Chrissa Olson here. Yesterday’s five-hour-long Board of Supervisors meeting resulted in a 3-2 vote to get rid of the Sheriff Office’s Flock cameras.
The split came between a group of supervisors concerned about privacy and cost—Wendy Root Askew, Kate Daniels and Glenn Church—against Chris Lopez and Luis Alejo, who emphasized that under-resourced communities could use the technology in the absence of sufficient law enforcement.
Speaking of the absence of law enforcement, Monterey County constituents at the meeting were not happy when Sheriff Tina Nieto and a contingent of deputies left just before the public comment period. They said they were listening from Zoom and chimed in at the end of public comment to confirm that yes, they were listening.
But it doesn’t look like they’ll be watching.
The Flock cameras will have to come down within the next 60 days and Undersheriff Keith Boyd said they’d tell Flock to suspend use of the cameras immediately.
While the Sheriff’s Office won’t be seeing out of those 63 cameras anymore, Flock certainly isn’t gone. It’s still used by different cities and the California Highway Patrol. In addition, homeowners associations and private companies can contract with Flock, without ever disclosing it to the public.
The vote was to deny negotiating a future contract, meaning the Sheriff’s Office didn’t actually have an existing contract with Flock. They’d been using it for a year for free, as the board didn’t allocate funding for it this year.
Flock’s deal was this: We’re giving you usage of the cameras now for free. In exchange, propose locking the County into a 10-year, long-term contract with us.
There’s all sorts of freebies that Flock would have thrown in too, such as the FreeForm Search tool, where you can look something up in plain language. (The Flock website suggests “women with red handbag” as something you could type in to find matches in the system. If they tried “big yellow squid” they’d still be unable to find my esteemed colleague.)
Looks like Flock won’t be getting a contract from the county. But their cameras are certainly still around.