In
last night's CC meeting, Chief Baker upon request of the council the previous
week, gave a power point presentation of the LPR’s request the FPD put out for
bid. You can see it at 16:20 to 1:09:05
http://207.172.210.8:5002/CablecastPublicSite/show/2553?channel=1
The background material can be found
here: 2022-04-26
(framinghamma.gov)
I never knew FPD has LPR's mounted
on cruisers since 2010. I was involved with government in 2010 as I recall and the subject
never came up as I remember. It was news to the entire council. I understand we
have 12 LPR cameras that have never worked according to the Chief. The data
collected is more than the cops wanted, like expired inspection stickers they
say. I would question what other data was collected at the time.
So FPD decided a while back to do a
trail run with 2 of these pole mounted LPR's for 90 days from a company called
Flock Cameras. https://www.flocksafety.com
Just so everyone understands this
technology, you drive anywhere that has a LPR watching traffic go by, every
license plate is captured and stored for as long as 30 days on the company’s
cloud server and compared to a "Hot List" of license plates connected
to a crime. The FPD would be notified and make an arrest. How and who make up
the "Hot List” is still unanswered. After 30 days, all those saved scanned
plates would be removed unless they are connected to a crime.
The Flock camera program relies on self-policing
in the police department. I heard that just command staff and detectives could
access the data but would have to log in and give a reason for a license plate
search.
The costs I heard was around 20K a
year for each camera. I was under the impression that only two cameras were
being purchased.
From the web site: The Flock Safety
Falcon camera is $2,500 per camera per year, with a one-time $350 installation
cost. This price includes everything — installation, maintenance, footage
hosting, cellular service, and software updates. The Sparrow camera (a lighter
and smaller version of our Falcon camera) costs slightly less with the
same basic subscription model.
Flock technology is built for
limited, responsible monitoring by the appropriate actors after adverse events,
not for 24/7 surveillance.
The above is a very
interesting statement by the company.
And it was very clear last night,
that FPD needs no approval from the council to be anything they want as long as
they use trust fund money.