New safeguards announced by Flock Safety are doing little to ease concerns among some Henderson County residents who have been pushing for the removal of the company's license plate-reading cameras.

The changes come as the debate over the technology continues locally, just days after residents spoke out about Flock cameras operating across Henderson County and an online petition calling for their removal gained more than 1,000 signatures.

Flock Safety announced new restrictions this week following reports of law enforcement officers around the country misusing its license plate reader network. Among the changes, the company says it will reduce how long it stores license plate data from 30 days to seven days and requires agencies to provide a specific reason and case number or incident number when conducting searches.

The company is also introducing additional auditing and oversight measures aimed at identifying potentially improper searches.

For Austin Rhodes, a Henderson County resident who has been pushing for the cameras' removal, the changes do not address his broader concerns about potential misuse.

"It would be unwise and foolish to use the honor system whenever so many people have used that and I don't buy the argument from the sheriff that they're doing all they can. You can't prevent that kind of misuse,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes was among the residents News 13 spoke with earlier this week about the petition calling for cameras to be removed from Henderson County.

Hendersonville Police Chief Blair Myhand, however, said the cameras give investigators a valuable tool for narrowing down potential suspects after a crime.

“What we can do now is, assuming that there is an ALPR (automatic license plate recognition) camera in the vicinity of the direction that the car went, is we would look at a certain time frame for a vehicle that matched that description and so what it will help us do is narrow down the list of potential suspects," he said.

Myhand said the cameras capture a vehicle and its license plate at a particular location and time.

“That's all that all the camera does is take a point-in-time picture of the driver vehicle to include the license plate. We would have to take that information and search the databases that we've been utilizing for decades to be able to identify who owns that car,” Myhand said.
He said the department also audits a random selection of searches each month.

“We also audit separate from that a certain number of the overall searches for that month at a random selection and so again, the system is overly transparent about what it uses and provides ways to audit everything that we do," he said.

Myhand said he supports changes that could make residents more comfortable with the technology. He also pointed to declining crime trends in the city while discussing the technology.

“Our crime trends, our crime statistics are trending downward right now," he said.

But residents who oppose the cameras say their concerns extend beyond how searches are conducted.

Bradley Harris questioned whether taxpayer money used for the technology could instead go toward communities still recovering from Helene.

“Why does the county feel like they need to spend this money to keep track of all of us whenever they could just go to Batcave and rebuild the house, rebuild the roads?” he said.
Harris said he does not expect the cameras already in place to disappear but wants governments to stop spending money on them.

Resident Kelly Turner said she would rather see the money spent elsewhere

“I would like them to put that money into more training so that they can do the same things that they're claiming the Flock cameras do but without them to protect our freedom," Turner said.

Turner also raised concerns about the potential for the technology to be misused for stalking, pointing to reported cases elsewhere involving improper searches by law enforcement officers.

Myhand says he is working with the International Association of Chiefs of Police on resources aimed at helping departments better communicate with their communities about the technology.

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“You'll see something next week from IACP, and then by the end of the year, hopefully we'll have some products that are out there that will help people maybe have a better understanding and help chiefs be able to communicate that in their communities," he said.

 

STORY & PHOTO COURTESY OF ABC 13 WLOS.