City Council - Regular Meeting

I just like get emotional. Thank you. All right. Let me see your hair.

I don't know. There's so many other

No, I Good evening and welcome to the Chandler City Council study session. We are glad that you are here tonight and I'd like invite the clerk to please take the role. Mayor Harki here. Vice Mayor Incinas here. Council member Poston here. Council member Ellis is absent, excused. Council member Orlando here. Council member Harris here. And council member Hawkins here. We have a quorum.

Very good. Next on our agenda is scheduled public appearances. I'd like to invite Council Member Harris to join me in All right. Our first uh scheduled public appearance is a proclamation for public works week. If I could have director Jeremy Abbott and the public works team come on down. All right, let me read this proclamation. We'll line you up for a photo later. You don't have to do it yet, but you guys are so good. You're already lining up preemptive strikes here. That's right. You know how to line things up in public works. Whereas public work professionals support the infrastructure, facilities and services that are vital to building, sustaining and sustainable and resilient communities and to protect public health, quality of life, and the well-being of the people of Chandler. And whereas these systems and services are made possible by the dedicated effort of public works professionals who

help build, maintain, and protect our city's transportation network, water and wastewater systems, solid waste services, public buildings, and other essential infrastructure. And whereas it's in the public interest for residents, civic leaders, and organizations in Chandler to understand the importance of public works and the role these programs play in our community. And whereas the year 2026 marks the 66th year of National Public Works Week. Now therefore, I, Kevin Hartkkey, mayor of the city of Chandler, do hereby proclaim May 17 through 23 as National Public Works Week. Woo.

Jeremy, are you speaking or somebody else?

Thank you, mayor. Uh, so first of all, I'd just like to thank mayor and council for supporting the public works and utilities department. can't do the things we do without your support. Uh most importantly the team that that show was able to show up and show their support and the all the other individuals. I am so proud to have such a compassionate and passionate department uh of individuals that work behind the scenes to support keeping our traffic and streets safe, our water and wastewater systems operating, and as well as uh addressing our solid waste. So uh this is for them. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Frank. Stephanie, we're ready for a photo. Can you improve on what they've already done? All right. Thank you all. All right. Next is recognition just serve awards. If if um Linda Finlandson, Chandler Area Just Serve director

Robin. Robin, I you know, I was thinking that wasn't right. Robin, I thought maybe you had a sister that was here. Is there a microphone here? Just taught. Wow.

That's cool. Hi-tech. Uh, mayor, members of the city council, and everyone else up there, uh, in 2026, America is celebrating 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And Just Serve is collaborating with America Gives, an initiative of America 250. What's the main goal? to have more volunteerism than ever in American history. Just Serve is also presenting the Heart of Service Award to some outstanding volunteers and community leaders throughout the nation who actively promote and expand volunteerism. We are grateful for them. This evening, I'm thrilled to present a medallion and certificate to three community leaders in Chandler who have an exceptional heart for serving others. When I heard about the award, the first person I thought of was Mayor Kevin Hartkey. For well over a decade, in one role or another, Mayor Hartkey has helped to create service opportunities and connect as many people as possible to them. He brings people of different faiths, political views, and every other way the pe that people can be different together in friendship and love for our community and for one another through serving together the most vulnerable among us. He leads Chandler and way beyond by his example of service. He takes time to personally know and compassionately serve many individuals struggling to get out of homelessness. his own hands voluntarily wield, for example, a paintbrush to beautify a neighborhood or a school backpack filled with supplies so he can give it to a child. Mayor, please accept this award as already been given. Next up is Carol Pollson. And now, Carol Pollson, I'm going to

read to you what Amy Bailey, another Just Serve specialist like me, said of her. Quote, "Carol Pollson has a remarkable ability to bring people together, building meaningful connections that strengthen both nonprofits and the individuals they serve. as director of the Chandler Business Alliance Foundation. And through her involvement with the Chandler Business Alliance, now get this, Carol supports, and stays connected with a network of more than 90 nonprofit organizations. True, helping them collaborate, share resources, and expand their collective impact. She consistently champions a culture of giving, encouraging others to contribute their time, talents, and resources to support the greater good. Known for her kindness, reliability, and willingness to step in wherever is needed, Carol leads by example, her steady behindthe-scenes efforts continue to strengthen the nonprofit community and uplift those around her." End quote. And now you get your award. And there's Nicole Earl. I'll quote one more Just Serve specialist, Angela Jones, right behind me, who said, quote, "In 2016, Nicole Earl co-founded Gathering Humanity, a 100% volunteer-run organization after seeing the need to support vulnerable refugees during resettlement. Since then, she has devoted herself to serving not only refugees, but also individuals and families throughout Chandler and across Arizona. Nicole works closely with over 30 agencies that help people escaping domestic violence, impoverished senior citizens, youth aging out of the foster system, and people coming out of homelessness.

Nicole inspires others in our community and within her faith to step forward and serve. Her compassion, leadership, and commitment to helping others makes her truly deserving of this recognition." End quote. And there you go, Nicole. I'll step in for a All right. Next, we want to recognize and invite up Miss Chandler.

I'd like to give you the microphone and and just give us a few sentences just on your story and where you are and where do you hope this will lead you. And I'm inviting Council Member Poston to join us and she had recommended us. There you go.

Thank you. Well, my name is Victoria Bradivogue. I have the honor and privilege of being Miss Chandler and I was born and raised in this city. So, it has been an absolute honor to represent my hometown this year and the city of Chandler. The council members have been so supportive of me, not only with my community service initiative, the gender violence project, where I advocate for survivors of gender violence to get the justice that they deserve, but also through my journey with law school in Miss Arizona. and I couldn't be more thankful. So, thank you.

Well, I just I just wanted to say thank you for coming in today. We do have this certificate of recognition. Just when I first read about Victoria and all the work that you were doing, I just thought you were such a wonderful representative of Chandler and especially the gender violence project. It's it's very unique. It's only one of three in the country. I actually just interviewed her on my show, Women Rise. And so if you want to learn about that and ways to support her, not only as Miss Chandler, but also for the Gender Violence Project and what she's doing to help women and people at the UN or Arizona State University, um you can watch that or reach out to her other than that. But the big thing is you have a scholarship program coming up in June. So, we definitely hopefully with mayor's permission, we're going to invite her back after she becomes Miss Arizona and goes on to represent us there. So, thank you so much. We appreciated getting to know you a little bit. Let me give you this and we wish you all the best of luck when that program comes up in June and we are all behind you. Thank you. All right, let's do a photo. Here you go. Thank you.

All right. And our last recognition tonight is calling up a Chandler student and Valley Metro contest winner. So Rukaya Goomba. So I met Rakaya when I was the keynote speaker at Paragon graduation ceremony just last week and she's graduating. and how exciting and uh but you've got a this is for a specific award and let me uh let uh council member Harris talk about that.

So Rakia here there was a art contest among the region uh where one student will be able to be picked to show their art on a valley metro bus that would travel throughout the region. that winner will be able to have their art displayed on the bus as well as their name in their school that they represent. And so, Rakao came number was the number one pick for the art contest and we are so proud of her. She's a Chandler High School and we're glad that she's here as a Chandler resident as well. So, let's give it her. I'm just very honored and very happy that I won and this was an amazing opportunity. Um, I was able to get a recommendation letter from Miss Jennifer Adams from Tempee and um, I'm excited to see where this is going to take my career. Um, this is just one of many that's to come. Thank you.

Let's do a photo. Would they like to come up for a photo? Come on, Mom. All right, that concludes our scheduled public appearances. this morning, this evening council. Only one item was called in for a question that was on item number 13, the the bird ordinance. And obviously we will be voting on the rest of these with the public hearing uh on Thursday. But I just had a really quick question

is so the understanding of this is basically people can continue to feed birds in their backyard because our code does not uh go into people's private places. But if someone is scattering bird seed in public spaces or or other places that create a public nuisance, this would this would not just discourage this, but according to this ordinance, make it illegal. Correct. Through the mayor, yes, that is correct.

Okay. I just wanted to clarify there's been a lot of thoughts on this. Council, any questions? All right. Thank you, council. Again, that was the only item called in here. On Thursday, we will be voting on all these and do want to do a very uh Oh, city manager, go ahead. Mayor, I may have created some confusion today. I did not realize until this meeting kicked off that we had that one item had been called back.

Um, and so I think I've told at least one council member that it was going to be pulled in today and they didn't need to take it off. So if you would like we can have a brief presentation on that topic tonight or I can push it till Thursday. But they are here and ready to present and I didn't want to make it I didn't want to do this without being very transparent that I had thought it was called in until we actually sat down. So in Thursday there will probably also be a discussion related to this item. Do you think or is there council member is that is that

I think that that there's been some questions that council wanted to know if uh police andor our uh vendor could answer and so I don't know if they can be here on Thursday night but they are here tonight. So I just wanted to make sure that I didn't with this confusion I didn't leave council without the information they had requested. All right. So, let me take mayor's prerogative then and and let's um have them make a presentation on this tonight. So, great. Thank you, mayor. All right. Um who's up for uh the cameras? Come on up.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So, this agenda item seeks approval to merge the two existing Flock license plate reader camera contracts uh into one contract and do the renewal. Um, let's see if we have our presentation up here.

Matt, can you help her? arrow button.

All right. So, a little background on the Flock license plate reader contract. In March of 2023, council approved a contract with Flock for 14 license plate readers. Uh we saw a lot of success in those initial 14. We came back in May of 2025 and requested 26 additional cameras. So, we now have 40 cameras that are out in our community. Uh we chose some of those locations based on the ingress and the egress to our city. Uh we focused on some of the hightra areas. So major thoroughares like Arizona Avenue, uh commercial corridors, maybe down in front of the mall on Chandler Boulevard. Uh but we focused on some of the high traffic where we see the most uh people moving within our city. So there's no cameras in the residential area. Uh we have um none placed to target any specific demographics or any different community groups within our city. Um in the on the uh screen that is a picture of the camera. So you can see it's a small camera on a pole. You'll see them uh over by sidewalks um and they have a solar panel on them. In this picture you can see what an alert looks like. So, uh, when we receive a notification in the real-time operations center about an alert, uh, you'll see a picture of the vehicle. It's a still shot and it has a license plate and we can look at some of those key characteristics. Um, we will see alerts on stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, u missing, endangered, wanted persons. Uh, wanted persons can be things like um a suspect on an active investigation or it can be a warrant for an arrest. Uh, but the system captures different characteristics. So, if it's a maybe a license plate um with something covering it, we can search for things like that. We can search for bumper stickers that are predominant um and any other identif identifiable markings. So, fiscal year to date, we've had over 7,600 different alerts that have come through this um the system just for Chandler. Uh what we do with those

alerts when they come through is we vet the information. So, we'll look to make sure that the system is giving us uh what we see in the picture. So, we make sure a five is a five and not an S. And we'll make sure some of the um license plate states are correct. So, some of those uh license plates look very similar. So, we'll vet that uh the system information that it's uh coming through. And then the second piece we do is we validate that the information is still valid. So, if there's a wanted person, we want to make sure that they're still wanted. So, all of those steps are taken before we take any kind of action at all. So, I wanted to give a couple of uh recent examples that really highlight the success of the program. Uh we received a 911 call about a missing elderly female with early onset dementia. The daughter reported that she couldn't find her mom. Mom was out driving a vehicle um and she had no way to call 911. So, the daughter had a general idea of where she might be, gave us the vehicle description. We were able to go into the flock system and locate mom. We directed officers to her and she was found and reunited with her mom safely. On another occasion, the real-time operations center received a flock alert of a wanted person and they were from another state. Uh the warrant on this person were uh was for crimes against children. The information was verified as accurate, was still valid. Uh we verified it with the other state and the suspect was then located and arrested. So notable with this one was this was a child predator that came from out of state and came to our community. So we were able to um know this information. The only reason we knew this information was because of this license license plate reader program that we have. So those are two examples. Both of those examples happened just last month. Uh and they were directly related to the use of this technology. So we also have flock here uh for any questions related to data privacy uh any kind of security questions that you may may have and I'm uh happy to answer any other questions.

Sure. I know a question I know a question out in the community is what happens to the data? How secure is it? Who owns it? Someone want to address those kind of uh concerning questions that someone might wonder is this is is this put our community at risk or does there someone else a bad actor or or another government have the capacity to take this data and and have it store it? uh or do anything else with it. Tell us about that process. Yeah, definitely. Mayor Hark, thank you so much for having us today.

Before she begin, can you Mayor Kate, before they begin, I'm I'm trying to keep track of the presentation, but I don't know what their name is or what their role is. Very good.

Um, thank you, uh, Council Member Harris. For the record, my name is Katie Doane and I'm here with Flock Safety. I'm on the public affairs team, um, and I represent Arizona. So, again, thank you for having us today. We really appreciate the opportunity. Um, mayor, to answer your question, the city of Chandler owns 100% of their data, and that's stated very clearly in the contract that we have with the city. Um, we don't make any decisions with your data. We don't sell your data. You guys own 100% of the data. Um, the data is very secure. It's one of the we are C just compliant, which is one of the highest standards to own agency data, especially for law enforcement, as well as SOCK 2 and a litany of other compliances that we have. So, we are very secure um in our data security. Is there any concern? Have there been any breaches in data in which uh inadvertently uh data has gone where it shouldn't go?

No. Um to our knowledge, we have not had any hacks in the the Spock system. Um and it's a threat we take very seriously. Just knowing this day and age, hacks can happen at any point. And so at Faulk, we take that threat very seriously. Um we have worked with um other departments. There's been some claims on social media saying that Flock has been hacked. Um we had partnered with the Miami date electronic crimes task force which is a gold standard in electric crimes um to debunk these claims and they posted testimony online saying that claims online that Flock has been hacked are absolutely false. In addition to be ahead of potential hacks, we partnered with Bishop Fox, a consulting firm, and they do penetrative testing on our systems to make sure that we're ahead um and have the most secure system possible. And you said 7,700 cases or 7,700 cases in Chandler that of the type that you mentioned. Do we ever work with other communities on this? So is data shared that way if uh we hear of something going on in Tempee, how would how would our our system interface or how would we cooperate with another community

through the mayor? Yes, we share our data with other state agencies, other local, county agencies within the state. Um, they opt in um and they request access of our system and then we have an approval process for that. Now, what does that mean concerning then that but we own the data but we others stop optin and vice versa. Talk to me about that

through the mayor. So we can uh search in a database uh for anyone that we have any agency that we have access uh to the system. Um but we as a as the city of Chandler we own Chandler data and so uh there it won't be released. Um well I shouldn't say it wouldn't be released. We are responsible for the release of our information.

So tell me how that works. Phoenix um in Awatuki is requesting they there's a something going on and they request do we give them access to data or do we give them specific point information on a person or driver's license they request because again there's a little bit of a I'm trying to understand putting those two statements together.

Sure. through the mayor, we will um we will choose specifically what they have information, what they can access. So um oftentimes it will be related to a case if we have a suspect or a point of interest or person of interest. Uh we can choose to share that with another agency or we can choose not to. So it's a case-byase basis. They will still have access to the same databases that they have nationally. So the national crime databases that's already in flock. So they will still have access to that information. It's information they would have already.

So I I think I'm understanding what you're saying. So they don't have just access to our information, but they can make a request on a license plate and we could trigger that as similar to other requests of that 7,700 and we would help them find them, but they would only have that information. Yes. Through the mayor, we can choose specifically what information that they can give. Do you want to talk about access controls and how that is managed in in house?

Yeah. Um, like we like we said, the city of Chandler owns 100% of their data and the the sharing requirements that they have are based on your city values. And so, um, when we enter into a partnership with the city, you decide we want to do onetoone sharing between Chandler and Tempe or we want to do regional sharing in Maripo Maropa County or we want to be on the national network to have access to the national database. is truly based on the the the sharing requirements that you as a city want to have and our guardrails are in place to ensure that that's not there's no backdoor access from another state that you don't agree with or that you don't have a sharing agreement with to do that.

Okay, I'm I think I'm asking question for others but I'm going to keep asking. Um so with that again that would be a specific request not access to our data to go through because they're looking for a needle in a hay stack. We would hand them they would hand us the needle and we would search and see. We wouldn't just give them a haststack versus information. Is that correct? Through the mayor, they have general access. So, it's a like a tier one of access to our system. Uh, anything that is deeper than that first tier, they would have to ask us specifically for our information. Yeah. What is tier one?

I'm I'm using tier one as a general statement. So the the basic information that uh we share with other agencies within the state would be the same things that you would be able to search in the national database. Stolen vehicles, uh stolen license plates, warrants, things like that. If it's a specific investigations, uh maybe one of our detectives is looking at a um a suspect in some kind of case, that would be a higher level uh that we wouldn't share with anyone. they would not have cart blanch to our active investigations.

Okay. So again, they would have access if if a license plate is triggered, they would have access to that photo or information, but not access to our data to look for that. Tell me what I'm see what I'm do you understand what I'm asking? Through the mayor's the specific data of the vehicle, they would already have as part of the NA national database. So if you uh if you see an officer that has made a traffic stop, uh they will be able to search that same criteria on a traffic stop, the flock component of that is a picture of its location. Okay. All right. Council, other questions? Vice Mayor?

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Um for our department, what agencies currently have access to our data or to those different levels of tiers that you say? Sure. through the mayor, vice mayor and cenus. Right now, we're sharing with uh agencies within the state. So, local city agencies, we have uh county agencies, uh the campus police departments and uh state agencies. We don't share outside of the state. Okay. So, no federal agencies or anything at the or has there been requests?

We share with the um I'm sorry, through the mayor, vice mayor and cenis. we share with the marshall's office but we are part of a a task force for fugitives on that. Gota and with that um has there been do we have any internal audits um of that data access or how do we monitor that making sure that there's no misuse or anything like that going on there? Sure. Through the mayor, vice mayor and cus we do 30-day audits and we also have a built-in flagging system that will let us know uh certain criteria. So if a if a license plate is queried one too many times for different cases, it will let us know. But we do audits on that and we have strong policy as well.

Oh, okay. Great. Great. Um I think that's all my questions for the department here. Good for other uh council member Orlando, then council Poston, then council. Um I mean council member Harris. Um, so what relationship do we have with the marshall's office? Uh, through the mayor, council member Orlando, we participate in a a task force with the marshall's office. And so because we work with them uh daily, we are uh willing to share our information with them as part of an operational day-to-day need.

What specific things normally is the marshall office ask for? uh through the mayor, council member Orlando, the fugitives uh is primarily what their uh responsibility is. Fugitive, if there's anything outside that that perimeter, do you share the data with them? Uh through the mayor, council member Orlando, I am not aware uh that we've had any of that come up in the past, but I can ask some more questions and get back with you on that.

I appreciate that. Um question, so how do you build your firewalls? Um, I can have our IT team reach out to you directly to get into the nitty-gritty. Um, but we do have a a um litany of engineers that are on the process of building the firewalls um and making sure that you know an agency can't be searched with one you don't have an agreement with. Um, but I can get back to you about more specifics on how they're specifically built. So, you also have obviously um secure facility website, things like that you want to access the information. Um um the mayor do you have uh security levels of security to be able to access information? So no one's probing that information to get the information

uh through the mayor council. Correct. That is correct. Okay. Um so the um this came up last week and I don't know who could actually answer this question but the state law is changing next year on using flock. Is that what I heard last time? Um through the mayor councilman Orlando. I know that they're still in session at the legislature and to my knowledge there has been no ALPR bills that have been passed um or signed by the governor, but we are monitoring the situation as the legislature is still under consideration. What is that state law, you know? Um I know there's a couple bills that are going through. I'm not the member of the state legislature team, but I can also make sure they connect with you to give you the download on that.

Well, um yeah, what I heard that the state was going to control or had the laws I guess my big question here is this. I'd rather keep local control than have one blanket of state if my that's my brother. So, let's get let's get some more information on what those state laws are or those potential proposals are and what we could do. Um, I'm still want more information on this on this Marshall stuff. And the other question I have is how long do you keep this data through the mayor council member Orlando? It's 30 days. Why 30 days? It's the standard that we started with and it's a general practice across the region. So if this is real time data, why do I need to keep it for 30 days?

Uh through the mayor, council member Orlando, there are times when we have uh investigations where a detective is looking for something. The real-time operations center uh may not be open or we may not be aware of a license plate or a vehicle that's involved in the original case. And so when a detective is assigned the case perhaps a week later, two weeks later and they start uh gathering more information on the case, they may get additional vehicle information and that would be a time when they would want to come back and query the database. Then what happens then once the 30 days are up uh through the mayor, council member Orlando, it is purged. It's what? Purged. Purged. Okay. Automatically. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Council member Post.

Thank you. I got a couple of my questions answered. Um, could you just the one question I do have for you is could you expound a little bit on the placement of these cameras and kind of how you determine the the need of where you're putting placing them?

Sure. Through the mayor, council member Poston, uh, our primary interest was in the major thoroughares and commercial corridors. Uh we worked with other uh units within the police department to see where our crime uh was most likely to occur and where the uh most likely that we could apprehend a criminal uh because of vehicle specific uh follow-up information that we could track down. So um like I said the um Arizona Avenue is a a huge thor thoroughare. So there's a lot of traffic that goes up and down uh that roads. you know, the onem increments that go across our city. Um, hight traffic intersections, high collision intersections. Um, that would be the high traffic and then commercial. Anytime you have a commercial, you have a lot of draw traffic in that area. And so that was the reason why we chose some of the commercial corridors.

Thank you. And then does our does now I know in terms of the contract you said um and I apologize, could you remind me of your name, please? Katie. Katie, thank you. Katie, um I know that you had mentioned that the data is Chandlers. We have full control over that. Does the contract include a provision that that data can't be sold? Yes. Um in the contract it is stated that the data will not be sold by block.

Okay. And then I'm going to repeat a question because I'd like to basically just understand your answer a little bit better in terms of that privacy and security and have there been any breaches and you had said you had never been hacked before. Were there any other kinds of breaches? Some concerns that had been brought forward to me were more in terms of employees as opposed to the PLC employees as opposed to um maybe hacking specifically. um through the mayor, councilman Fiston. Um there have been no instances where flock employees can access, for example, I wouldn't be able to access Chandler's license plate data. It requires a very high security clearance internally in our team to access very specific information. And that's purely for improving our systems um and making sure that we're able to work directly with law enforcement to say, "Okay, we notice this is happening. This high security person can help solve those issues." But to my know, there's never been a flak employee that has misused the data.

Okay. And then this this is I'm sorry for bouncing back and forth a little bit too. If there were a breach of this contract, if we were to find that some of the things that we were told today that there had become a violation, could that contract what would be the repercussions of that? Could that contract be canled? Would it continue on? Um do we have anything in the contract that says anything about that? And mayor, I if I may interject on this one, I can say we we have reviewed the contract and we have um the ability to terminate as well as recover damages as well as insurance protections as well as indimification from flock. So I can assure you um the contract contains those provisions to provide protections to the city in the event we had something like that happen.

Okay, those are my questions. Thanks to you,

Council Member Harris. Thank you so much. I think I I think the issue um I think the issue more importantly I'll just say to the community since they're listening and watching I think it's a public trust issue. I think that's clearly what we're discussing. Uh we know that this is a tool that is used to help support law enforcement and real-time crime. Um we've seen the tool happen uh in real time. We've seen you know it gives our law enforcement cover uh when they get there. But what we've seen is specifically when you talk about like the US Marshalss, the US Marshalss actually works with ICE. And so that's the problem that we're I'm just putting it out there so that way you can be very clear on what we're talking about. US Marshall works with ICE to help do enforcement. The push back against ICE is consistently happening and the push back is just this is an example of a push back. we see the real tools that's happening that can happen and be a part but also US marshalss work with ICE to do enforcement and I know that we have some rules that governs that but I also understand that our community is at a disarray and and this it it has to do with public trust and law enforcement um that trust has to be earned every day and I think what we want to hear is what is your responsibility to that protection of our residents um because ICE is out there. They work with US marshals so they they find a new way to work around the system and yet we're here. So I I think that's what we're talking about today. Although the data and all those other things are important, but I think we're really talking about how are we making sure that we're protecting our residents from ICE. Even for residents, they're nervous about ICE and their residents and citizens of the United States. I think that's what we're really talking about today. So, if you can give us some clarity and some color around that, I think that would be very helpful.

Through the mayor, council member Harris, um the Marshall's task force is uh guided to look for violent offenders and fugitives. That's it. Much like they are part of the federal government, so is the FBI, so is the CIA, so is ICE, and so is Border Patrol. Um although I know it can sound confusing because they are all government enforcement agencies, they operate in silos, the the the marshals cannot query for ICE. They can only query based on what our detectives are working towards for violent offenders. These are people who are fugitives from justice for criminal courts. These are not ICE detainers. These are not Border Patrol civil detainers. These are violent felons already in the system that have warrants for their arrest. Uh to the extent that ICE would ever ask, and to be clear, they never have. And we have discussed this with the city manager, that if ICE were ever to ask for info on this, this would be the conversation we'd have to have with the city manager and city attorney. Again, that would be a one-off in the years that we've had it. I know of not one request. I'm sensitive certainly to the community feeling that you know this is just another surveillance tool that we share broadly with anybody. Uh I like to remind the entire council that the confidentiality around law enforcement systems goes back decades. Our sieges compliance and the audits that we have for that. We do random audits and and not only do those audits uh verify that those confidentiality is not being breached, but we also have inquiries through supervisors in another a number of ways. So, um, while I understand the the confusion or the, uh, interconnectability with those federal agencies, uh, it it's not sharing with ICE and it's, I would say, misinformation to be construing that that information is being shared with ICE and they are taking action on it whatsoever.

Well, and I and I think Thank you, Chief, because I I think and I'm just I just want to keep it 100%. I don't want to sugarcoat anything. I just want to keep it straight. I think the ideal that ICE has an ability where any law enforcement or anyone with with the proper information can go to the website and put the information in. It could be as simply as sitting at the job at the flock camera job and they're seeing this information happen and they're able to actually go into the system and put these people's in information there. I think that that that alerts the community in a different way where now someone can someone who is a bad actor can actually go in and do multiple reporting because ICE has an open system in which they can report or do inquiries. And I think that's a that's a big concern that residents have with how not necessarily us, but there could be concern about flocked staffing could also be able to do that. And I think that's another issue that's being brought to me that probably if we can address that that will help our community to help us like hey they're not being bad characters but then the question is what if they do and how do we protect the residents that way too through the mayor council member Harris I I um I understand your perspective I'd also tell you that you cannot just blindly search in the flat system. It has to be for a law enforcement purpose. Um that's part of the audit trail when any agency our own uh looks inside the flock system and specifically looks for vehicles and distinction important here they look for vehicles not people uh those those flat cameras are are taking pictures of vehicles not people I also like to just for all council's awareness no uh facial recognition occurs this is another myth that is out there flat cameras do not run uh um facial recognition on these cameras because they're focused on vehicles. So any search that is done, whether it is from the Marshall's task force or a local

detective here, is trackable and has to be for a law enforcement purpose. The audits that you hear about when the same camera or the same license plates get runs four or five or 20 times in a month, those set off internal audits already. That's that's too much. And that's an indication that either um it's being worked by multiple detectives or in a worst case scenario, someone is using it to try and get information. I've never seen evidence of that yet, but I can certainly tell you that historically in this profession, people have abused confidentiality. And when that happens, they're terminated. They're no longer allowed to be a peace officer in the state of Arizona. There are significant rep uh uh repercussions for it. So we take it very seriously. We understand the public trust is earned every single day. If there's an abuse, we will act swiftly to take care of it and we won't tolerate it here.

And and I I guess the other question would be within internal within Flock because I don't know how Flock operates their team and the community needs to know how do they operate to keep employees safe because now they're looking at sensitive information. Even the license plate can can carry some of the most sensitive information that people don't want. people just being able to look at their information. Although they are um there is a common theme that when you uh show up in public or when you're driving in public, you lose your privacy rights, but also they don't want their privacy rights being used in a way that puts them into an investigation or it it allows them to alert for law enforcement to do nothing else than what it is. So I guess the question would be how does Flock internally work their process and procedures to make sure that we're being protected uh irregardless uh irregardless of what they see how how internal inside of Flock how they're making sure their staff is being held accountable and then do we know if their staff is being held accountable so that way there's no privacy breaks

through the mayor Council Member Harris I I'll let Katie talk about that specifically but I I would just say This flock is a vendor for the license plate reader. Much like Axon is a vendor for our bodywn camera. So when we capture stuff on our bodywn camera, it is our own stuff that Axing cannot come in and use. Similarly, the data that we collect from license plate readers is ours only. Flock does not have the capacity to come in and do it. So I I throw that as a reference just as it's technology and a vendor and it's our data. But if Katie wants to add a little bit more, please do.

Um through the mayor, council member Harris, um reiterating what the chief said, the city of Chandler does own a 100% of their data and they use the tool 100%. Block, for example, I wouldn't be able to use block systems to look at city of Chandler's data. Um a that's not my security requirement and b because block doesn't use the tool the way that law enforcement uses the tool. Um we do have people like I mentioned who are have security clearances so they can work with law enforcement on troubleshooting. say there's like a you know data error or something like you know like a bug in the system or something we can work with them directly but employees at Flock don't have access to the license plate data.

Okay. And then my last question mayor um um you mentioned security clearance. I just kind of want to know what's your policy and what's the levels of security clearance that um people undergo if their staff inhouse flock. Yeah. Um I can speak to the general hiring practices. We go through background checks. um we go through um obviously interview processes, but we do state background checks um that are done behind us. Um as it gets higher up in the process, I can talk to our engineering team. I'm not an engineer, not on that team, so I don't know the specific requirements that are um on that docket, but I can get back to you with those.

Okay. Thank you. I I think that's important because this is a this is a this is a public trust conversation. It's not about dollars to me. It's about do our community feel safe with flock today? And I think that's what we're answering today. And I think anyone that's watching this currently right now, they're asking themselves, do I agree with Flock being in the community? Even though the real bene there are real benefits for Flock to supporting our law enforcement and as you have mentioned earlier, there's been some helpful things that has happened. Uh obviously must help with Amber alerts and all kinds of different things that it does help out with, but we're concerned about the abuse of power and the misuse of it and the public trust. And unfortunately, it may not necessarily be you that this is being um this conversation is being elevated. It could just be what the national politics are that's elevating this conversation. Uh so I I think that the information you gave today was helpful. uh it will give us something to think about, but I also have to weigh in with the community members and see where they feel with that because it's not necessarily I say I'm saying that you're doing something incorrect or we're doing something incorrect, but it's just do they feel comfortable like they did yesterday when we had this. Do they feel the same way today? And that's kind of what I'm weighing and that's kind of the things that I want to address. But if you can share whatever that company that internal company policy with myself and the council members um that would be greatly appreciated because that will allow us to put more information out there in the community. So with that being said, thank you mayor. So, I've got another question. Um, of this, again, I I realize it's all of our goal to make our city as safe as possible, that law enforcement is one of the things that is trusted to cities. Of that 7,700 inquiries, obviously, I I doubt if all 7,700 of those have been resolved. Perhaps they they just drove through

Chandler and are not here. But you gave us a couple stories of how as part of a real-time crime center. To me, this is one of the backbones of what we're able to do using technology to keep uh our city safe. So, of that 7,700, can you give us any idea of of the resolution of those or I don't think you're going to say that all of them have been resolved, but tell me about that

through the mayor. Uh, so of those, those are all alerts that come through. So, some of them when we verify, they're not uh they're not valid anymore. And so, we clear those. We have no action that's taken on those. So, we're we're vetting those. So that will uh pull some of that number down. And then uh we will also see um like I mentioned like a a zero and a and an O may be interchangeable or the plate not may not be the same state as what it's registering at. So there's still a software versus human vetting process. Um, but I will say I can get you the specific stats uh that we track because we track um all stolen vehicles, stolen license plate recoveries, missing people, I can get you those specific numbers.

Yeah, maybe maybe rather than looking at that as a raw percentages, how many cases have how many recoveries uh cases has been helpful, you know, per time period. That might be a better indication for us through the mayor. I can get you those specific numbers.

Yeah. Okay. Mayor, Council Member Lind, thank you very much for tonight. Uh, Mayor, thanks for taking my prerogative. I appreciate it. It's good information tonight. I learned a lot more than we did a couple weeks ago. We we brushed this subject. Uh, Chief, just want to let you know I trust you and I trust our men and women in the police department to do the right thing. uh you went through a highly competitive process to get this force back to where it should be and every officer I've spoken to have told me that even the ones we brought in from other agencies that they are working out very well. It was a a rigorous examination. Um we have been doing this since the late 90s working with other federal agencies. Uh we had the Roundup which was a stain in our background. We learned a lot of lessons in that roundup and a lot of those lessons were shared with other agencies. So it's important to understand that even though channel was ground zero in the late 1990s, we are ground zero to continue keeping that process, make sure we use information to get the bad guys and bad gals off the street. So that's all I have to say, chief. Thank you. Any additional questions? Vice Mayor.

Okay. Thank you, mayor. Um, Chief, I understand this is an impactful tool that officers use and it's brought great benefits in keeping our community safe. So, for me, it's not a question about how our department is using this. My questions are go more towards um Katie here at Flock. Um, Katie, what audit capabilities do we have as a city to ensure that our data is not being accessed by anyone outside of of us in our department?

Yeah. Um you can do the the department has access to agency audits and then organiza and then um organizational audits and so agency audits can be every time um Chandler's data is pulled from a different city um and so you can see that why the search was done um what type of case the search was done for or the crime um and so you get information through that. Um, would our audits or those audits show that only Chandler users were accessing that or would it show any other outside users?

Um, through the mayor uh, vice mayor and seen us um, it would show that like a different city was pull that you have an agency sharing agreement with. It would say like you know city of Tempee did a search on the Chandler plate um, and that agency audit. Okay. And then I know you mentioned the reports of hackers um other users and stuff but there has been nationwide stories of actual Flock users in different departments different agencies who have accessed this and you know there's stories out of Texas or stories out of Florida. What has Flock done since then to or like a roadmap to make changes to make this more secure. What have you guys done

through the mayor um vice mayor and seness? we have taken those reports very seriously and so enhanced our tools to um ensure that any misconduct of the tool and misuse of the tool um is flagged immediately. And so I do want to point out that the misuse of the tool and the stories that you are seeing are flagged because of our transparent auditing system. And so um what you guys alluded to earlier about um anomalies in the system, the the agency administrator through um our audit assist tool will get flags if a a plate is pulled for, you know, searching for reproductive rights or something like that. Um any searches that are outside anomaly of a a case um system will be flaged for the officer administrator and they can discuss it specifically with that officer.

Okay. and say if that user was um terminated, eliminated from that department but ends up working in another state in another different department agency. How are you guys tracking if that person has access once again? Um uh through the mayor vice mayor uh and um that would be a specific department requirement and so that would be if that officer is hired with a different department and they were terminated that would I believe show up in their employment history and that would be up to the other agency to hire them. I don't have um a specific example of that happening though. Okay. So you guys don't have um an internal within block system to kind of monitor those types of things. Ten it's just by departments

um through the mayor vice mayor Zenus. Um I can double check but like we mentioned earlier every agency owns their own data and handles their own audits and so um I will double check with our technical team and get back to you but to my knowledge um again that's not something we've ever seen happen. Gotcha. Okay. I do appreciate you coming out here and chatting with us. There's a lot of questions, a lot of concerns that have come up from our communities and stuff. So, thank you for being out here to answer all these questions for us and thank you chief for taking the time for explaining to our residents as well.

All right, council member Harris. Um, Angel summed it up. Just want to ask the chief one question. What happens if our law enforcement team I heard from Flock, what happens if our law enforcement team um accesses um accesses the system? Um what happens if it wasn't for something that was legitimate? what what happens on our end through the mayor council member Harris any breach of confidentiality and law enforcement sensitive information would end up in termination for that employee.

Okay. And then my just to follow up the this was kind of crazy but it came to my desk. Um boyfriend, girlfriends, former spouses, um those type of things are often have been used in the past to search the database to look for individuals like that. Maybe they're in a bad breakup. Maybe there's a relationship um uh issue going on. And it it was brought to me that sometimes it's used for that. I just kind of wanted to know like what does that look like from from us and what happens if that happens?

Yeah. Through the mayor, council member Harris, that would be a violation of the confidentiality agreements that we have regarding the use of law enforcement sensitive information. As I previously indicated, if that were to happen, and I've not seen that here, if that were to happen, those employees would be dealt with up to termination. Termination would be swift. Swift. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. I can add that as well. Katie, go ahead.

Um, through the mayor, Council Member Harris, um, when a search is conducted on a license plate, there is specific information you need to input. You can't just willy-nilly look up a license plate. You have to put a case number, an offense type, and other things that would indicate why you're searching for that plate. And so, I'd imagine if someone was doing that, looking up an ex-girlfriend or ex-husband or wife, they probably do some fabrication of that as well, which would also lead to a termination.

Council, any other questions? Yeah. Hey, thank you for the council grill. Yeah, very good. Um, city manager, there were a lot of questions that were asked that for us to make a decision on this. Were you able to capture them between what was asked to make sure we get this information by Thursday? Mayor, we will make sure that this information is provided from PD to you guys before Thursday. Okay. Thank you. Um, good robust conversation. Thank you. With that, that concludes your meeting. We'll be voting on this, everything else on Thursday.