St. Paul Flock cam debate: How does the technology work?

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker in a social media video posted last week called for "city administration and county partners" to work together to remove the controversial cameras from the city. Noecker, in the video, alludes to local data from Flock cameras being sold and entered into a national database. Local law enforcement call that untrue, and misinformation a byproduct of election politics.

"Everyone should be concerned about what Flock cameras mean for our community," said Noecker in the video. "That's why I will be authoring a resolution calling on our administration and county partners to end our contract with Flock."

How the technology works

What we know:

Flock says whoever owns the camera owns the data. The two cameras owned by St. Paul Police, situated at Kellogg Boulevard and Smith Avenue, stores its data locally in St. Paul. But departments can — and often do — share that data with other jurisdictions.

Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers are regulated by state law in Minnesota. Departments are not allowed to keep data for longer than 60 days unless it is tied to an active investigation, and departments are required to audit the system every two years.

As for what the cameras actually capture, Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Police Chiefs Association, describes it as "really just a picture of the license plate at a particular time and date." 

But the photos can also include the make, model and color of the vehicle and, depending on how the camera is angled, other aspects of the road as well.

"That system itself does not collect any of the vehicle owner or driver data," said Potts.

FOX 9 interviewed Ramsey County sergeants who use the technology every day. There are two primary ways the RCSO uses Flock. Manual searches are done by law enforcement officers with specialized training, and automatic alerts sent to patrol officers based on "hotlist hits." Hotlists include missing persons lists, stolen vehicles and active warrants.

"If I want to search a specific plate - I go to the search. I have to enter in a case number, the reason, and then what type of crime it's wanted for. And then I have to specify a date and time," said Sargent Thomas Segelstrom.

How departments compare

Dig deeper:

Some departments are more transparent about how they collect and share Flock data than others. Flock offers departments the option to create publicly available Flock Transparency portals. St. Louis Park’s portal, for instance, shows the city has 16 cameras that detected more than 400,000 vehicles in the last month. Officers there manually searched the database 76 times in that same period, and the cameras alerted officers to more than 9,000 hotlist hits.

St. Louis Park limits its data sharing to other jurisdictions within the state, but it does receive data from Fort Worth, Texas and private companies like Home Depot.

Faribault PD, by contrast, only shares its data with local dispatch.

In St. Paul, where Noecker is calling for the cameras' removal, the police department shares less information on the portal than Faribault and St. Louis Park. However, the public can see that St. Paul only shares data with Minnesota departments.

The public's role

What we don't know:

While statewide guidelines exist, many decisions about data sharing and transparency are left up to individual departments. It remains unclear how the St. Paul City Council vote will go or what changes, if any, will be made to the city's current contract with Flock.

A special public meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at 4:30 at St. Paul City Hall, where residents will have the opportunity to weigh in on the cameras.