Often times, it’s the police who praise and defend the use of Flock’s license plate reading cameras, but this time, the cops in D.C. are doing just the opposite.
The head of the D.C. Police Union is raising constitutional questions about the data collected by those cameras. He’s also accusing management in D.C.’s police department of accessing information obtained by the cameras for noncriminal investigations.
“We discovered that managers in the department were accessing the system for noncriminal investigations, which is a violation of the general order and it’s a violation of the Flock user agreement,” union President Gregg Pemberton said. “The only way that you can make a query into this system is if you have reasonable, articulable suspicion or probable cause that a crime occurred.”
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“The same day they denied the grievance, they actually published a teletype restricting everyone’s access to the Flock database and limiting it only to one clearinghouse down at the Real-Time Crime Center,” Pemberton said. “So, all requests for Flock queries have to go through this one individual unit. To me, that was an acknowledgment that the system had, was being abused and the department was trying to rein it in.”
An D.C. police spokesperson painted a different picture of the situation, saying it abides by a stringent policy when it comes to those cameras.
“The DC Police Union has filed a grievance against the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the use of LPR in an Internal Affairs investigation into the misconduct of a union member. The Department’s position is that the use of LPR in the misconduct investigation was appropriate,” read the statement attributed to a spokesperson.
“This grievance involves a union matter, and it will be resolved through arbitration between MPD and the DC Police Union.”
But Pemberton said these cameras also create more constitutional concerns, primarily focused on the Fourth Amendment.
“It keeps getting billed as a license plate reader, and I think that’s a misnomer,” Pemberton said. “I mean, the system is significantly more powerful than, you know, a camera that takes pictures of license plates.”
He’s asking for more transparency about how the department uses the system, including where the cameras are and who can access their data. He also wants to see a legal opinion on the use of these cameras.
“We’re now collecting data on innocent people, and we’re creating profiles on what those people do every day, and where they are, what cars they’re using, and who they interact with,” Pemberton said. “I’m not entirely sure that that comports with my understanding of the Fourth Amendment.”
He compared this to the debate the department had over body-worn cameras a decade ago, when the department, the union and the public weighed in on how the program should work and privacy concerns were frequently evaluated. Yet in this case, he argued, the Flock cameras are more powerful and intrusive than body cameras.
“One of the concerns that we have as police officers is what happens if we use this tool to make a dozen arrests in various homicide cases over the next two years, and then the Supreme Court comes down and issues a ruling saying these things are unlawful?” he asked. “Do we then have to go back and let those people out of jail? I don’t know.”
D.C. police did not respond to questions about whether it was concerned about the constitutional questions he raised, and whether citizens should be worried about all the information those cameras collect. Pemberton said those concerns are valid too.
“It’s actually taking pictures of all cars that pass it and it’s creating a fingerprint, not just of your tag, but of the color of your vehicle, your bumper stickers, the dent in the in the back bumper, and it’s creating a profile of all of the people and all of the cars that go past it,” he said. “It’s actually even partnering with other agencies and partnering with private entities like Lowe’s and Ulta Beauty, and it’s now collecting information from the cameras inside those stores, and it’s building dossiers on innocent people who have not been suspected of a crime.”
“The government’s position is ‘Well, we don’t look at that data unless we suspect that you’ve committed a crime, and then we can go back and sort of crack open that data and figure out what you’ve been up to,’” he added.
He said in his mind, that’s a Fourth Amendment concern.
He admitted even he’s surprised he’s asking for the D.C. Council, a legislative body the union has frequently clashed with, to weigh in on the matter. An email sent to the office of Brooke Pinto, the chair of the public safety committee, was not responded to.
“I think we all need to take a step back and make sure that what we’re doing is lawful and it’s understood in the court system to be a legitimate tool and being used in a way that’s legitimate,” Pemberton said. “This thing has taken off, and I’m not entirely sure that everybody understands what it’s capable of.”
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