MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office is providing answers to questions about its use of Flock security cameras.
Chief Deputy Mark Ralston said in a Friday afternoon meeting with reporters, the cameras are only activated when a license number or vehicle type matches a hot list.
Ralston said even after the notification the deputies are required to investigate the “hit” to be certain it is indeed an actual crime or incident.
None of the information collected is personal in nature—only vehicle type and plate number. Data collected by the cameras is held for 21 days and then automatically purged from the system, he said.
“They capture images of license plates and vehicle descriptions,” Ralston said. “They are not into the DMV system at all we get no other information than the plate.”
The sheriff’s department now has a flock transparency page available to the public at the agency website. During the first 30 days of use, there were more than 550,000 images with 101 department searches, meaning nearly 99 percent of the images collected were never viewed. The data collected is only available to be viewed by deputies and department administrators that have been properly trained. Unauthorized searches or mishandling the data can result in felony charges, according to Ralston.
“There’s nothing identifiable in there,” Ralston said. “We can’t search for a person at all. There are no criteria to search for anything but a plate or a vehicle.”
Once an employee is properly trained, their ability to search the system is limited. Search criteria must include a case number tied to an active incident or call for service. Any search requested is held for the life of the system and can be searched in the event of allegations of misuse.
“We have to know the reason for the search; there has to be an active investigation with an accompanying call for service or an active case number that has been issued for that complaint or incident,” Ralston said.
It is possible someone crossing a street could have their image taken by the cameras. However, the system does not have facial recognition capability—only the ability to capture license plates and vehicle type.
“The only thing that is stored is that data—the plate and the vehicle description,” Ralston said. “Nothing in there is searchable other than the plate and the vehicle description; they don’t capture images of people.”
Meanwhile, there is an active investigation in the county regarding vandalism to some of the devices already installed. Wesley Jackson, 20, has been arrested after two cameras on Chestnut Ridge Road were damaged on June 26. Jackson has been charged with felony damage or theft of equipment used by emergency first responders and conspiracy to commit a felony.
“If we have the ability and are able to come up with a viable suspect and actually get probable cause for that arrest, we will do that,” Ralston said. “Not only for county property but for anyone else who files a complaint with our office.”