Glynn County PD uses Flock and audits. But residents are still concerned.

Ed Van Otteren, a retired Department of Natural Resources employee, would rather spend his days enjoying the fruits of his labor. But the issue of electronic surveillance got him riled up enough to sit through a three-hour Glynn County Commission meeting in mid-April to speak his truth.

“I want to express my concern with the lack of privacy for our law-abiding citizens by so many Flock cameras going up,” he said about the controversial license plate readers being set up around the county.

Last year, The Current GA reported that the Glynn County Police Department had purchased 86 Flock cameras with an $830,000 state grant. As of mid-August, 80 had been installed. 

Since then, newly appointed Chief of Police Bryan Sipe has tried to quell concerns by providing online access to the public about how the camera system is used. But stories about abuse — most recently among police officers in Savannah — keep residents like Van Otteren worried about whether surveillance is being used for the public good or not.

“It’s too easy to abuse, and even though I worked for the government for a long time,” the 64-year-old told The Current GA in a recent interview. “What’s the difference between me abusing something and my government abusing something?”

Sipe could not cite any specific crimes solved with the assistance of the Flock system. He noted that the system helped the department’s crime analyst identify a suspect in a rash of car break-ins by comparing license plate tags on vehicles on St. Simons and in Brunswick.

The chief, however, defends the Flock cameras as necessary crime-fighting tools and says he’s implemented the highest levels of transparency and standards to prevent the powerful system from being misused. Partial audit data showing officers’ Flock inquiries, released by GCPD to The Current, suggest that the department’s standards are being followed.

“I would argue that we have the highest level of security and accountability that we could get from Flock,” said Sipe. “It’s up to individual departments to set their levels. I don’t think a lot of people were putting those safeguards in that we did initially.”

Misuse increasing 

The Flock system has become a common surveillance method used by police forces across the nation, even as reports of misuse rise.

 A Washington Post analysis of police and court records found that bad actors across the nation have increasingly weaponized the camera network to stalk relatives or intimate partners. Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including surveilling women without their knowledge or consent, according to The Post.

In Georgia, dozens of law enforcement officials have been accused of misusing the Georgia-based company’s license plate reader database.

On July 27, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced that it arrested and charged Andrae Wright, a former investigator with the Ogeechee Circuit District Attorney’s Office, with stalking, computer invasion of privacy, and violation of oath of office after a Flock audit found potential infractions.

Earlier this month, the Savannah Police Department fired four officers and two civilian staff members last week after they were flagged through the department’s auditing and oversight processes under the Flock Safety Audit Assistance Program.

In Glynn, the Office of Professional Standards at GCPD conducts monthly audits of officers’ inquiries in the Flock database, according to Sipe. 

The department is also enrolled in the Flock Safety Audit Assistance Program, which continuously monitors system activity and flags search patterns that fall outside an agency’s typical usage. For example, if an officer searches for a specific car on multiple occasions, it is flagged and sent to the department as suspicious activity. 

GCPD Captain Shawn Strohl, the Support Services Division Commander who oversees the department’s use of Flock, told The Current that the department has had some activity flagged by Flock. But he attributes that to officers who were training to use the system.

Officers, for example, have conducted multiple manual searches for the same suspicious vehicle over multiple days, instead of following protocol to create automatic updates for the vehicle with that specific license plate. 

“It’s just a training issue that we’re trying to work through to get these officers spun up on how the system actually should operate,” said Strohl. 

However, privacy advocates like Martha Shockey at Indivisible Georgia don’t view training or training reform as the answer. 

“I don’t know if training is something that can be done. I think the system is inherently flawed. It produces incorrect results. It makes connections that you know a human being might not make. There’s an awful lot of AI involved in how the technology is used and the kinds of information that it gathers,” she said. 

Community disconnect 

Shockey believes that police should end Flock contracts and focus money and time on community policing that builds relationships between citizens and beat cops. That, she says, is more effective at preventing crime than cameras. 

She also pointed out the taxpayer support for Flock cameras, rather than spending to keep the Brunswick YMCA open, as examples of the county’s misplaced priorities. 

“But they’re going to go spend all this money on Flock cameras. Who’s going to pick up the daycare that you’ll lose with that institution being closed? Are they looking at that? I mean, what’s going to happen to the parents who need to work? There are so many other things that need to be addressed other than this, and I think it’s just an outrageous expenditure of money,” said Shockey.

Van Otteren, a resident of Blythe Island, isn’t in favor of completely abolishing electronic surveillance by police, but he fears that someone could be wrongfully implicated or that a bad apple could use the cameras for nefarious reasons.

The Flock Transparency Portal that the public can access shows the GCPD policies for the camera system. It also details the number of active license plate readers, vehicles detected, searches, and hotlists that the department has conducted, as well as the agencies with whom the department shared data and from whom it receives data. 

The Current reported last year that GCPD requires officers to have a reason for a search and a case number. That policy does not extend to agencies that tap into GCPD’s network of Flock cameras, though. 

Strohl said that there could always be issues with technology, but the department feels it has one of the stronger policies, noting that it had a License Plate Reader policy before Flock became widespread. 

The transparency and standards, however, haven’t changed the opinions of those opposed to the spread of surveillance technology like Van Otteren. 

“Getting a case number is easy to do. Most officers can generate their own case numbers. If you put a case number down there, it’s not like that really means anything. You can generate a case number, put it there, and just say, oh, it didn’t go, and you know, the lead didn’t pan out. It didn’t go anywhere,” he said. 

What does the future look like under Flock?

Sipe said he has not been part of any discussions about expanding Flock in the county and believes the number of cameras the department currently supports is sufficient. 

The 80 cameras are strategically placed at various entry and exit points throughout the county, which has approximately 87,000 people. 

Shockey, who lives in Clarkston, Georgia—a city in the east metro Atlanta area—views the number as excessive for rural Glynn County. 

“I just can’t imagine if you have that many cameras in an area that has that few number of citizens. I just can’t imagine what they’re doing with all that data,” she said. “Why do they need all that data? Is the crime rate so extraordinarily high that they feel they have to have this? And if it’s that high, they need to figure out why.” 

Van Otteren, who became aware of Flock and its capabilities after seeing the cameras during his routine travels, views the entire system as backward and urges his neighbors to conduct their own research. He added that, right now, Flock cameras in Glynn County might be functioning only as license plate readers. The capability already exists for them to do far more than that. 

“You can’t have privacy in public. But at what point does it become intrusive? I mean, if someone were following you around, you’d have a problem with it,” he said.