part of my job is coming before.

We work to be as transparent as possible as regards to open records laws.

I would have to refer to your legal counsel and their interpretation of what your legal uh open records law are because that varies from city to city and state to state.

So I can't.

I just wanted to find out if somebody was abusing the system somehow, like selling our information without our knowledge, or updating the terms of service in such a way that it would be very shady.

Um you know, you would turn over those documents if you were asked for them.

Would we have all the conversations uh that your company has had internally about our city and what we're using your system for?

I mean, there's there's a lot of hypotheticals in those two sentences, and so I mean I mean my emails would be subject to open record, right?

I I'm talking to you via the.

So you're not talking about the audit.

You're not talking about the audit logs of the searches of that.

You're I just need some clarification on that.

Um sure, audit logs, and then also what we're asking for.

What if uh there's some services that get added on that we didn't actually ask for?

Um and then audit logs.

Yeah, I mean, we we have we have full transparency.

So uh when you sign on as a customer, you get a customer success manager that works to make sure like the entire uh operation is onboarded, every agency is onboarded, uh knows it lets you know about the functionality.

Any upgrades that might happen, everyone will be made aware of.

Um and you all as a council uh can make clear like if this upgrade becomes available, we don't want it.

Uh and so that's 100% within the purview of all of you.

If you want to make very clear in statute that this is all we want is LPR, and if any upgrade is offered that it goes beyond license plate reading, uh we don't want it.

You can put that in.

And again, one of the things that we're proudest of at Flock is that we make uh a product that makes sure that your community safety doesn't have to come at the expense of your community values.

And so you can if if you pass a particular law regulation, we will absolutely uh make every effort.

If we if we can't, then we'll say, sorry, we we are not the vendor that can make this happen.

But out of any LPR vendor, we are some that we are the most um adaptable to make sure that your community uh has a tool that both aligns with your safety goals and your and your values.

Well, we wouldn't pay for that.

I mean, we'd have it not giving you anything free.

Yeah, and if they're trying to we're trying to upgrade to some additional stuff, first of all, we'd have to run it by you guys because we'd require more money.

Second of all, we wouldn't pay for it.

Well, we wouldn't need anything like that.

You know, the simplicity of the license plate readers what we're needing.

Just that the ability to identify targeted vehicles surgical surgically, if they're involved in a crime, or we're trying to recover someone that's lost or kidnapped.

That's all we need.

We don't need anything else, we don't need any uh AI generated anything on policy again, doesn't talk about us utilizing AI or upgrading them anything other than that.

And again, if you go back to our policy and read it, and and any questions you have concerning on policy, we'll address some of these questions in fears because that's just something that we're not, we're not we wouldn't do.

But uh all good questions, trust me, these are all good questions because if if people are asking, we need to know, we need to address them now in this format and get these things resolved before we move forward to anything, just like uh council member grant said.

So I so these are all great questions.

I don't know.

I have just to follow up.

So have you ever had a data breach at Flock?

And if you did, would that not be released to us, or would you be transparent and let people know that there's been a breach on your segment of the server?

Yes.

So uh the answer question.

First question is no.

Uh, we have not had a breach, and we're continually working and innovating to make sure that stays the case.

We're not getting lazy about that.

Second is contractually, yes, we are absolutely mandated.

If there is anything like that that happens, uh I think, and uh I believe there's also federal laws and state laws that apply to this, but specifically within our contract, if any sort of breach were to happen, uh we would absolutely be obligated to uh alert you.

And this kind of but this also kind of ties in to the nature of the data that we're holding.

Um if you think about your DMV or any of the data that is in this building currently that your city is holding on to, uh incredibly sensitive data, social security numbers, ages, birthdays, um, addresses, property deeds, all of those held within this building right now.

What Flock is holding on to are license plates at a point in time.

Uh compared to the data that you all are holding on to in this building currently and all the sensitivity and PII, uh, we treat the data we're holding on to extremely seriously, the license plates, public documents administered by the state, technically owned by the state, meant for public uh distribution and public uh public awareness.

Uh even though that all these license plates are government documents that are meant to be publicly displayed on public roads, we treat their security intensely with the same intensity that the FBI protects their data.

And at the same time, uh your it's it's not a social security number.

It is not your data birth or a registrar or anything like that, but we treat it the same.

So I think that's an important distinction note that even though this is a uh a public uh document that's meant to be public facing, we still treat it with an intense amount of security as if it were uh personally identifiable information.

Okay, thank you.

I have a couple different questions if you don't mind, and if they want, I just wonder when we just talk about the inverler system in C MEC.

Um, do any of those agencies like that happen to have a board position on your board?

No.

Okay.

Um the AI database itself and everything that deal with AI at the hospitals.

Well, you say that it dumps after 30 days.

Right.

But does the AI technology as it's training itself in its own memory over a period of time, does your AI not automatically still kind of recognize certain things that it's seen before over and over, even after a dump occurs.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Thank you for that.

Uh, because one of the one of the things that makes Flock so good is the accuracy of its machine learning.

Um constantly, you know, if there's a new model car that comes out, uh, you know, accuracy is of the utmost importance to us.

There's a new license plate that comes out.

If a three is getting mistaken for an E, we want to catch that, and we want to make sure we're training our system to update that so we're not getting any mistakes.

And so what will happen is less than 1% of all images taken around the country are selected for these machine training purposes.

And so what happens in that situation is just the image is selected, no metadata, no nothing about where it came from, time, location, anywhere.

It's chosen specifically for the image of that license plate or that vehicle to update the machine learning, and it is plucked again with absolutely no context, so uh it can't be used in in any sort of format beyond machine learning training, and it is used to update the machine learning to increase accuracy.

And you mentioned cost 3500 per camera in an area such as Norman and what PD would want to monitor how many approximate cameras do we estimate that to be at a rollout?

Well, uh there's some sales benefits uh to purchasing within the next few months, where in that $3,500 cost, I think $500 of that, I think it's on one-time installation feed and $3,000 thereafter.

So that would be that's waived depending on what we decide to do.

Uh so we're looking at we initially thought about 10 cameras to start, so it's about 30,000 a year.

And then uh, however, uh my concern is if we decide to go with the flock camera system, all that does really is capture the internal part of Norman, you know, but it's gonna leave people on our on our outskirts out of that protective area, you know, farther west we go and the farther east we go.

So ideally, you know, around 15 cameras would actually work better.

The capture, be able to be able to capture us in a more effective, have a spend of protection in a more effective area range of area, and we don't leave anyone out.

So um, so you had another 5,000 at 3,000 a camera and another five, it's 15,000 more, so 45,000 roughly.

Okay.

And also, I saw when you had your list of certain cities in the metro around us that has this technology.

I don't know what the other council members think or anything, but if we're seriously considering it, I would like to see if maybe the chief of Moore that kind of knows our city a lot, also, if he would be open for us coming QA with him about how it's working, how it's not working for them, any concerns, any public concerns, anything like that, and how did he overcome them if there were things like that just to gain more knowledge from the next door neighbor?

I can't speak for Brother Todd, but uh I'm sure if we reached out, they have to do that.

I would imagine we're a partner in a lot of things, not only more Oklahoma City and Midwest City, we're all partners.

So any of those, any of those, any of those agencies would be I feel more than happy to accommodate anyone that had an interest in seeing what they do and the pros and cons of what they've experienced.

I just think it'd give me some to take back to my constituents to go.

Hey, I went next door to where it's been talk to some people there also and address some of these concerns in action live event that's already happening.

Sure.

And just if I could follow up on one thing about the machine learning data, because sometimes people look at the contract and they they point out this one phrase of you know, perpetual usage or or whatever.

Um, it's about that machine learning data.

You all own 100% of your data, so we don't again, Flock does not own any of it.

Um that perpetual usage language that some people like kind of fly, oh, this means they can keep data forever and ever and not tell us and do it for whatever.

No, it's solely and it's outlined in the contract specifically for that very small percentage that's used for machine learning to increase accuracy.

I would like to add a couple of things uh about again.

This is statistically how the Flock is.

If I walk out in the parking lot here and walk through the parking lot and not see tags, that's pretty much what Flock does.

It doesn't, it can't run the tag and see who is it registered to or anything like that.

It's just it sees the tag.

We have to do that on our end, and we have to do a lot of footwork that to figure out who is, you know, who this tag is registered to.

Secondly, you know, if we uh if we run a if we get a tag that comes runs across our system and it comes back as the car is stolen, we don't arrest the people and do all that stuff on the side of the road.

We have to call and verify that that warrant is still active or that car is still stolen.

So you just don't act on that hit alone.

Like anything else we do, we still have to follow up and validate and make sure that stuff is still still accurate and still in the system.

That person's still in one vehicle or one in person.

So the flock stuff is been a game changer for us in a number in a number of things.

As far as um, we just had an incident a few weeks ago, actually last month, where a young lady was robbed at gunpoint, her car was stolen, and that person took her car and and and left Norman, and we had no idea where he was until he hit a camera in Oklahoma City.

You know, and we could have probably recovered that lady's uh property sooner.

We probably could have stopped this guy from going out and maybe robbing someone else had we had that technology here in Norman.

But how we ended up identifying this individual is that he went to pond some stolen property.

I believe it was either more Oklahoma City.

Both both.

And uh they had a fly camera, they caught the image, we're able to track them down to Noble, and we were able to get them into custody so he doesn't offend on anyone else.

So, but had we had that technology here, we probably could have solved it a lot faster.

Another case we had involving a fly camera, and it was a year or two ago.

We had an incident in a private parking lot at one o'clock in the morning that we thought was a homicide.

And um, and so it's the strangest thing to happen on this particular case.

Being again, a major case guy working homicide, and had I rolled up on that scene without a fly camera, I would have thought that someone did something to this young to this individual and they took off, and then we don't know what happened other than the phone call that hey, we got a person that's either shot or injured in the parking lot.

And so what happened was we were able, this particular business had one of the first uh fly cameras in Norman, and it captured this person pulling into the parking lot, waiting for a couple of two or three hours, and then a flash inside the vehicle, and then nothing until this homeless guy walks up, sees a vehicle, hears it running, tries the door, goes in, takes handles property and evidence inside, closes the door, smears evidence on the outside of the car, and and he calls us, and then off he goes.

That's all we get is a call of a person in the parking lot.

We get there and we find the person.

Had it not been for the flock cameras, we would have been working that for I don't know, weeks weeks running down leaves, trying to figure out what exactly happened to this young this young individual, but the flock cameras had the answer right there, and it cut a lot of time out, and that guy wasn't targeted for something that he didn't do.

All he did was find a person and call it in to us.

So these types of things, you know, we've got 20, we've got a dozen, two, three dozen stories where flock has helped us recover people out of the state, people that were high risk, they were physically abused.

As a matter of fact, we caught a young lady in in Houston, thanks to Flock cameras, that was had been have been trafficked and had her young child with her, and the child and she both were at risk.

Had we not got it when we did, the agent, the individuals that law enforcement in in Houston said uh she would have probably been dead because the next step was going to Mexico and she'd have been dead.

So we called her before she ended up ended up taking her out of the country, you know, and save her and her child.

And that flock cameras helped with that.

So this tool is invaluable for us in law enforcement to recovering people that are at risk to solving crimes in our in our community.

And uh I just it's just something that I feel that moving forward, I understand the concerns and the anks about it, you know, and I understand there's a lot of things out there that say this is what flock cameras is.

Is it just sitting here tonight?

I hear three different camera systems.

Flock doesn't do what the old cameras do and collect the insurance information.

That's not what Flock does.

No, no, no.

All right, just need to correct.

Umot said that they were only allowed to collect that vehicle insurance that they were not statutorily allowed.

Yes, for another license system.

Yeah.

So anyhow, you know, it's a it's an invaluable tool.

Um we should all consider, you know, the why behind it.

And again, our whole whole drive on this thing is to make sure that the people in our community deserve the same amount of of safety and protection that people in Moore and Open City and everybody else has because they all have this technology.

And they're community there's a safe safer forward.

Counselor Hinkle.

Uh in kind of a meandering way, all of my questions ran.

Yeah, I mean you're meandering answer, or did you just kind of just kind of went there?

So Dixon.

Um Chief, back to the carjacking at Ward 3.

Um talk about using other municipalities flock cameras.

Does someone at the Norman Police Department just sit down and log on to Flock and able to access that?

Well, or what's what's the difference between us not being a member of Flock?

I'm gonna allow my my Intel analyst to answer that, but yes, we have we have an account.

Um and so I do have access to other jurisdictions uh cameras as long as they share with us.

And so in this situation, we used a camera in Oklahoma City to identify the vehicle that that suspect was currently driving based off of security camera that we had gotten from pawn shop in war, um showing a very specific vehicle.

Um when we got the notice that he had pawned something in Oklahoma City, um, I looked up the address of the pawn shop and I noticed that there was a flat camera right across the street.

So for like a 30-minute period, I searched for White Ford Explorers because we knew that that was what he was driving when he pawned something in war.

And sure enough, the um the white port explorer showed up, it had the same characteristics as the one that we saw on the security camera um and more.

And when we looked at the registration through a different through different um research methods, we realized that it was registered to the mother of his girlfriend.

So that's how we were able to track it to Noble.

Um Flock didn't tell you it belonged to the Flock does not did not show me who was in the vehicle.

Flock did not show me um where the vehicle was going, other than it hit this camera across from the pawn shop, it didn't tell me anything about the registration.

And I think that's important to note about Flock.

Um when you look at a picture of a Flock that Flock can't that captures, um, it doesn't have to be the registered owner driving it.

Um it doesn't have to be anybody who knows that person in the car.

Um I don't know that based on the picture, and so I have to continue to do research um as part of my job.

If I if I can, she brings up another part that I think probably is helpful for you all too currently and/or in this system.

But if we have our cameras, everybody doesn't have access to it.

Right.

Um, it's your dispatch supervisors, but then for urgent things, um, like the cars from the car jacking and the kidnappings and things are happening currently, um, our two analysts and a couple of detectives.

So this isn't like every patrol officer has it, those are all audited, those are all tracked, those are all like a heat uh Trevor said much right or name, sorry.

Um they have to have a case number, they have a reason that's all audited in there that what they're doing with that data.

Yeah, I just want to specify Jason and I are the crime analysis and so we're the two flock, and we take we both take privacy very seriously.

Um anybody is welcome to see you know who I've been searching and why.

Um anybody who comes to me saying, Hey, I need you to run this tag through Flock has to have a case number, as Major Barbara said, and a reason.

It can't just be you know, tell tell me where this car has been.

Um even then it can't really say where the car has been other than that it passed this car, this flock camera.

So that's it.

And so with the with the flock audit system, um it will show every time you have asked Flock to look for license plate number XYZ123, unless uh anytime anybody accesses Flock and says, I want to look at find this license plate for me, it logs your name, the time, do you have to put a reason in or a case number?

Okay, so there's all that, so I can't just call up Major Barber and say, Hey, Marjorie Barber.

Here's his license tag.

Can you can you see if he's swinging by Panera to grab her some coffee?

But you're not gonna get the information you're looking at.

Okay.

Do you mind if I talk about it and we have that same relationship expectation for them too when it happens if somebody asks something that makes the then question that then they come to us.

Um in that same policy, and you all have it, so I'm not trying to assume you all have it right.

Um you all have it.

It it puts that burden on me to go there and make sure that's thing and that's taken care of.

And just to touch on the if you if you do decide to enter in a sharing relationship with another city, you also get the audit log of what how they have searched, if if they search yours, it'll also show that too.

So you have a layer of accountability with your own agency, making sure they're using the tool appropriately, and you have the audit of how other people are using it.

And if you if you again the audits are great, and some people do it once uh a month, some people do I there is uh a city in uh Southern California that does it once a week.

Uh they but um that's them.

Uh but you're able to see uh make to ensure that your system is being used appropriately.

And if you say, like, hey, um hey uh townville, uh I've been looking, I've been seeing that there's you're you're not using this the way that aligns with our values, turn it off.

Yep.

I was gonna mention um my neighborhood has flock here in Norman.

Uh we had it established about a few months ago.

Uh we worked with Flock uh last year because we had a series of stolen cars that were stolen from our neighborhood.

So this was something my HOA chose to install.

And working on the police side, I get to see how we use on the police side, but working on the private side, they have so many auditing tools.

So any agency that uses our system will automatically show an audit of which police agencies are looking for cars using our camera.

So the the accountability side and the the open side of it also applies to any neighborhoods that use it.

So we have it.

I think Red Point Apartment Complex has it.

The Lowe's part, uh the Lowe's in town has flock cameras that use them extensively for shoplifting.

Um we get report uh get a uh shoplifting packet from them, they have the car, the information stuff, which aids the officers and quickly identifying and making those charges, you know, working with the the detector or detectives and stuff.

And one thing I want to note, uh, because uh as was noted, we do have private customers like Home Depot or neighborhood associations.

Uh they can choose to share with law enforcement.

It does not go the other way.

They would they uh private customers never get law enforcement alerts uh because again that's CGIS data protected under the FBI.

Uh they're not allowed to get that.

So if but again, you have a company like Hope Depot who deals with a lot of organized retail theft, organized retail crime, they have their own uses uh for the the private aspect of flock.

Um so some of them choose to not share, and they're like, nope, this is what we're using it for.

We don't need to, we don't want to connect to law enforcement.

If they wanted to, they can say yes.

So um, so then the law your law enforcement agency uh would have access to their camera.

So if they someone goes into if there's a car that goes into Home Depot parking lot and that and there's that vehicle um is associated with an amber alert or with a robbery, then the police will get an alert that it's in that parking lot.

But it's very important to note that it's a it's a one-way relationship under no circumstances do private customers ever have access to law enforcement data.

And Chief Jackson, um more south more Oklahoma City per sale have them.

Do a regional car thieves know that Norman as a city does not have them, and that if they leave Norman east or west, as long as they don't go through more per sale, they're not gonna get picked up on a flock camera.

Yeah, if they don't know they assume that people are fairly savvy, they figure things out, you know, done their job long enough to know that's kind of how it goes.

Sooner or later the word to get out, and then we will be the place where folks come to do what they do and hang around a while knowing that you know where they hang out here, yeah.

They won't get on the camera.

So I suppose we keep on.

I'll go later, sorry.

We keep on bringing up you know references to all these private flock cameras in Norman.

Do we have a possible count of how many private flock cameras are in Norman City limits?

And if not, could we get that count?

Yeah, I can get you the count.

This is my laptop.

I was about to look at that.

I was like, wait, this is pops up, then we're going, wait a minute.

It's not supposed to be on it.

It's not it's not a whole bunch.

Okay.

I'll just wonder.

I think maybe four or five, maybe a dozen for sure.

No, and not all of them share.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

I'll just wonder.

It's just another thing to be able to tell people that hey, it's already in certain communities already without even realizing it.

Right.

Council More Grant.

That was actually my question.

Was to find out how many are privately employed and how many are sharing.

Um you're sharing, I guess.

If another municipality is using AI, does that mean the information that we're sharing does not get put into a system that's using that?

Uh sorry, could you clarify that?

So if another municipality has a different, let's call it terms of service and what they've decided to put together.

Our data is not being fed to those things that we don't want to be a part of.

Nope.

So if an Oklahoma City is using their data to tell ICE about people, if we had those cameras, that information is not being used through OKC to feed ICE.

Correct.

Unless that unless there is a assigned, or however you want to do it, some uh it's as simple as sometimes checking a box.

You can also mandate that you have to have assigned MOU between cities in order for sharing that demonstrates that uh that makes they make a commitment that they're gonna align with values uh that your community has.

But correct, uh your data is in you can think of it as being in a box.

And when you create a sharing relationship uh with you know, say Oklahoma City, you create a connection between the two boxes, uh, but it doesn't combine the data.

So your data is still 100% yours and separate, and if you so choose, you can clip that line and refuse them access to your data.

And something along that line is kind of just to give you an example of how that kind of works, is that you know, for instance, we've if we if our ask Oklahoma City for a police report for some investigative crime they're working, they send me a copy of the report.

I can't then take that report and then send in the midwest city or anybody else.

I I don't I can't do that.

It stops in my agency.

So I can't forward that on.

So they can't piggyback on our stuff and forward it to some other organization or agency to use for whatever means they want to use it for.

That makes sense.

In fact, that just came up on the criminal investigation.

Yeah.

We said no, you have to go back to the other agency and go and it was a significant agency, so we were able to make that connection, which is how we found out about it, because I knew we had the data and we declined them.

So that that happens regularly.

Of course, that other home agency gave it to them.

Um, but they need to know where their data comes from.

You can't do that.

So okay.

Are there is there an open bid process with this?

Um, I but this is under the bid amounts.

Yeah, this is um I don't know uh if there's anyone that does it better than Flock.

Well, just because there are wondering if have there have other vendors been considered the main ones I came across were vigilant solutions, genetic auto view, rector systems, and plate smart were four other big ones, I guess.

Yeah, vision that does something totally different.

Uh rector, I think I read a little bit about that.

Uh I think there may be LPR, but the industry standard has been Flock as far as what they do and the safeguards in place but flock.

So uh we've been we'd be more interested in look at some of these other places if you provide us with a list of those that you think maybe over the years we've looked at several of them, and it seems to be and and to your point earlier with discussions with our partner agencies who we meet with daily almost that that has been their finding as well.

Okay, did just want to double check on that on how um this particular company is selected and if there was an open process.

Um have any departments in Oklahoma declined to do it, and are there any that have done it but then decided to stop doing it?

In Oklahoma or anywhere, I guess, that you know of.

Yeah, I don't have that off the top of my head.

I can I can find out though.

I can talk to our Oklahoma lead on what that looks like.

And if they stopped using it, why did they?

Yeah, I can tell you the typical time the typical reason people have stopped using is budgetary reasons, tends to be, but I don't have that specific breakdown, but I can look into that for you.

Okay.

And then the safeguards um as far as normal police department goes, um is that just a policy of the current chief of police and could change with a different police chief of police, or is it a policy of the city in Norman that's that's a standard exapl policy, you know, with with LPRs, you know.

And as a matter of fact, our policy mirrors pretty much the other policies across the state and the region when it comes to the usage and non-uses of uh the LPR system.

So that's pretty consistent.

Anyone can go in and kind of manipulate that, uh guess, but uh historically, and I will say historically here nor in Norman, we don't that's not something we would do some backhanded under it's not something we would we would do.

And then I think if a new chief came in and try to do that, then there's folks that historically know how things a culture of normal PD is not to do things, not to operate that way, I don't see that happening.

I just sort of want to make sure to do that.

Maybe that's possible that you think it's possible, granted, you know, but I don't see that happening.

Those lexical policies, kind of the value of being a lexical agency policy-wise, is those policies have been uh tried and tested in court, uh coast to coast, and typically we find if you are following the policy that you'll you'll find in that lexical policy manual.

If if you're ever challenged in court by following the book, we come out okay.

It's really important.

We also have a bunch of templates from other cities who have put in place other policies, and if you'd like us to provide those, whether you know, whether it's from Berkeley or or other all around, we're happy to provide examples of other cities that have put policies in place.

Yeah, um, specifically too, if there's any other college towns or the Southeastern Conference that use this.

Absolutely.

Um, but I would want to make, I mean, I really like that Norman's Norman Police Department's current policy is what it is about that, but I want to make sure that that is in perpetuity.

And is it something that maybe just evolves and changes over the next one?

Good question.

That's very good question.

As the older folks retire out and new people come in and whatever goes on, I mean, some kind of safeguard that says that if we have this technology, it's not going to escalate beyond that without counsel or some city manager something like that.

That's I can tell you flock is pretty unique um in that we actually uh often work to convince departments to have a strong policy in place.

Uh we we believe that our the tool is best used with a strong policy.

Um, and that's why we have so many examples um and templates and what to use because uh it's our strong belief that any LPR system should come in place with a strong LPR policy.

And there's there seems to be a lot of um debate, if you will, about um actual data on lowering crime or whatnot.

Um there's like numerous examples of claims versus what actual data is may have seen.

San Marino, California was a example that came up of claims of a 70% drop in burglaries, but data showed residential burglaries had actually increased.

And serious crime didn't change meaningfully.

Similar skepticism in other cities like Fort Worth, Dayton, Ohio, and Lexington, Kentucky, and then concerns about Flock and other platforms using fear-based marketing that exaggerates, exaggerates risks or insinuates crime rates are higher than they actually are.

Okay, and concerns about them giving a false sense of security in that same vein.

So that's just some of the criticisms of I've read about it.

As you guys have noticed, uh noted, there are a lot of pros to it potentially as well when it comes to silver alerts and kid missing kids and uh things like that.

So those are I think all things that we should all think about and weigh, and um my encouragement to everybody would be to take all the information we get today and talk to your constituents, however, you think is the best way to do that and gather whatever feedback you can about it, and then um let city staff know what you'd like to do if there's enough desire on council to move forward and prove, then we can do that.

Uh and if not, then uh yeah, go ahead.

Um, I was just gonna ask, Chief, like outside of the carjacking and Ward 3.

Um, does have we used it to solve uh any like human trafficking issues?

Well, the one at Houston was was one, and then we had uh not a human trafficking, but we had a kidnapping where we had some children that risk that we recover flock help recover those those children, and I've got maybe 2020 examples here.

I just didn't want to beat you guys over the head, you know, over and over again, but uh I understand some of the concerns about maybe inflating numbers and stats and all of that, but but I'm a old gum shooter.

It is a company private company that wants to sell us a product.

But I'm looking at the real life results because we experienced the real life results when we go out and bring people home that were taken from their homes and return their loved ones where they need to be in there when they're they're healthy and and not harmed.

And that's the real that's what I judge.

Not I'm not a numbers guy, granted, but I judge uh those results, you know, have invaluable.

I mean, so a company couldn't inflate staff, they can inflate and fear monger and all of that.

But I know that we've used Flock here and is recovered, people that were at risk, people that have been trafficked, people that have been kidnapped, uh missing people we have recovered through Flock.

And we've caught a few murder suspects and people doing bad things like that, you know, with the Flock technology.

So my last question is to uh council member Grant.

The the lady in the blog that you brought up at the very first of the meeting that was tracked down uh because she obtained an illegal abortion.

Was she ticketed, charge, jailed, or convicted of having an illegal abortion?

Did the police act upon that a very irrelevant question because we're talking about potentially entering them.

So and I'm not gonna discuss her situation.

So it's not my situation.

I read the blog, I read the blog post today too.

So the police, the police she had no negative police interactions of the blog post that Councilmember Grant brought up earlier.

There was zero ACLU the ACLU blog post, there were zero negative law enforcement interactions with that lady.

I think that is a concern.

It's a valid concern as states like Texas have tried to pass these bounty hunter laws, and uh, which I think are just crazy um absurd, but that is a bit I I'll read about that too, because I'd be interested if there was further action in that case regarding that.

But I it is a real concern that not just in Texas but other states, Oklahoma could be one of them.

Not hard to imagine somebody making up a reason to go track someone down and then calling law enforcement on them.

Happens all the time.

Not Norman.

Oh, never in Norman.

So nobody has ever been called on a gas station situation with the black person and then illegally detained.

Well, not illegally detained because they were told that person was acting dangerously, but it turned out to be a false situation.

I appreciate your questions, but I'm talking about the things that happened that don't get brought up as often.

And you would like to focus on Ricky Jackson's examples, which I don't discount.

I mean, like it's great that those people were found, but I'm talking about abuse.

And that's why we've got the policy around the flock, so to prevent that.

I mean, I would love to dig into the perpetuity stuff and how to have uh our values carried forward in the future, and also not have situations like a Daniel Hortz claw because those people crop up in any department.

He wasn't using flock.

No, but he was targeting people.

Absolutely.

Oh, also OHP.

There was a guy using his license plate reader to track.

Can we get this back to Flock to I mean, uh in this case, the guy was using his information to track women and their husbands.

In this meeting, there is there is a case in Houston where I was reading about where there was reports of many officers searching through the system, lacking proper jurisdiction to do so.

Justification and response, flock made an update requiring officers select a purpose when searching.

Critics argue that there's still a room, you know, they could select something, and then if it's not being audited, but you're saying it is being audited, what they're using it for.

And I'll add that you know, if you remember a couple of years ago, we had a lot of similar concerns about Norman DD and what we would do if we got a bear cat.

And it's been two years now, and to my knowledge, there's been no abuse, no attacking our citizens with that piece of equipment.

We use it that we said we were gonna use it as to rescue people, to keep our officers safe, to keep people safe.

So I get the concerns.

I mean, again, I want to hear these concerns and get them out because there are people asking these questions.

And so, but again, going back to what we did with the bear cats, same discussions, and none of that has come to fruition.

So we can we can theorize all day long what we could do abuse-wise, but historically with Norman, you don't get those type of complaints.

You don't see us in the news, abusing people every day or anything like that, violating people's rights.

It's a culture we have here in Norman, you know, to protect people in our community.

So um these things could happen.

You know, it's good to think about these things to kind of mitigate for moving forward.

But the reality of it is this agency, we're not conducting ourselves in that fashion.

So, but I appreciate the questions and the thoughts and the concerns.

I think they're all valid.

And and the mayor made a point about um statistics or statements being made that this will reduce crime.

And I thought that was interesting in in just the most recent incident with the armed robbery.

Um because that hadn't occurred to me.

What could my thought process was uh was naughty people do naughty things.

Uh, there's a whole bunch of them that do naughty things with they do it in front of ring doorbells all the time.

I mean, I just kind of think we all recognize there are cameras everywhere, everywhere, all the time.

Somebody's got a camera.

Everything you do is gonna wind up on Facebook for Pete's sake, and that same cell phone data winds up on the Channel 5 News.

And um it it I don't think if if somebody was telling me that I think this camera is gonna reduce crime, I I wouldn't buy it.

What I I would say it might help you get to the answer faster.

But I I think when people got their mindset to go do something naughty, we I'm just a firm believer, somebody's gonna already see that particular bad guy.

He he was on the video surveillance camera in the pharmacy before he went out and stuck the gun in the lady's face.

He was already on camera.

But yeah, I I think the the safe bet from our perspective is does it speed up the ability to put the guy in in custody.

And I would love if if there's if there's any instances or um RC fair moment, please, I would love to address those head on.

So please send those directly my way.

Um, but I think what was just said is is really key.

There's a bunch of there's several ways to look at efficacy and success.

Um currently, I think the New York Times had a report saying I think less than 50% of murders are solved.

Um if you look, I think one of the ways that we up flock are looking at success in various ways is look at your city's clearance rates.

Um, how many uh crimes don't even get uh a suspect, how many crimes when they do get a suspect are charged and successfully prosecuted.

Um that's also a key uh point is you obviously want to do the best for the victims of crime as well, and having and you also want to do the best for the people that are suspected of crimes that didn't do those crimes.

Um and so there's a many different ways to look at efficacy.

Um, and I'm happy to dive deeper into those conversations as well.

You know, some people say, oh, well, these cameras took a million pictures uh in one month, and you're in our office only ran 200 plates and it only got maybe 13 people.

That means you're only getting a minute percentage.

Like what's the what's the point?

Well, the point is that it has allowed your officers again to not do mass surveillance but precision policing, because instead of having to sit at a corner and think everyone in a particular vehicle a particular kind of vehicle might be a suspect, they're spending their time actually pursuing the folks that are actual suspects.

Doesn't mean they're guilty, means they're a suspect.

Um and so it's there's an efficacy in uh some cities uh would say that Flock, uh, like the mayor of San Francisco has said that Flock is responsible for not only a 41% decrease in auto theft crimes, but a 46% increase in prosecutions.

So not only he he said that, not us, that not only is it helping decrease crime, but is helping increase the clearance rate for their prosecutions.

Uh doesn't mean it's gonna be the same for every city.

Crime is dynamic, uh, has multiple uh socioeconomic factors that go along with it.

Um and uh yeah, no no two cities, no two states are the same when it comes to that, but definitely happy to have that conversation.

So a better catchphrase might be more likely to provide details to investigate a crime or something to that effect.

Council More Grant.

Okay, I'm thinking in it if the logic that the mayor of San Francisco's thought if in auto theft you successfully prosecute a serial car thief, potentially auto theft goes down because that guy's not gonna be the one stealing cars in the neighborhood for a while at least.

So could it could it reduce crime?

I I guess depending on how how many frequent flyers you have of a particular crime that flock goes.

That's interesting.

Flock by itself really is nothing.

We you have to have talent to train people like these two cities to be able to track that different a little bit of information down and actually identify people and recover folks.

So you can you can give me a flock image.

I don't have the ability in my head to run that tag or do any of that follow-up.

Yeah.

So I mean, I can I can drive to Edmund on order.

Without probably could not going through any of the main streets that probably have those cameras in more in OKC, I bet.

So anybody smart enough and strategic enough can find ways, I'm sure.

But uh it would make it uh good conversation, everybody.

Like I said, I would encourage you all to think about all the stuff we heard today.

Let everybody know that this meeting is on recording.

They can go back and watch it if they have questions about this discussion.

Um and then uh you know, gather some feedback and let staff know how you'd like to proceed down the road and might be revisiting it again in the near future.

And I'm gonna leave my contact information for counsel.

So any follow-up uh questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Okay.

Thank you, guys, for hosting us.

I appreciate it.

Thank you all for being here.

Thanks, Gene.

Okay.

All right.

Next item.

Consideration of acknowledgement, approval, rejection, amendment, and/or postponement.

The mayor's appointments for the Ward Five Candidate Selection Committee Committee as follows.

Aisha Prather, Randy Carter, Siobhan Evans, Heidi Smith, and John Dorrigo.

Motion second.

Any questions or conversation about it?

I think we did an excellent job.

Thank you.

Um, the plan is for the uh application process for candidates is open until Friday at 5.

And then Brenda's getting in touch with all the committee members to get have their first orientation meeting hopefully this week.

And um hopefully they can start conducting some interviews next week and ambitiously.

I mentioned before I'd like to get this seat filled by the uh city the council meeting on the 9th of September.

Not the 23rd, but I think we can get it there by 9th.

How many candidates do we have?

About 10 so far.

12 or 13.

Wow.

Girl by that edge by the hour.

Okay.

I mean, there's a few that I recognize, but a lot of them I've never heard before.

People get engaged.

Yeah, okay.

So uh specific IQ with the front rule.

Yeah.

Do we have to vote on this?

Yes, we need to vote.

Okay.

So there's a motion, there's a second.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

No.

Okay.

Very good.

All right, any final comment questions, anything else?