MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Flock cameras, manufactured by Flock Safety, or Automated License Plate Reader, are creating public comment in Monongalia County.
Several residents made those comments during Wednesday’s Monongalia County Commission meeting.
The cameras can capture images of passing cars, logging the license plate, vehicle make, color, and specific details like bumper stickers or bike racks. Some of the systems can be fitted with facial recognition software and sensors capable of detecting WiFi signals.
The Monongalia County version of the system is a license plate reader that interfaces with a live crime data base. Deputies could be notified of a suspect involved in a crime, or they could be used to track a getaway or identify a suspect in a serious or violent crime. The system reads license plates only that are part of a crime, criminal complaint, a Silver Alert, or an Amber Alert. There is no mass collection and storage of mass amounts of data, according to commissioners.
Justin Musser, IT Administrator for the WVU PRT, told commissioners collecting details is something Monongalia County should have known about before they went into use.
“I’m really disappointed that there has not been any communication to the public about data collection that involves them,” Musser said. “Like, you are collecting data about your constituents; they deserve to know that.”
Resident Leslie Wilbur also shared her concerns about where the data goes and how secure the end point is. The cameras were purchased with $180,000 of opioid settlement money, another point Wilbur said does not serve the interests of the public.
“It’s not particularly clear how the data will be treated or whether it will be shared with state and national networks,” Wilbur said. “How secure it is, how secure the hardware is, and how secure the software is.”
During the meeting, Monongalia County Sheriff Todd Forbes made it clear there are municipalities in the county that do have the capabilities residents are concerned about, but in Monongalia County they do not. He cited data taken from the cameras led to an arrest in connection with a triple murder in Ohio.
“We don’t have the capabilities or the add-ons; I heard a lot of things, and we don’t have any of those things,” Forbes said. “There are municipalities within our county that do have those things, but they weren’t transparent—we were transparent.”
Monongalia County Commissioner Jeff Arnett made it clear the cameras are “reading” devices, and using opioid settlement dollars was within spending guidelines for grants from the West Virginia First Foundation. He also noted the $180,000 spent on the cameras is about 12 percent of their opioid funding, and the bulk of that money went to things like CASA for Kids, Lauren’s Wish, Milan Puskar Health Right, Morgantown Community Resources, Your Community Foundation, and the Wise Path Recovery Center.
“These are not surveilling cameras the way they are being used in Monongalia County; they are finding cameras,” Arnett said. “They do not identify a license plate unless a criminal complaint has been entered into the system and that license plate associated with that criminal complaint has been identified by the FLOCK cameras.”
Commission President Tom Bloom said the cameras save a great deal of manpower by revealing where and when a suspect has been sighted. But Bloom made it clear the cameras would not be looking for someone that had not been involved in a crime or missing persons report. He also took time to explain the grant review process used in Monongalia County was also adopted by the West Virginia First Foundation, and the expenditure on the cameras is well within the requirements of the core strategies.
“There is no facial recognition; there has never been any facial recognition, and they can only be activated on an active Amber Alert, an active Silver Alert, an active warrant, or an active criminal complaint,” Bloom said.