Public Safety & Criminal Justice Reform Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

I got you.

It says phone numbers.

You misspelled my last name. Nuh-uh.

Did you do my name right? I don't know.

Mine is 43620. So is mine. I'm just going to let everybody else do their thing.

Oh, okay. We'd like to call to order the Toledo City Council Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Committee meeting of September 17th, 2026. Clerk, call the roll. Hobbs. Here.

Williams. Here. Cramer. Here. McPherson. Melvin. Morris. Sorrento. Here.

Four present, and also present, Gaddis.

all right first we're going to have the toledo municipal court diversion study if they would come at this time thank you all so much he's amazing this amazing work that is being done in our municipal court and they have worked on this for a while and so i am anxious to hear the results of this And if you would, please introduce yourselves so that, of course I know, but so our general public will know who you are and we will go from there. Thank you so much. I want to acknowledge every council member that's here today and also acknowledge our council president, Council President Denise Williams.

Judge Tim Coleman, Toledo Municipal Court.

Hi, I'm Renee Dancer from the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School.

And I'm Lisa Falgiano, the court administrator for the Toledo Municipal Court.

Thank you all for inviting us again to come back. We're really excited to talk to you about our progress. I'll just say, we're still in active enrollment in the evaluation, so you'll hear a little bit more about that, but what we're gonna present today is some of the analysis we're able to do, and we have just a really large caveat that it's not the final yet, so don't rely on any of this information as things that should drive your decision making just yet. First, I just wanted to give you a reminder, a little refresher of what we're doing and why we're doing it. What you see on the screen is a rudimentary diagram of how people are coming into the evaluation. Just to recall, we're wanting to evaluate the court's persistent low-level offender diversion program. the Community Diversion Program to understand if it's decreasing recidivism and improving participants' housing and employment stability. So here is where we are so far. That's what this chart will tell you. First, you're going to see a column that represents our expectations, where we thought we would be at this point when we started. And then you'll see a column that's titled Reality, which is where we are at this point. So, I'm sorry, Councilman Hobbs, did you have something? No, okay. Yes, that is the headline. It's good. So where we thought we would be at this point as far as enrollment is concerned, we thought by the end of this month we would have hit 648 participants. Turns out by the first week of this month we had 744 participants. So we're way ahead of pace, and that has been consistent throughout the study, and I constantly tell my friends here, Judge Coleman and Lisa, that you are the only study that I've ever participated in that has been not only consistently ahead of pace, but ever ahead of pace. We have 372 people in each of the programs, the diversion program and the community service condition. That is showing you also that the randomization is working. It's fairly even as far as the distribution. Our total enrollment expectation has not changed. It won't change, but we're getting there faster. That means instead of being about 51% of the way there, we're almost 60% of the way there. And so we have reduced our pace of it or our enrollment deadline by three months roughly. So we thought we'd be done in March of 2028. It looks like we'll be done if we keep this pace in December of 2027, but we have been ahead of pace, so we might get done even faster than that. So let me give you some examples of what we can see in the data, remembering that this is not causal data yet. So it's telling you what we can, what we will be able to see at the end, but not what exactly we're seeing at the current moment. But it looks pretty exciting and pretty good. So it's important to note this is telling you that our participants are roughly looking the same generally across the groups, which is telling you also that the random assignment is working. So on the graph on the left, you'll see that that is our racial makeup of our participants. And the darker shaded bars are those who are in the community service. The lighter shaded bars are those in the diversion program. You can see that in each category, they're roughly the same. So that will show you that there's no kind of confounding factor of race. And the other bar graph is about how old are our participants, and that will show you there's no confounding factor of age. And roughly, the mean age is about 35 for all of our participants. We have other demographic categories. I could show you all of them. That sounds pretty boring, but they all are about the same. Also, by and large, all of our participants are successfully completing their program. That's happening in both groups, the community service and the diversion program. So you'll see that most people are getting their cases dismissed. That means they've successfully completed. That is, the reward for doing the program is dismissal. Thank you. Actually, thank them. I'm doing very little to make that happen. The pending category are folks who are still, their case is still pending, they don't yet have a disposition. Remember, we have people who have who just enrolled, people who are still within their 30-day time period, so we would expect to see some pending. Certainly, we do have some folks that come back in that 30 days, haven't completed their program, and the judge does see that there are some extenuating circumstances and gives them extra time. That would also put them in the pending category. So not only are they completing the programs, but they're generally doing it in the time asked of them. So this is the mean case length in weeks. You'll see it's about seven weeks, roughly, a little bit under for each group. The difference there is actually quite small, even if it looks like it's noticeable, so it's not statistically significant. We are seeing that people are completing the program in the time asked of them. So even those few folks that get an extra time, that's not the majority. We also are getting administrative data from our data partners, and we'll talk a little bit more about that at the end because we want to give a big thank you to them. But we're getting administrative data, and we're getting that for folks from two years prior to their enrollment and two years after. So we'll be able to see a baseline, where they were before they got into this program, and then we'll be able to see what happened for a period of two years after their program. And so what you're seeing here are graphs that represent what was going on before their program or before they got into this program. And what was happening is they were both engaging in the criminal justice system, which shouldn't come as a surprise because one of the requirements to get into the diversion program is that you have persistent charges. So you've come back and come back. So we should expect to see that. And we also saw that people were trying to get some help, right? So they were interacting with services that are being monitored through the homeless management information system, which would be housing related services. But post-enrollment, we're not seeing much activity on either of those fronts. So that's the good and the bad, right? Because we want to see little activity on the recidivism front, but we want to see more activity on the engagement with the community services front. But remember, we're still following people. Some people just enrolled. We have not hit anyone's two-year mark yet. So this is showing you how many people are accessing HMIS services, the Homeless Management Information Services post-enrollment. That's those housing-related community services. And it's small. You can see a little difference between the two groups. Again, that's not statistically significant, so don't put much stock in that little bit of difference. But it's not very many people so far. But the nice news, oh, I wish I would have fixed this before we got here. The good news is that they're also not recidivating, right? They're not coming back. And that's true in both groups as well. This looks deceptive, but those incarcerated post-enrollment are very few in total. This is the mean post-incarcerated number of days. This is not statistically significant, even though it does look quite deceptive as a large graph, but that's four days, so that's really not very many. And so just another reminder, those are examples of analyses we can run with the data we have. They're not, none of them are, you should not think of any of that as causal data just yet because we are still enrolling and we still have lots of follow up to do. But we wanted to give you a recap of what's been going well and where we're having some challenges. And so that's what you're gonna see here are our successes and struggles. Our biggest success has been the local partnerships. We have really fantastic support from all of the offices both within the court and within the city. So the law department, the public defender, the prosecutor, the mayor's office, the clerk of court, and of course the court itself have all been working together and we do that regularly. So we're like constantly talking about cases that we need to make sure we're staying on top of, we're talking about all of the data, we're talking about any issues that come up, and everyone is really involved and supportive in that. We did have some bumpy courtroom process, but because of those partnerships at the beginning, we were able to work through that together, and it's really seamless at this point. We have regular and consistent data collection going on with Norris, the Ohio Department of Corrections, and the Homeless Management Information Services. It's consistent and without issue. And when I say consistent, I mean the ODRC is pulling data monthly. Norris and the HMIS are pulling data quarterly. Quarterly is where we start. Sometimes we don't get that lucky and we get every six months. Monthly was what the Department of Corrections wanted to do, and they have been so responsive to doing that, which is super helpful. And then, of course, you saw at the beginning, we have been consistently ahead of pace in our enrollment. It's just astonishing. It has never wavered, not this entire time. It's very exciting. Where we've struggled is we have yet to get any labor data. We've been working with both Job and Family Services and the OLDA to get labor data. We are so close with the OLDA. We're just finalizing a data sharing agreement. It took a long time. And with job and family services, the court has been really, really instrumental in intervening in those discussions. We've had now two separate contacts who have retired and just left without telling us. But we're getting there. I think we're close. So that's our mitigation. The court's really working and helping on that. And then we've had some referral and then re-referral errors. So folks who were referred and then they came back with a different case and they were re-referred, like it was just a clerical error on our part. So to do that, to fix that and to mitigate that, we've done lots of ongoing training and then kind of isolated individual conversations when necessary. And that has, I think, really cleared up. So it's not really a big problem any longer. So that's what I have. I'm happy to answer questions or have any discussion you'd like. And certainly, I have given no time to the judge or Lisa, so please take some.

I wouldn't have much to add other than we appreciate Renee's work. We are looking forward to the final conclusion of the study. But what we see now is there was a concern with pushing this diversion program There's kind of an attitude in this country that for every crime there needs to be a pound of flesh and some conviction. I don't believe that. I believe that we ought to look at the particular circumstances of the case and perhaps declination is the way to go and just get rid of the case and get a low risk person out of the system before we turn them into a high risk person. and that's a little bit of what this program is about now we have to be careful on that that we're not dismissing cases with high-risk people that are going to come back that we need to be protecting the the public from but what some of these results suggest and again very preliminary and we can't make any causal connection at this time but both our group of people who received our persistent offender curriculum the people that learned the stuff they have very very little recidivism but also the people who were able to take advantage of three and a half hours community service and then also have their case dismissed have almost no recidivism so the point here is that people who are persistent offenders they have prior convictions They're treated fairly within the system. They're given an opportunity to do something to take care of their case without getting a conviction. And those groups of people at this early stage are not reoffending at all, both groups. So that's the good news, that we aren't seeing people getting their cases dismissed and going out and committing new crimes.

I think one of the things that struck me with the data is the fact that we have such high completion rates. A lot of times you think about someone who's being asked to do something and comply, that sometimes compliance can be spotty. And I think it's a testament to the fact that we really work on having fair processes. practicing procedural fairness as an organization to ensure that when people come through the court that they feel respected that they have an opportunity to have a voice about their case that when decisions are made those decisions are explained to them in a way that they can understand and when we do all of that I think it enhances public trust which I think is part of the reason that we're doing so well with enrollment and with completion

Thank you all so much. I just want to say amazing. I'll say my comments, but this is amazing. Council President Williams.

Thank you so much. I definitely wish this was like the hot topic that we have here today, but I doubt it. This is absolutely game changing. If we can reduce the prison population just by doing some simple, not simple, doing some reachable, tangible, It's amazing to me, and I know the media is not even here for this, when it should be. This is a program that I am so excited about because when you say 60% of the participants And that is the number of participants, 744 have been dismissed, have had charges dismissed because of diversion. That's amazing. So definitely, I'm so glad. Thank you, Judge Coleman. I know you've been leading this effort with the other judges. This is amazing to see these numbers and this data. and know that it is really there and the recidivism oh my god that is something that has been so um jaw-dropping to me um how many people that don't have this opportunity recommit so uh the question that i definitely had was i saw some of the partnerships that you listed i know the county is still part is are the counties is the county still partnering with ctf Or did that?

Yes, right. That's who's delivering. Yes, that's who's delivering the program. You're right. That's an error.

I got worried because I said, wait a minute.

No, no, that's an error in judgment for not adding them. You're absolutely correct. They are delivering the diversion program.

oh okay okay i just wanted to make sure i think this is so amazing and and you know i'm glad uh we definitely have this data in front of us i can't wait to see the end result and what we do with carrying this on because this is important for our community that people see there you can make a mistake you know, and come back from it and be okay. So thank you so much, all of you guys. Toledo Municipal Court, thank you so much. And maybe this can go over and we can partner with the county and they can take it on as well because, you know, some things you shouldn't have to have a damning record for life or something that can be rectified by just changing your thought process. So thank you so much. I appreciate everything that you've done with this program.

And I just want to point out that this program, when you think about investment, the cost of this program is less than $40,000 a year. And so if we can pay $40,000 a year for the instruction in order to get people out of the system, that is an incredibly good investment. And it's an investment that can help communities all over the country that are facing budget crisis in terms of doing something innovative and impactful for their community.

Wow. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Councilman Sorrento.

Thank you, Chairman Hobbs. When did the diversion program start?

I'm not positive. I think it was 2017. Okay.

So it's been around almost 10 years. Okay. So the data that we're looking at is from what time period? Is it 10 years or less? No, starting in March of last year.

March of last year. March of 25 is when the study started. Okay.

And what happens to the few individuals that do not complete the diversion program?

They come back to court? So in order to get into the diversion program, they have to enter a no contest plea. We reserve the finding instead of finding them guilty at that time and then dismiss the case if they complete. If they don't complete the program, they've already entered the no contest plea, then we find them guilty, and then a sentence... accordingly okay so um from that chart some of those sentences were jail time which would be cease and ccno for us and uh some were fines and costs okay

And does anybody do community service if they're in that situation?

That could be a part of a probationary sentence would be community service, yes.

So essentially, what percent of people do not complete the program?

About, well, less than one-third. Less than one-third fail to complete.

Okay, so those people are, either they get fined or they go to incarceration?

They're found guilty and then sentenced, yes. Okay, all right, okay.

Then the other question I had so the recidivism rate is pretty low Extremely what so far so far what we've got so as a result of that is the case load at Toledo Municipal Court for criminal cases Not civil and not speeding and running red lights But are the criminal cases down or are they about the same?

or up Our caseload is down dramatically since I started 20 years ago

Okay, that's what I'm driving at. Could you give us an estimate? You think it's down 25%, more than that?

I think it's 35%.

35, okay, thank you, your honor. All right, I appreciate it. I think this is really working well. It's a good program, and I'm sure I speak for many taxpayers in our community. They just want people that break the law to be held accountable, and I believe this program is holding people accountable. When they're not held accountable, unfortunately, we see a lot of recidivism in the community. from time to time we hear media reports of people that are charged with serious felonies, violence, crime, domestic violence, murder, assault, that have gone through the system but they've been repeating themselves. But it sounds to me like it's a pretty small number. Am I correct on that?

Well, you're talking about accountability and going back to what Council President Williams said, we can hold people accountable without putting a mark on them that prevents them from moving forward with their lives and education and employment. So we hold them accountable by taking a no contest plea requiring either community service or the diversion curriculum. They're held accountable, and then the case gets dismissed. But they're still held accountable, OK? there is a concern when we have people who are high-risk offenders uh... who are not uh... uh... who continually repeat and what we do there is We increase the accountability as people come back. So I might put somebody on probation. If they're violating probation and committing a new crime, then I do probation with more terms. And then at some point it becomes jail time. But the accountability increases in severity as people are not learning their lesson. Now, most people, the greatest number of people are not going to come back no matter what we do. They're just not gonna come back. The smaller group of people, the high risk people are the ones who are going to come back and we do need to be more aggressive about the accountability there.

Okay, and again, what I'm trying to say is I think the diversion program and the community service program is holding people accountable. And as you have said, Judge, pleading no contest also puts that accountability factor in there. So I'm just saying I think it's very important that we hold citizens accountable when they're brought to the court. I think this program is working, and I commend you for the hard work and the good results.

thank you thank you mr chairman thank you and i can't wait till our next report um this has just become every time it's progressively better and so i'm just looking forward and thank you mr renee thank you mr i mean uh miss falziano and thank you judge coleman for this amazing work that you are doing uh please please please don't get weary and well doing this is this is great and it's working it is working the the numbers aren't lying it's working so thank you and for under forty thousand dollars is working I mean this this this is great work money well spent so thank you thank you Next, we're going to have, as Chief Trenly and his staff is coming to the pit, Chief Krall is going to come, our public safety director. He's going to come and make a statement as they're coming, and then they're going to come into the pit, and we're going to talk about flock.

Good afternoon, President Williams, Chairman Hobbs, Member of Council. I'm George Crowell, Chief of Safety and Internal Services for the City of Toledo. First, I want to thank Councilman Hobbs for convening this hearing and providing the opportunity for what I believe is an important and timely discussion. As city leaders, we all share the same fundamental goal, keeping our residents safe while ensuring that the tools we use are implemented responsibly and transparently. The Toledo Police Department faces increasingly complex challenges in preventing and solving serious crimes. To meet those challenges, our officers must have access to modern investigative tools that can help locate vehicles connected to criminal activity and generate leads that otherwise may not exist. This technology is one of those tools, and they have become an important resource in helping law enforcement protect our community and pursue justice for victims. At the same time, we recognize that with any technology comes a responsibility to ensure it is used appropriately. That is why Toledo has established clear policies, safeguards and oversight mechanisms governing the use of this tool. Today's hearing provides an opportunity to review those protections, discuss how the system is being utilized, and ensure that the balance between public safety and individual privacy remains firmly in place. Most importantly, I believe council should hear directly from Chief Trenley, Chief Brown, and the Toledo Police Department about how these LPRs are being used in the field, the role it plays in helping officers solve serious crimes, and the real world implications that limitations on this system could have on criminal investigations and public safety. Our position is straightforward. Toledo police officers should have access to effective tools that help them keep our residents safe, and those tools should be governed by strong, clear, and enforceable rules that promote accountability and public trust. With that, I will turn it over to Chief Trenley and the Toledo Police Department We appreciate council's attention to this issue and look forward to a productive discussion. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. And I want to say before we start this meeting tonight, I want to be very clear, very clear. We did not have to have this discussion at all. But I wanted to have a discussion where we could have a public meeting where we could talk about this issue, talk from both sides, those that are for and those that are against. At any time you become disrespectful or loud or start yelling out, I've already asked our officers to have you removed. We're here to have a discussion. We respect everybody's opinion. That's why we're having this. So you can stay either side, but we're not going to be disrespectful to each other. That will not happen in this meeting. Please trust and believe. Thank you.

All right. Good evening, Councilman Hobbs, Council President Williams, rest of City Council, thank you for having us here tonight. I have with me Assistant Chief Kevin Braun, Captain Kelly Lenhart, and Lieutenant Leslie Cook. So each of us kind of have a little bit of a part in this tonight, and kind of what we're looking to do here tonight is just kind of have a discussion about flock, how we use flock, how we monitor our officers that use flock, how we hold them accountable for using it correctly. There's a lot of misinformation out there right now about this technology uh... i've heard everything from it's reading your social media when it you drive past it it's taking pictures of your kids at schools it's doing all kinds of things that just simply aren't true unfortunately that's the time we live in right now and that's the way things are mobilized around different topics at different times during critical moments in side politics if you will but for us i think it's important for us to just tell you about the technology that we're using and why we're using it and how it's affecting our police department so the solo police department has experienced large decreases in crime especially our violent crime including murder our homicide rates are down 28 this year they're down from 2020 2021 a lot more than that year after year we have seen reductions in our violent crime and pretty much all of our crime in general actually and i will tell you technology is one of those pieces of equipment that we have that helps us reduce crime. And particularly, our flock cameras go a long way in solving our crime. Right now, as a police department, we are experiencing a solvability rate of 86% for homicides. Since 2022 when we started implementing flock cameras, we have experienced high rates of clearance rates for homicides. Prior to that, we were under 60%. The national average is under 60% actually. You might say, okay, fine, you're solving some crimes, you're solving some homicides, what does that really mean? I will tell you homicides, and not only are we solving them, we're solving them faster than we ever have. And it's partially to do with this flock technology. Now, Assistant Chief Braun's going to talk to you about some numbers and some cases in which we can prove and put an actual, tangible narrative to those, not just statements saying that's what we're doing. But the reality is, when a homicide happens, the longer that suspect is left to go free, the more crime that's going to happen surrounding that homicide. Just because we don't know who saw or who committed that homicide doesn't mean the person on the street that was the victim's family, that they don't know who it is. So then we start seeing retaliations. We start seeing back and forth shootings as a result of that initial act. By getting that person off the street fast and getting them convicted, that goes a long way in reducing our homicide rates and our shootings. And FLEC technology, does an amazing job in allowing us to catch those suspects in these types of crimes. And actually, it's all types of crimes. And Assistant Chief Braun will tell you about some of the different types of crimes that we're able to solve using this technology. If we are to disband using license plate readers, the impact will be on our community. This isn't a shot at law enforcement. This isn't a shot at government. This is a shot at our community. We'll have more victims. We'll have more victims that don't get justice because we're unable to arrest the perpetrators. At the end of the day, the police department will move on. We'll continue to do our job. We'll continue to try to solve crimes as we have since our existence. We just will not be as effective. And while I'll tell you that there's no study done right now that'll tell you 100% that this will happen, the removal of this technology and other technologies that go a long way in helping us do our job will increase our crime rate in the city. I understand that there are legitimate concerns about any type of technology, any kind of surveillance. I get that. That's why we have strong policies in place and we hold people accountable when they violate those policies. The fact of the matter is if we removed every piece of technology, every equipment, every computer database that was ever violated by any cop in America, we would have no tools to help solve crime. Cops are human beings just like the rest of our communities. And unfortunately, sometimes they do things that go against the best wishes of our community and our policies as a police department. So as we move forward and talk about eliminating, talk about taking them and pausing them, I just hope that we consider what that effect will have on our community, not on our police department, on our community. And the fact of the matter is that is who we are all here to serve. At this point, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Assistant Chief Braun. He's got some details he wants to share with you guys. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief. Chief Braun.

Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Chair Hobbs, Council President Williams, members of council. Very grateful to be here again to speak on this topic. And our goal today is very simple. It's to explain how we use license plate readers, the value they provide to us and to our community, and the safeguards we have in place to deter and detect misuse of the system by our officers. We also understand and appreciate the concerns of those who oppose this technology, and those concerns deserve to be heard. But it's equally important that we discuss what this technology actually does, how we actually use it, and what it has meant to public safety in our city. License plate readers are not new. The Toledo Police Department started using license plate readers when I came on, 25, 26 years ago. We started using flock license plate readers in 2022. And since the implementation of the flock license plate readers, we've had more than 100 stolen vehicles recovered in Toledo using the system. And 48 missing persons cases have been cleared with the assistance of flock technology. The missing persons number is very important because oftentimes the value of this technology has absolutely nothing to do with tracking criminals and making arrests. On February 11th of this year, an 89-year-old female in our city was reported missing. As her family began looking into the situation, they discovered something that made the circumstances particularly concerning. The missing woman had recently withdrawn approximately $50,000 from her bank account and was believed to have the cash with her. Now, normally in a missing person's case, we have several tools available to us. We may be able to locate someone's cell phone. We may be able to use credit or debit card information. But in this case, neither option was available. But what we did have was her vehicle, a maroon 2016 Chevy. Using the flock database, we were able to determine that she left Toledo and traveled to Michigan. The missing female was eventually located at a motel in Michigan and reunited with her family. At the time that she was found, she was exhibiting signs of cognitive impairment, excuse me. In October of last year, a 78-year-old Toledo woman drove away from her home in a white Kia Sportage and her family was unable to locate her. The missing woman had cancer and also suffered from dementia. Using Flock, investigators were able to determine where her vehicle was traveling. Instead of simply sending officers throughout the area hoping somebody happened to see her vehicle, because of Flock, we had information telling us where to look. The female was ultimately located in Sylvania Township and safely reunited with her family. Now I'd like to talk a little bit about violent crime. From the implementation of Flock in 2022 through September 4th of this year, our city has unfortunately experienced 210 homicides. Flock was used in the investigation of 142 of those homicides. That's approximately 68% of every homicide we've investigated during that period. And according to our sergeant and our detective bureau, 17 of our solved homicide cases during that time likely would have gone unsolved without evidence developed through Flock. That's 17 homicide victims, 17 grieving families, 17 cases in which investigators likely would not have been able to provide those families with answers without this technology. I'd also like to put our homicide investigations in some historical context. The year before Toledo implemented FLOC, our detective bureau solved approximately 59% of our homicide cases that year. In 2024, that number was approximately 87%. Last year, it was approximately 81%. And so far this year, we have solved approximately 86% of homicide cases. And just for context, and I know the chief referenced this, the national average for homicide clearance rates is about 61%. i'm not suggesting the flock alone is responsible for those numbers our homicide cases are solved because of our detectives patrol officers are prosecutors other surveillance video cooperation from the community and many other investigative resources but flock has become one of those resources this technology helps us move quicker and be more precise this is another benefit that often gets overlooked FLOC helps us reduce unnecessary police contacts. Before technology like FLOC was available, investigators might know that a suspect was driving a particular make, model, or color of vehicle. And that information would be distributed to the officers on the street. Officers then might stop multiple similar vehicles attempting to locate the suspect. Every one of those stops could involve someone who had absolutely nothing to do with the crime being investigated. FLOC allows us to be much more precise. This allows officers to focus their attention and reduces unnecessary encounters with uninvolved members of the public. Just this month, a 67-year-old woman was found murdered in Wyandotte, Michigan. Her adult son was identified by police as the primary suspect and the victim's vehicle was missing. Investigators used flock camera information to track the vehicle from Michigan into Toledo. A Toledo police officer, knowing exactly what he was looking for, was able to locate the vehicle and the suspect in our city. A murder suspect from Michigan was on our streets in our city, and this technology helped us find him quickly. It's also important to understand what this system actually does. When the database is searched, we receive a photo of the vehicle, a photo of the license plate, and the time and location that the photo was taken. That's it. The system provides no registration information and no information on the occupants of the vehicle. And there's also an important distinction between an image being captured and an officer actually viewing or using that image. The overwhelming majority of images captured by the system are never viewed by a police officer. They remain in the system during the retention period and are ultimately deleted without ever becoming part of an investigation. We only search this information when there is a legitimate law enforcement reason to do so. That brings me to accountability, which is equally important. Everything an officer does within the flock system is tracked. That means there is a record that can be reviewed. The system doesn't just provide an investigative trail for criminal investigations. It provides an audit trail of our own employees' activity. If someone alleges that an officer improperly searched a vehicle, we don't simply have to take their word for it. We can look. We can determine who conducted the search, when it occurred, and investigate the reason for it. We as a police department understand why people have concerns about license plate reader technology. Law enforcement technology should have rules. It should have oversight. It should have safeguards. And officers who have access to sensitive investigative systems should absolutely be accountable for how they use them. We agree with those principles. That's why auditing, documenting searches, and the ability to investigate misuse are so important. the question shouldn't simply be could this technology potentially be misused the question should also be what legitimate public safety purposes does this technology serve and what safeguards do we have in place to prevent and detect misuse both parts of that conversation matter at the end of the day flock doesn't replace good police work it makes good police work more efficient and more precise And it allows us to achieve our ultimate goal, which is a safer city. Again, thank you, Chair Hobbs. Thank you, Council. Thank you, Council President Williams. And I also want to thank everyone who came out tonight to have this important discussion, whether they're in favor of FLOC or against FLOC. It's important that we have this discussion. And at this point, I would like to turn it over to Lieutenant Cook so she can walk us through the PowerPoint presentation.

Thank you, Chief Brown. So I wanted to just go through the capabilities of the system and the safeguards we have in place, because it seems like there's a lot of questions that people have regarding the system. So Chief Brown already mentioned that we have had ALPR technology, automated license plate reading technology, in the city since the early 2000s, and that our contract with FLOC started in 22. And the images, the data is retained for 30 days by the police department. It is owned by the police department, and then it is deleted without us being able to do anything about it. After 30 days, it is destroyed. The system logs all activities by anyone on our network, whether that's our officers accessing the network or any outside agencies that we share with accessing our network. Every search that they do on our network is logged. Searches require a specific offense type and a reason, as you can see in that image at the bottom of the screen. Both of those are required before a search is even performed. The system will not let you do it unless you have something entered in both of those spaces. And then when there's a hot list hit, so when there's an alert on a plate for whatever the reason is, it still requires independent officer verification prior to any enforcement action being taken. As Chief Braun mentioned, there's no additional information provided in the system about who's in the car or who's driving the car or who owns the car. None of that is given to us. So the officer then has to take that license plate information that they're given and independently verify it through our other systems that who the registered owner is or that that plate belongs to the vehicle or any other number of things. So there's a lot of different technology out there, and I wanted to make sure everybody was aware of what we actually have in the city. We have standard LPR devices from Flock that only capture images of passing vehicles. We have four flex LPR devices, and these are simply called flex devices because they're not permanently Unquote permanently, I guess anything can be taken down but they're there have the ability to be relocated Relatively easily so we can move them based on an ongoing Investigation or an area in the city that's experiencing higher crime than normal than what is normally going on in that area That is the four that was recently the contract was recently voted on a few months ago and then we have three live-view cameras and I think this is where some of the additional concerns may come up when people talk about cameras tracking people's movements. These three live view cameras can show us what's going on at an intersection. They also have ALPR capability, so if they are pointed in a direction like the image you see on the screen, they would capture license plate information of the cars passing by that. Uh, by that camera, these cameras do have, um, this guardian mode, which is not designed for our situation. And it is off on all three of our cameras. I wanted to make that clear for everybody. The guardian mode is what people have talked about. Can the camera can essentially detect a person and move to where that movement is occurring. but it detects any movement, so it detects a person or a vehicle. That, in our situation, wouldn't even apply. This is at an intersection, as you can see from the image, that has tons of traffic at it all day long. The camera would be bouncing back and forth everywhere, wouldn't do anything. So I wanted to clarify that a lot of misinformation is out there about these cameras following people. We only have three of the live view cameras in the city, anyway, but we do keep those modes off at all times. What ALPR technology does not do, it does not have facial recognition. It does not track people as they walk past. It does not provide any owner driver registration information whatsoever. And the images that are taken do not show any distinguishing characteristics of anything or anyone inside of that vehicle. So this is just a little snapshot from the last 30 days and Chief Brown alluded to this already, but of all the images that were captured on our network, a maximum of 0.4% of those license plates were looked at via a search. So I say maximum because there were probably multiple searches on the same license plate when a car was stolen at 2 o'clock in the morning, there were probably 10 officers searching that plate at that time. So it was multiple officers doing the same search. And then 0.2% of the captured images triggered a hot list hit. So that's a very small percentage, again, of images that we're viewing, that we're reviewing to see what enforcement action we can take. And then I put on here the top five search reasons. Again, this fluctuates by the day, but you can see the majority of what we are using this for. Stolen motor vehicles, hit and run accidents, wanted people, homicide or death investigations, and then some drug investigations. The audit assistance tool, this is the system that is in place in the flock system. that will alert anybody who has administrative rights, which is people in the criminal intelligence section, my office, the supervisors. And it will flag searches for the following reasons. If a single user is searching the same plate 30 days after that initial search of the plate. So to be clear, that's searching that plate in February and then searching it again in May and then searching it again in August. Users that are searching only shared networks, so they're not searching in Toledo's network for some reason, and they're only searching outside of Toledo. That's an odd thing, so the system will flag that. If somebody is consistently only searching in California, why are they only searching in California? That doesn't make sense, and that allows us to further investigate that. A user that's searching the same plate with multiple case numbers, obviously that's a problem. The user who is the only one in the organization searching a plate and does so more than 10 times. These are the types of things where it's going to trigger those potential STALKING CASES WHERE PEOPLE HAVE CONCERNS THAT SOMEBODY MIGHT BE SEARCHING AN ACCESS PLATE OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. THE SYSTEM WILL TRIGGER TO THAT BECAUSE IT'S GOING TO SAY THIS IS THE ONLY PERSON IN THE ENTIRE POLICE DEPARTMENT OUT OF 500, 600, HOWEVER MANY OFFICERS WE HAVE TODAY, THE ONLY PERSON WHO IS SEARCHING FOR THAT LICENSE PLATE. AND THEN IF A USER IS REPEATEDLY SEARCHING NARROW TIME WINDOWS. Flags come up and then my office, the supervisors in my office review them and determine if there is concern or not. And we have been able to clear all of these without any concern, knowing we've been able to look at them and say, yes, these are valid law enforcement reasons that these officers are searching these plates. THIS IS A SNAPSHOT, AGAIN, THIS CHANGES OFTEN AS ORGANIZATIONS CHANGE THEIR SHARING SETTINGS. WHEN I PULLED THIS DATA WE WERE SHARING WITH 2,235 ORGANIZATIONS, 437 OF THOSE ARE IN OHIO, AND 1,283 WERE SHARING THEIR DATA WITH US. 371 OF THOSE BEING FROM OHIO. We have federal sharing requests turned off, so that means that federal organizations cannot even request for us to share with them. There are only a handful of federal organizations at this time that even have contracts with FLOC, but they don't have the ability to request a sharing relationship with us. We have also turned off immigration and reproductive care searches. So that means anybody from any other jurisdiction who is attempting to do an immigration search, as you saw at the beginning, you have to select a reason. Everybody that uses Flock has to select a reason. So if they select one of those two reasons, those searches will not even hit our network. And then just going back to the amount of searches that are actually being done or the amount of our images that are being captured that are actually being looked at less than a half or not sorry not less but half of a percent of the out-of-state searches that were done on our network had a corresponding license plate read so that means that these outside agencies are searching they're searching the entire united states they're doing a look up on their plate to see where their plate has gone And very rarely is that plate here in Toledo. So they're not searching from other jurisdictions and repeatedly seeing these plates hitting in Toledo. We did make live a couple months ago now, I believe, the transparency page. So this is, again, this one is a snapshot that was taken a little while ago. So these numbers won't be exactly the same as if you were to click on the link and go look at it today. Uh, data retention stays the same. LPR cameras, um, is there, and you'll see that that number doesn't match up exactly with what I said earlier. And that's the distinction because those three live view cameras, um, don't weigh into this LPR because they're live view cameras. So, um. But it'll routinely show you the number of searches that have been conducted on our network and the top offenses. And there's some additional information on that page about our policies and procedures and those things. And that's available for anybody to take a look at.

Thank you. Concludes our prepared presentation and at this point we would like to open up the floor to counsel for any questions You may have that we can answer for you Thank you for your presentation Councilman Driscoll Thank You mr.

Chair I've got a couple of questions, and then I'll kind of have a statement at the end. Chief Turnley, I want to go back to something you said at the beginning. You said getting rid of these is going to increase our crime rate. Is that precisely what you meant, or did you mean that it would decrease our clearance rate? Because I think those are kind of two different things. And maybe ultimately if our clearance rate is decreased, crime does go up. But what did you mean precisely by that statement? Because I think what could be construed from what you said is that these are acting as a deterrent just by their presence.

100% they are. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. So the people that are committing crimes know that these LPR cameras are inside the city and they know that we're going to catch them. And so a lot of times they're doing things differently and or maybe not doing an impulse crime in an area where there are cameras. So yes, I do feel they are a deterrent. But also, back to my reference to the fact that we're solving more crimes with them and getting more of these violent criminals off the streets in a quicker manner, that reduces our crime. So if we're not able to do that as quickly and as efficiently as we are now, It is plausible to believe that our crime will then increase because those criminals will still be on the street doing more crimes. Once you commit a murder, at what point do you care about what other crimes you commit?

Yeah, certainly that's true. I mean, obviously we know there's, you know, a small percentage of Toledoans commit the vast majority of crime in Toledo. So obviously solving crimes is just as important as deterring them. But I just wanted to give you the opportunity to clarify there. I'd like to go into the audit trail a little bit here. So we're doing, is that about average how many searches we're doing a month? 2,000 or so? 2,300? Does that sound accurate?

I would have to go back and look at it. The way that the audit trail, or the way that the audit system pulls the data, I don't know a good way to say it. The searches are, that 2,000 number that was on there, that is, in independent not independent like individual separate searches right so like if i'm sitting at my desk and i'm i'm working on an investigation and i i type something one way and then i'm like oh i gotta type it a little bit different um so those that's kind of how it pulls that data for the searches if that makes sense if i went into the system and pulled every single search by our officers on our network, the number would be higher than that. Because if I refresh, because I want to see if the plate has hit, and I typed it in and I'm working on something and I hit refresh on my page, it then shows as a new search, even though it's simply just a refresh. And I can get that information as to whether it was a new search or a refresh, but I just wanna make it clear that if I was to pull an audit log for a 30-day period, it would be more than the number that you saw. so it's kind of really like someone use it's real that reflects how many times somebody is using the system rather than like the amount of times they're hitting enter is that right essentially yes i mean you wouldn't want to pare it down quite that much because i might use the system for 20 minutes and search five different vehicles for different things but yes okay

So let's say for some reason the system thinks there's suspicious searches going on. It flags them for you. You get that. Does anybody on council get that information? Do we see that?

No, right now that information, is in a database that we have, and there's protected CJIS information in that return, so it's not something that we can just share with people who don't have it.

Okay, so up the chain, who does it go to?

So it's my office that is reviewing, the supervisors are reviewing it, and they have the ability to see the case number or the report number or whatever things are tied to it. And then they can determine, a lot of them may be able to be dispelled immediately. It's a newer system in that it's, I think, overly cautious overly flagging okay giving us more information to look at to make sure it's not missing anything so um a lot of them can be cleared rather quickly and one of the supervisors in my office is the one that reviews them but we are also then taking those flags that maybe we can't clear immediately because we can say yes that was a stolen car on that night we know we're just going to wipe that one away and not wipe it away but mark it and we categorize everything we log it but then we will send information to the watch commander or the supervisor of that officer who was flagged and then they will talk to the officer gather more information and that's how we determine if there's any problem with that search

Okay. As of my last check, that's eight people in our department for which are sitting here and then several of the deputy chiefs and one other captain.

Okay. And if you're not comfortable sharing a number here, I'm just curious, so you get those reports monthly, about how many flagged instances do we get a month? Or if you don't want to give a number, I think we can maybe get a more precise one, that's fine.

Yeah, I don't have a good answer for you. Okay, that's fine. It has varied pretty greatly, actually, across the months since they implemented the tool.

Okay, and do you, so we know what's flagged, but do we also sort of independently review, I mean, I know there's a lot of them, but do we sort of randomly and independently review the rest of the searches just to make sure the system didn't miss any?

At this time, we aren't, Pulling anything additional because the tool was built to capture so to be over correct. Yes. Okay. And that's, I guess what I was trying to get the point across that it captures so much. And so many of them are easily resolved. That it's, it wouldn't be feasible or really. We don't believe we would find anything additional.

Okay. Does it flag suspicious searches from other communities?

When you say suspicious.

I'm sorry, not suspicious. Does it flag unusual searches from other communities?

No, it's only within our organization.

Okay. uh... so uh... i think um... i also be curious uh... system chief brought thank you for that list that i've asked for uh... from tpd and from on prosecutors office uh... both city and county for a list of audiences is where he uses i think that the help people know i've received a little bit from tpd but i would say it's kind of an extemporaneous list you have like even just a spreadsheet of every time every time this has been useful in an investigation And I think it'd be helpful to get that from the Lucas County prosecutor and our city prosecutor as well.

Yeah, Councilman, we would love more than anything to share all of the successes that we've had using this system. The list would be very, very long. I know that we did look, and we looked at reports that specifically listed flock as being used, and I don't remember what the number was. Do you remember off the top of your head?

Well, we reviewed about 1,200 reports.

1,200 reports listed. So the problem is that that doesn't capture the full picture either, because sometimes our officers aren't exactly listing. Because FLOC can play. a role this big in an investigation, and it can play just a small piece of the investigation. But I go back to the number that we got from our detective bureau where they said, you know, since 2022, I think it was 68, nearly 70% of those homicide investigations used flock in some form or fashion. It's hard to overstate how much we use it. And it's not just for homicides and missing people. We use it for theft, you name it. Retail theft, I know it gets used a lot for that. So it's really hard to overstate just how much we use it. But we would love to try to provide you with as much of that information as we possibly can. I know when Councilman Martinez and Council President Williams came over a couple of weeks ago, we tried really hard to articulate a lot of the successes, but anything we can do to get you some of that information, we'll certainly do. Okay.

We also have successes available on our transparency page. Those aren't Toledo Police specific, although we are included on there, but those are available if you were to go on our transparency page right now. Okay.

If I may for one quick second here. So the problem is, Councilman, we don't, We don't keep a log that we say, hey, every time you use this, please go into the spreadsheet and tell us you used it. Because that would actually then take a lot of work from their officers because they are using as much as they are. It would be nice to know, yes, every time we've used it and it's been successful, that'd be a great number to give you. And we've tried to capture some of those highlights. I would say this, for all of you council members, I encourage you to come on over to our real time crime center, take a tour, see how we're using it and talk to those analysts that are constantly using it and constantly looking at the reports and the data from the rest of our departments when they're doing all their analysis and how much that flock has helped us in that. So I encourage all of you to come over and take a look at it and see how the technology is actually used.

And I did when I first got on council. It is worthwhile. No doubt about it. I'm just trying to get a better understanding of this. Back to the searches. Why do we have to let other communities search our cameras? Are we required to?

No, we're not. So Chief Braun talked to you a little bit about that homicide that occurred up in Michigan and it was found in Toledo. The problem is going to be we have people that flee from Toledo and go up into Michigan and we catch them that way. So the reality is if we say, and we simply can, we're only searching Toledo and only people are allowed to search Toledo are Toledo officers. You could do that. That degrades the system. That then says all those other communities are going to be like, well, if they won't let us search theirs, then we're not going to have them search ours either. And then all of a sudden we aren't able to find anybody that leaves outside the state or outside the city of Toledo. And some of those high profile investigations will be lost and not be able to be used at that point.

Okay. So there are communities all across the country that are turning their flock cameras off. Is it too early yet or are we already seeing, to use your words, degrading of the capabilities of the system?

So, you know, we talk about LPR technology, right, and it's been around for over 20 years. One of the great things about this particular company and their technology is the shared network. That has been what has stepped their product so much higher than all the other LPR technologies in this country, because they all... works similar. That network of sharing of officers from jurisdiction to jurisdiction is a key component of this system to allow you to solve more crimes than just those that stay inside your community. So yes, every time there's a camera that goes down, that's a missed opportunity for a read, a missed opportunity that somebody abducted their child and has fled to a relative down in Texas or wherever else, and you're not able to find that person. In theory yes. Has it come to a point where it's making the system inoperable? No it's not.

I'd also like to add that if we don't share, we could still solve a lot of crime in Toledo and prevent crime in Toledo. But we're doing a disservice to victims across the nation who are crossing through Toledo's 75 and the Turnpike. Everybody sitting up there knows what a central location we are as far as national travel. And if those vehicles with victims inside or just the vehicles themselves are traveling through our city, we want to know about that and recover them.

Okay, I just got a couple more and I appreciate the difference here from the chair because I'm not a regular member of this committee Are we aware of any misuse by any Toledo police officers of the flock camera system?

At this time we are not aware of any misuses are there any pending cases of potential misuse not for the flock system? Okay

I would appreciate if we could put our heads together about how we could distribute more. I'm not afraid of more information. I'm looking across the way at Council Member Gaddis, she loves information. So I think if we could put together a sheet of everywhere we've used it, I think that the prosecutors, I think that would be of great help for us if we are going to try to make a case for this. I guess my feelings on the topic are thus. There's no doubt in my mind that this has been useful. No doubt. My question as we've gone through the summer and as we're entering the fall here is, is it too blunt of an instrument? Is it too imprecise of a tool? Look, you can weed your garden bed by setting it on fire. The question, but that's not a, and you're going to kill all the weeds. But is that too imprecise of an action? Just like curfews or things like that that we have to, I'm sure that curfews keep kids at home, but what do we lose when we do that? And that's my concern with this technology, particularly I think in light of some of the developments just in the past two weeks alone, what we're hearing from the artificial intelligence community. So we know of cases from both anthropic and open AI of agents that have essentially escaped containment and independently hacked exterior companies' databases and things like that. That's my concern. If we're collecting all this data and we don't really have the control of it, another company has, a third party has control of it, I'm not sure we can necessarily guarantee the safety of it in light of this. And Congress has refused to act on this, but it seems like hopefully they will in the future. And potentially, I think maybe the best system would be something akin to our LEADS system, which you all well know is regulated by the Attorney General and the State DOT, which puts in place a lot of safety and controls around that system that I think help keep our community safe. I want to be confident to the people who live in Toledo that are concerned about if they're if they are undocumented or if people come here to get an abortion, things like that. I want to know for a fact that those people's data is not accessible from a third party. And I'm not quite sure I know that. So I'm very supportive of us doing an audit. And I think as we do that process and as we and communities all across this country are thinking about how to regulate this at the same time, that coterminously is while Congress is thinking about how to regulate AI. I do feel we should pause our flock system at least during that time. Now, that's an administrative decision. And I understand, like I said, there's no doubt in my mind that this has been useful. But I think right now, given the moment we're in nationally, I'm concerned. I'm concerned about about how we control the system. And I look, if we were to if we were to get rid of this system, I'd be the first person to tell you we're not taking $400,000 from the cops. We're going to we're going to put it somewhere else in public safety. I mean, that's how that's how strong I feel about public safety and always have. So, you know, I want to make sure that our TPD has resources, has folks boots on the ground, has the tools they need. But we've got to make sure that we can guarantee a level of safety and thoughtfulness to the rest of our community. So I thank you for your work. I thank you for what you do to keep Toledo safe. I thank you for the work you've done in solving crimes. And I appreciate you being here today because I know this is a challenging conversation.

Councilwoman Gattis.

I just didn't have my light on second, that's why I was shooken. Okay, thank you, thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation and thank you for the transparency page. I am really grateful for your willingness and taking steps to be open. When I think about this, And I know that we've had lots of discussions. When I think about this, there was an article that came out in the Wired yesterday that said, I think about not the police department, but what it means to be mass surveilled. And the article says, well, much of the automatic license plate readers most sensitive storage remain encrypted and inaccessible the joint analysis of the recovered data showed that the software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles license plates and fight and bicycles you don't get that image they have that image they have that image of all of us. And that gives me pause, because what they share with you is not what they're collecting. And there's a dissonance in there that I think that that is part of where I share the concern of what it means to be mass surveilled. My constituents, they're very open about their thoughts on this. In fact, it's a lot of what I talk about. They've shared hundreds of emails with us. When I'm out in the community, we talk about it a lot. So on July 1st, after we passed the legislation for the one-year surveillance, I did a 10-point public records request. That was 78 days ago. I still haven't gotten any information. 78 days ago. Now, and I understand. I got a call and I was told, well, we have to redact sensitive information. So I get that. Maybe this is a lot. Um, but if you only hold the data for 30 days and I'm saying, I just want to see, I'd like to see all of it just to, I am a data nerd. Councilman Driscoll, uh, has clocked me as that, but like I could have seen June. I could have seen July. I could have seen August. I could have given information that my district is asking for to them, redacted. and I could have answered questions for them. But because I haven't received anything in 78 days, it's very difficult for me to do my job. I guess I just want to leave on this note, because I don't want to take up too much time. I want to hear from the citizens. But the Declaration of Independence said that we have rights for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that to secure those rights, governments are instituted among men, derived of their just powers from the consent of the governed. Well, the consent of my governed, the people that I govern for right now, have a lot of questions, and they want this paused, and they do not want to be mass surveilled. And I just want to make sure that's on the record, that my job is to represent the people, and the people are saying that this is amendment. uh fourth amendment right um it steps on their fourth amendment right and i understand how powerful of a tool it is but we also have to weigh what our rights are as a country so thank you chair i understand i'm not part of this committee thank you for the time and thank you for your presentation and the hard work you guys did

Thank you Chairman Hobbs. I just have a few comments. So I want to verify, you stated today that these flock cameras cannot identify, they're not identifying the drivers of a vehicle. they're only identifying the vehicle itself, the license plate, and you're taking that information so that if you match it up with a missing person or a murder suspect or a domestic violence suspect, you're able to at least have another tool to find that person and obviously constitutionally tell them their rights and also investigate the situation per the Constitution of the United States and the Supreme Court regulations that we have in place since the mid 60s. Am I correct on that?

That is an accurate recap, sir.

Okay, so what would happen if you identified a police officer or an employee of the Toledo Police Department that has misused the information? For example, they want to check on an ex-girlfriend, they want to check on an ex-wife, they want to check on a guy that's asking their daughter out for a date. What would happen to that person?

So and we have this we've had this happen with our leads database actually so it's very similar to that in that we launched an investigation that particular officer is relieved of duty during that investigation all their access to all of electronic databases are cut off. And then once we are able to confirm that they are doing something wrong with the technology, depending on what happened and what they were done, it could be anywhere from being disciplined and suspended to termination.

Okay. So there are penalties and it's obviously serious because if they're terminated, that's it. They're no longer with the department. Yes. I received a couple of communications that I just want to read into the record. Karen Mayfield of Washington Township emailed me and she said that we currently have four flock cameras in Washington Township as part of a 90-day trial before making a commitment to them. Our police chief explained that they are strategically placed where vehicles enter and exit the township. This is because the township was becoming known by drug dealers and other bad actors, and the township was an easy way to enter and exit Point Place in North Toledo without being detected. We don't want our township to be used for that, And along with our mutual aid with TPD, we want to make it more difficult for these people to do what they do. So that was from her. I thought that was interesting in terms of prevention. And then I also wanted to share for the record a communication that was published in the Toledo Blade from Judge Lindsey Navar, who's a common police court judge for almost a decade. And I just want to point out in her communication or in her editorial, I know that. I know that. Okay? Relax. So Judge Lizzy Navarro said the murder of Jasmine Queen, which happened earlier this year, is one such example. The investigation that led to the apprehension of the individuals responsible for her death relied heavily on information generated through flock cameras. We've had many cases, and I appreciate the judge's editorial on that, but we've had so many cases in the community that flat cameras have been used. You know, what's interesting to me is that we have cameras not just all over Toledo and area on the streets, which are public areas, by the way, but when I walk into a bank, there's a camera. When I go into a store, when I go into a restaurant, when I go into a bar, More than likely, there are cameras. Cameras are all over the place. And the fact of the matter is, if I grab my phone and I Google something, for example, I want to know what the tax rate is for Social Security recipients, I will bet you, because I've experienced this, almost immediately I am getting information from various companies, accounting firms and financial firms to help, basically for me to buy their services. So there really is no privacy anymore throughout America. But I guess what concerns me is that it would appear from your testimony today that these cameras are not used for immigration enforcement. They're not used to enforce reproductive laws from other states or even in Ohio. They're simply used to take a picture of a vehicle, take a picture of a license plate, and see if there's a match. And if someone is mistakenly charged with a crime as a result of partial use of the flock cameras, then they have a right to go to court and they would be found innocent because they can prove that they were not the person charged. Constitutionally, I'm talking now. So I understand the rights of privacy. I welcome that. I certainly value my privacy. But when I'm on a public street. I have to accept the fact that there are cameras all over the place. When I go into public places, there are cameras. And I just think that it's unfortunate, but we've also seen a tremendous amount of crimes solved. And we've seen bad actors apprehended as a result of that and brought to justice. And I think that's what we all want. Our responsibility in government, local government, number one responsibility is public safety. That's why local governments were formed. And we must maintain public safety, and we should do it constitutionally. We should do it honoring the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and we have. And the courts are there to protect everyone, including the victims of crime. you know i hear a lot about privacy concerns what about the victims of crime don't the victims have rights don't doesn't the mother that got beaten up by her husband have a right also to justice and doesn't the person that loses their kid because they're being kidnapped and maybe murdered don't they have rights also and don't people have rights that that are stealing and assaulting other people of course people have rights and victims are victim rights are very important just as rights for every american in this country that has to be preserved so i i appreciate what you're doing i appreciate the information and i will take you up on that i will come over to the safety building, and I would like to see the information that you have, because I think it's important. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Councilman and Councilwoman Aaron Kramer.

Thank you, Chair. Where do I even start? I've got a lot of notes, but I really want everyone to speak tonight, so I will be very brief. I want to harken back to something that Council Member Gaddis said, but also to something that Assistant Chief Brown said. You said that auditing is very important, and I completely agree. I asked our law director, Dale Emch, on August 12th, hey, how do we get an audit? What do we do? There was a lot of controversy around these cameras. What can we do about that? So he told me, reach out to the chief, okay? I then found out the next day that Councilmember Gaddis had already asked for that. Okay, great. I'm going to ask for that. checked in with Council Member Gattis several times since then. As she said, 78 days, we have not received anything. So now we are asking our auditor, and we'll have to pass a resolution so that our auditor can audit that information. I do feel we should be given that information regularly. We should have oversight if we are going to be passing this over and over again, giving the police department money for this system, we should have oversight. That should be part of what we have. We should get that information weekly, monthly. I've looked at the transparency page. It's not very transparent. I don't get a lot of information from looking at that. So that is my concern, is that we have asked and we have not received the information that we have asked for. I would also like a copy of the presentation. If someone can get that to me, that would be great. Also, this all kind of came from Councilman Martinez wanting to have some more flock cameras, a system that links in all the schools in his district. I want to ask our police representatives here, do you think that would deter school shootings if we had those cameras in the district where Councilman Martinez is requesting those cameras?

So to think, if you're asking So the project that Councilman Martinez is doing is multifaceted. The LPR technology, I can't even comment on whether that could deter a school shooting or not. I will tell you the program that he is trying to do would help during an active incident. It would also help us solve any incidents that happen in the school, around the school. So from that safety standpoint, it would definitely allow us to do our job better, allow us to intervene in an active shooting better but to try to tell you that it would prevent a school shooting i cannot say that thank you i appreciate that

I also just want to say that Councilman Sorrento read an email that he had received that was in support of the flock cameras. We have all received hundreds of emails that oppose those flock cameras. I'm not going to read any of those emails tonight, but I just want to make mention of that. And also, we have a full group of folks who I anticipate are going to have the same sentiment. So thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you, Councilwoman, Councilman Martinez.

Thank you, I will defer to President Williams and then I will last, if that's okay, Chair.

Council President Williams.

Thank you, Chair, and thank everyone for coming out. Thank you, officers, for being here today. I just want to say as the district that has the most license plate readers and cameras, I am in support of them. District 4 is the highest crime area in the city of Toledo. That crime has decreased significantly And crimes have been solved faster. The quality of life in our neighborhoods in District 4 has been better over the years that I've been on council. In conjunction with me a couple years ago purchasing two flat cameras, this discussion didn't come out. You know where those flat cameras were supposed to go? Greenbelt apartments where the crime rate is extreme. And if you don't know where Greenbelt is, come and take a walk with me across the street. I invite any of my colleagues to come over to Greenbelt where I've been fighting for the residents over there for years, since 2015 prior to being on council. Also too, the other location that I wanted to put it at was actually Bancroft and Fullerton. We actually had a prostitution building that was torn down recently, thank God, it was torn down. But there is a high, if you've never been down Bancroft and Ashland, you'll see a makeshift park where people are using drugs actively. on that corner, it has been highlighted on Reels. So those are not license plate readers. Those are actual cameras. And I'll tell a story that I told just the other day at our council member. Joseph Johnson was murdered on Woodward Avenue. He was somebody's son and grandson, regardless of what they were doing during that murder, he was murdered. Before the license plate reader was used to solve that crime, which is something that I learned from doing our visit, was there was a ring camera that caught the car that held the four individuals that shot and murdered Joseph Johnson. The ring camera on the neighbors. There was a convenience store slash gas station camera that was used to identify that car that was identified in the ring camera. Then there was ODOT cameras. Oh yeah, there are cameras on our highways. They caught the car that was actually identified on the convenience store camera and the ring camera. And then the license plate reader tagged the license plate of the car. And those individuals were just found guilty of Joseph Johnson's murder using cameras. A little baby was murdered. A baby was murdered a few years ago. Ring cameras, license plate cameras were used to solve those crimes. I see the benefit of them and I see the other end of concern as well. The benefit of finding Joseph Johnson was 16 years old. Now he'll be forever 16 that baby was what 8 months old was she 8 months. She was 8 months old she'll be forever 8 months, but the people that killed those 2 individuals in my district are gone away. And held accountable for those murders using those the technology that they did. I put forth the resolution for our auditor to do an audit But I will not advocate for a pause when I have a baby dying and a 6 year-old dying. I understand people are concerned about their Fourth Amendment right, I get that. But we have to make sure that we're being cognizant of what the benefit, the pros and the cons. We will do an audit. We are doing an audit. Once that audit comes back, if we find out some mess, we'll take action from there. But right now, I focus on the 16-year-old, the families living in the Greenbelt Apartments, and Joseph Johnson. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President Williams, Councilman Martinez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I want to apologize for my tardiness. I got caught up in a traffic accident in Detroit, so I was in traffic for the last hour, but I've been listening actively as I was watching this on my way home. Thank goodness for Bluetooth. And so as we're having this conversation, I've been very kind of wanting to make sure that we understand both sides of the conversation. You know, I've had, again, a lot of interaction with our residents. And, you know, one of the two big questions that keep coming up that I have not been able to really get a definitive answer And so I invited some guests. So I did invite Judge Navarre here to discuss from the judiciary side the impact of flock cameras in terms of how that happened. We've heard from the administrative side or the executive side, and clearly we're having the same discussions on the legislative side. So I wanted to make sure that we had a full perspective of the conversation on flock and technology and privacy rights. I also tried to invite a constitutional scholar from the University UT Law. Unfortunately, they were not able to provide anyone that was willing to be able to come and speak today. So that's unfortunate, because I really want to put some of the misinformation or information that we're not aware of to rest, and we can finally get some finality to that. I think a lot of times with social media, there are, you know, clickbait or, you know, misinformation to I gotcha type things. tags so they can get counts or whatever. And I think a lot of times, it just gets lost in the sauce. So I wanted to make sure we were providing facts. And I'm not disregarding anyone's beliefs, feelings, or anything like that. I think they're very real. Councilman Kramer's mom last night said it best. I think everyone is at a heightened awareness now because of the abuse that we're seeing at the federal level on technology and to our residents, right? So I get where everyone is coming from. But I wanted to make sure we're having a very open-minded, even-keeled conversation. So that's why I did invite the individuals today. So after I'm finished, Chair, with your permission, I'd like to invite Judge Navarro to speak today. Thank you. And then also, one of the questions that keeps coming up, especially in the Latino community, in terms of, yes, we have this council has been both proactive and reactive to ensure that there's policies in place, proactive, ensuring, seeing what everybody else in the country is doing and to make sure that we have policies in place to not do that, but also to to be reactive to our community. This council passed legislation to not share information with ICE and CBO and other national federal organizations. So my question, Chief, or whomever can answer it is, How, two questions really. Number one, is there a way for ICE to utilize TPD? I can only speak to what Toledo Police Department is. I can't speak to what the county does, Oregon, Rossford, anywhere else. Only what Toledo has to get information and what would that look like? So that's my first question. The second question is similar. Other federal agencies that do not have our sharing permissions, how would they access information? for whatever reason.

As far as the ICE question goes, no, there is no legal way for them to access our system. There is no sharing agreement. There is no possible avenue for them to get into our system.

Gotcha, and we have a good working relationship with FLOC and other immigrant communities to ensure that happens not just in the Latino community, but also. Can you address that slightly or big picture for those that aren't aware?

So can you repeat the question again, sir?

So we have a good working relationship with organizations like FLOC and other immigrant advocate groups. Could you kind of share the conversation?

Yes, no, it just gets confusing when I have so many FLOCs. We do. So we even have a liaison to the flock organization. We have participated in several different things with them, whether it be the code of conduct that we have signed with them back in, I believe it was 2017. And even having our officers and our chiefs attend their meetings and answer questions and talk about interactions with the police department and their community.

Thank you. And then so how would a federal agency outside of who we are allowed to share request information from us?

So we do have good working relationships like with the FBI, DEA, and those kinds of federal agencies. So depending on what they're looking for, as long as it doesn't violate any of our policies or anything else like that, and it's a legitimate law enforcement purpose, and usually specifically that impacts the city of Toledo, then we do share information with them.

Gotcha. Would they need a warrant?

No. I mean, it would depend on what they're looking for. So we have officers that are assigned to task forces with the FBI and DEA and the ATF. And so we do work in concert with our local, state, and federal partners on investigations that are important to the city of Toledo.

Gotcha, thank you. So, and the other question that's on that section, I guess the other one regards to IA, or artificial AI, artificial intelligence. And you may or may not know, in our system, do we use AI? And it's a loaded question, and I can do it by referral, because we just had a hearing this past week in terms of how the city of Toledo can use artificial intelligence, and there are some prohibitions, and there has to be a whole working scope. And I just want to make sure that if there is indeed... AI being used, that it's still in line with the administrative policies that have just been adopted by the mayor's office.

If you would, Councilman, I would like to take that by referral because the reality is we can talk about AI and what we believe is inside the system, not inside the system. But I think almost every part of technology now, every software, has some component of AI in it. And what that does or doesn't do, I don't want to misspeak on that.

Sure, understood. And I asked... uh chief bennett also to opine unfortunately she wasn't able to make it either so it's just i think it's just the day unfortunately so i will do that by referral and also include um chief uh chief bennett so she can also kind of opine from the data technology perspective um to make sure because if it's adopted every vendor including flock or whomever else we use, have to abide by these new guidelines. So I just want to make sure that at least we're aware of that. And then I'm not sure if you're able to, Captain Leonard, are you able to show the police transparency page online or not? If not, that's fine. Of course. We talk about it, but unless you've seen it. Sure.

Does this computer have access to the internet?

I have no idea. You would have to... We'll see. ask our wizard behind the wall.

Hey.

So in the meantime, because it may be helpful to kind of explain what we're looking at, because if you don't know, it looks like a bunch of stuff that may not be relevant, or just raw data that isn't very easily interpreted, unless you know how to interpret it.

Yes, we're happy to do that. Thank you. I am interested, Councilwoman Cramer, what information you was lacking in your search?

I'd have to sit and have some notes about that. But when I looked at it, I was like, I would like way more information as the person who is saying yes, have some money, have more of our taxpayer dollars to fund this. What information? I would have to sit and look at what information I would like.

So, go ahead.

I didn't hear your question. Did you want me to walk through this?

Yeah, if you could, so we know what we're looking at.

Okay. Yeah, so at the top, these are just stories that are pulled that are success stories from across the state of Ohio. all sorts of jurisdictions that are using the system. So it just links to those. That's what's at the top there. I had the screenshot of this in there, and again, it was a moment in time, so that might be slightly different there. Just shows for everybody that our data retention is 30 days, the number of LPRs that we have, so if that number were to change, that is automatically pulled from the system, so that would adjust in, I don't want to say 100% real time, but I don't know how often it updates, maybe every 24 hours. I can get that information, though, but near real time, that's updating. And then the searches, of course, we discussed that. Those are the user search sessions just for the last 30 day period, so that's gonna be changing daily as well. And as I mentioned before, the offense types, those are the top five offense types that are currently being searched on our devices. And then, um, we've had a lot of, uh, people concerned about who we're sharing with and, um, who is sharing with us. So here, this is a full list of all of the, and you can scroll. Ooh, maybe I can't. Get the mouse to go on it here. But you can scroll through that and that list is very long on both of those based on those numbers I gave you guys earlier for all of the organizations that we share with and who share with us. There's some policy information at the bottom, just some bullet points for how the system works, what we can use it for, what we can't use it for, what's against policy. These security icons, I guess, at the bottom or in the middle of the page now, those are security, I don't know what the term is, but that FLOC has received as an organization to say that they meet certain security requirements. And then there's just some myths from myth versus fact here that helps clarify some of the things that we've discussed in the past that are Often some of the bigger topics that are in the media that people have concerns about gotcha.

Did you take down the policies? Say that again

We did not take them down. They're available at a different section of the website.

Oh, a different section, gotcha. And if you could show those too.

Yes, sir. So we have another section on our website on toledopolice.com, the flock transparency portal or whatever you want to call it, our policies. the locations and our service agreement with flock because that is one of the most frequent frequently requested public records is our contract with them and then we would pull the manual up here which i'm happy to do but it's like 500 pages and we would just control uh search our license plate reader policy which i have here with me uh it's 401.33 if anybody wants to directly Pull it, it's available on our website.

Gotcha, so it'd probably be a good idea to have those identified. Happy to do that. Not all of them, but the key most requested. to make sure that you know we do indeed have these policies in place and then also for me personally around school security to make sure that's everyone can kind of see when it would be appropriate to use school cameras and I'll get into my that portion shortly after the agenda so thank you so much I appreciate you showing that to us I think it's one thing to talk about it but it's another to see it and then Everyone should know where to go to see it if they have any other questions, and I would encourage my colleagues to review it. And if there's more information that you're looking for, maybe you're not as familiar with it as I am, sometimes I feel like I got into the weeds way too much unexpectedly on this, to make sure that we publish it in a very easily searchable manner. I don't think we're hiding anything, but sometimes ease of use and access is also equally as important. That being said, Chair, I would like to ask Judge Navarro to come up with all due respect. Thank you.

At this time, I'm going to ask, I'm sorry. I'm going, thank you, Chief Trenley. Thank you, Deputy Chief Braun. Thank you, Lieutenant Cook and Lieutenant Linhart. Thank you so much. They're going to exit and as they're exiting, Judge, the honorable Judge Lindsay Navarro is going to come. Thank you Judge Navarre for being here today. You can turn that mic on and pull it right up to you. Councilman Martinez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Your Honor, thank you so much for coming and attending tonight on such short notice. I sincerely appreciate your willingness to do this. I wanted to make sure that as we're thinking about the flock cameras and just technology in general around crime fighting, that we had all perspectives, specifically around the government side. So we had the administration. legislative and now we're hoping to have the judiciary kind of opine on the uses of it and how it impacts the judicial side.

Okay, well good evening. Thank you for having me here. Chairman Hobbs, President Williams, all members of city council, all of whom are friendly faces to me. I would just like to start by saying I don't come here as a spokesperson for flock cameras. I also don't come here as someone who believes we should give law enforcement unlimited access to information about where people in our community go. I understand why people are uncomfortable with technology that records vehicles traveling through their community. I think that concern is legitimate. Councilman Driscoll, I think you raised some really important concerns, and I'm impressed with the research you've done and the comparison to Leeds, because I think that truly offers a good framework of how you could begin to look at setting up some safeguards.

Your Honor, could you pull that closer so we can hear you? Sure. Thank you.

Yeah, because I think she just complimented me, so I think we want the volume up high for that part.

What I do come to you today as is a legal professional who spent the last 20 years in our local criminal justice system, the last 10, as a trial court judge at our county common pleas court. I'm here tonight because I care deeply about the safety of this community, and I tell you unequivocally, that this community will be less safe without the use of flock camera technology. It would be less safe because fewer violent crimes would be solved, fewer missing persons would be located, fewer stolen cars would be recovered. That list could go on and on. I'm not going to step up onto a soapbox and debate the philosophy of civil liberties with you because that's not my role here today, but I'm more than happy to answer any questions you have. me about my experience, my perspective from the bench, and any insight you'd like into the specific cases that have been tried before me as a trial court judge where this technology proved pivotal.

Thank you, Judge Navarro. We appreciate you. Did any? Councilman Martinez.

Thank you, Madam President. So, Your Honor, could you, based on your experience, can you share an experience? having flock that was pivotal in the conviction of a case?

Sure, there are, I brought four examples today with me. Two of these cases were tried before me over the course of the last two years. One, Councilman Tarantu did quote to, I included that in my letter to the editor, that was victim Jasmine Queen who was murdered in the parking lot at Hill and Reynolds last November when Marvin Padaway and Marshawn Purley parked in a nearby apartment complex, hopped fences and ran through a neighborhood to get to the parking lot where they unloaded untold rounds of bullets into the crowd and Jasmine Queen did fall victim. those two offenders were not identified by anyone in the parking lot that night. They were not in the club where everyone was exiting. The young lady who drove them to the parking lot was someone Marshawn Purley had just met on Snapchat, so not a known associate. I tell you all that to say there were not many leads in this case, and Flock Technology played a pivotal role in identifying those suspects. And from my perspective from the bench, seeing the evidence that was presented, that crime would not have been solved without Flock Technology. Councilwoman Williams, President Williams, in your district, you talked about Judiah Carter, who murdered an eight-month-old in the backseat of her father's car during a road rage incident that really shocked the conscience of our collective community. That case was tried in my courtroom, and there were no witnesses to that shooting. There were no leads for days. And without flock technology, ring camera technology, that case would have never been solved. Two other crimes that I think we can all agree on. I know there's not much agreement here today, but that we can agree shocks the conscience of our community. Where defendants Charles Walker and Brent Kohlhofer, who were convicted of aggravated murder and kidnapping after abducting two juvenile boys from a party. assaulting and torturing them and then burning down a house where they had placed their bodies. Flock camera technology was used to find out who had picked the boys up that evening and deliver them to their murderers, frankly. A case pending with a different judge on my court right now is Darnell Jones, who's accused of murdering young Kamani Lateek. And he was only found in Columbus after having fled because of flat camera technology. There are many more examples, but those are for purposes of brevity, those are the ones I brought to you tonight.

Thank you for that, and I sincerely appreciate your candor on this. And then I guess the final question that kind of keeps coming up, if you could just address with the court's view the constitutionality of these cameras.

Sure. Without getting into too much specificity, for the last 20 years, I've become very well acquainted with the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure by the government. But in order for the Fourth Amendment to be triggered, there has to be a reasonable expectation of privacy. And the courts that have reviewed technology based on the Fourth Amendment and based on a constitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment have found that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a license plate on a public roadway. And I do think there is an important distinction to be made between mass surveillance of people and the use of a vehicle based investigative tool after a crime has occurred.

Thank you. So was it, because I just saw it in the news board, but was it Schmidt versus Norfolk that kind of put the finality to that question?

Well, I don't think that there's finality to this question. I certainly don't as of right now, but Ohio courts have addressed it from that reasonable expectation of privacy standpoint, saying that that does not exist. Great, thank you so much. Mm-hm.

All right. I think I'm saying correctly this time. Councilwoman Gaddis, the light is on down here.

Thank you. Thank you. I keep this brief. I really appreciate all the stories of the successes and how this has helped. But And I think it's important to acknowledge this, but let's talk about Brandon Upchurch, who was viciously attacked by a canine dog because of the inaccuracy of flock reading the license plate wrong. They pulled that gentleman over. And it is stated in that court case about how TPD talked about the inaccuracy of flock. Now, I'm not saying it's not getting better, but as we acknowledge all the successes, I think that it is only fair that we also acknowledge that $35,000 of your tax money went to that gentleman for getting bit because of the inaccuracy of these tools. So these tools, while I appreciate everybody's success, we should also think about all of the ways that it is also costing the city. So I just want the record to reflect this. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Is that it? Your Honor, is that it? I'm sorry. Chief, Councilman, is that everything?

If there are no other questions, if I could just end with a short statement. I don't think the citizens of Toledo should be asked to choose between privacy and public safety. And I don't think law enforcement should be given a blank check simply because technology can help solve crimes. I think you can do both. You can give investigators a tool that can help identify a vehicle involved in a homicide, locate a missing child, investigate a serious hit and run, and develop a lead in a violent crime. And at the same time, you can insist that the information is collected for a legitimate purpose, retained for a limited time, accessed only by authorized personnel, audited and subject to consequences when it's misused. I know Councilman Driscoll will appreciate the additional kudos, but as he discussed, there's a framework in place that's been used for decades for leads. LEADS is used by law enforcement to look up criminal histories and those who use LEADS have to be certified to use LEADS. They are only allowed to use LEADS for legitimate law enforcement purposes and it's a crime if they use it for anything else. There are safeguards that exist that can be looked to for something like this. I would encourage you to think about this issue not as public safety versus privacy, but as an opportunity to establish meaningful safeguards. This is not a zero sum game in my opinion. I think you can do both, thank you.

Thank you, Your Honor. One of the things I was gonna talk about tonight, but I want everybody, so I'm not going to, but one of the things I was gonna bring up, Your Honor, is leads and all of the protection that leads provides to that information. And one of the other things that leads provides is that if a officer is found doing wrong with that, not only could they be disciplined, but it could also be taken away from that department. And so I think Leeds offers us a strong format to use to regulate flock. So thank you. But I wanted everybody else to have time, so I'll talk some other time. Thank you. at this time we're going to open up um again uh thank you councilman uh martinez uh councilman driscoll councilwoman uh kramer uh council president thank you councilman sarantu and thank you councilwoman gaddis at this time whether you are for or against we want everybody to sign this list to be heard whether you are against or for we want you to be heard please allow everyone to speak for or against or against or for please let them speak without yelling out please let them speak without booing or any of those things everybody has a right to their opinion So please allow everyone, whether you agree or disagree, to state how they feel about this. We want to make sure we have the public input. The other thing is that I'm going to try my best to pronounce every name on here. I'm not trying to be funny. Sometimes it's not printed very well, and so I'm going to try my best to pronounce everybody's name the correct way. You will have three minutes. There's a clock there, and there are two clocks on the side. i have two sheets here were there any other sheets was that it was these two sheets all right first we're going to have mr richard arnold mr richard arnold come point of order i'm sorry i didn't see that i'm sorry i didn't see it councilman martinez no problem i just i was going by the agenda i didn't know if i would be able to address the second portion of the agenda item if not that's fine we can we can do it a different time I'm a let just give me a second or less no problem come come to the police.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. The comments that I'm about to make, I wanted to make earlier this year during the budget process. But if you will recall, two safety community meetings were canceled back then. One was on February the 19th, canceled on February the 3rd. The other was on March the 19th, canceled on March the 11th. So the public really did not have enough. an opportunity to comment on the budget. A brief history. We've been defunding the police for too long now. 2017, we got rid of the helicopter. 2018, we got rid of the motorcycle unit. 2016, we sent back a armored vehicle which we could have used. We sent it back to the government, and since that time, we've turned down two opportunities to obtain another one, a state-of-the-art that could have been used to transport both police and medical personnel. to and from a mass casualty scene and we're left with the bearcat which is 17 years old purchased in 2009 with homeland security funds and as far as as far as the current budget uh no new uniforms for the police only replaced damage the budget for narcan was cut um twenty thousand dollars out of office supplies was cut that's a lot of paper clips And no new money for shot spotters. So we've got to do a better job of obtaining public input, especially during our budget process. And as far as the current issue in front of city council, I've read the stories. Yes, there's abuses in other parts of the country. It is a national outcry, but I think you need to send the message. that when it comes to a national outcry, whether it's this one or the next one or the one after that, city council doesn't respond with rash decision-making. City council listens to the people, city council listens to its law enforcement officers, and you make the best decision that you can. And I do believe that an independent audit at this time is the right thing to do. Any termination or disruption, that would be a rash decision, and I don't think that would be in the best interest of the city's safety. So thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you, Mr. Arnold. How do you pronounce your last name, Ms. Janice?

Exactly how you said it. Thank you. Yeah. Good afternoon, City Council President Williams and City Council members. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak on this issue. I live in Point Place, if anybody wants to know. I'm going to be giving a few points against the flock cameras, and I'm going to keep this brief. I'm going to focus on rights, privacy, and constitutionality, which is very controversial, but it's my opinion. As far as the privacy issue, with all due respect, flock cameras are not like cell phones are going into stores. When it comes to privacy, we choose to have cell phones, we choose to go into stores. We do not choose to be monitored by the state without legal and constitutional justification. Flock cameras are as unconstitutional and illegal as red light and speed cameras, even more so because they track vehicles. It's beyond a single point in time. At the very least, judicial warrants are needed, again, at the very, very least for flock surveillance. We need judges involved in this. Our Constitution protects citizens from authoritarian surveillance and control. If you drive or own a car, you really are not giving up privacy rights in this country. Flock issue, it's not about, deep down, it's really not about solving crimes or finding missing people. I mean, these things are important, but this is, flock should not be involved with this. It's all about what kind of surveillance is constitutional. Flock cameras are against our Fourth Amendment rights. Thank you so much.

Thank you. John Dorn.

Hello, council members. I want to speak against the flock cameras, opposed to them, and I think that some of the talking points that you heard are disingenuous. Police departments in Barberton, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio, Lake County Sheriff's Department, Ohio, have misused the FLOC technology. As far as audits are concerned, FLOC has drop-down features on their interface that allows police officers, anyone with access to the FLOC, to just put any type of reason in to justify the search. They could put LOL, LMAO, They can just hit keystrokes and stuff and nonsensical things about that. Concerning the comments about constitutionality and so forth, there are federal courts and jurisdictions that are taking a very serious look at this about the warrantless search aspects attributed to flock. While the Toledo Police Department may claim that they don't use it for immigration, it's connected to, according to FLOC's own data, it's connected to Leeds, it's connected to CAD. They have GTAC system, Geotab, NCIC that are all databases that extrapolate this information. They do not just take license plates, numerals and stuff like that. What they do is they take an image of the vehicle and basically it's facial recognition for the vehicles. These have been used across the nation for unlawful, illegal place reasons. The district tool, as far as one council member's district, First of all, this is for additional license plate readers, flat cameras. Toledo already has flat cameras, okay? I don't know if it helped catch the joyriding Lucas County Sheriff's Department vehicle, but I don't know that the talking points that were given were talking about vehicles in other jurisdictions that were used. Other jurisdictions have used The database for illegal purposes to track residency requirements for schools, and this is interesting as far as school administrators. You don't know who has access to that information technology in school who can be looking up your children's vehicle. Your vehicle's license plate might be registered to your license plate or whatever.

Paul Villafranco.

are you doing thank you so much for having this hearing and thank you for allowing us to speak my name is paul via franco as uh councilman hobbs said i'm speaking on behalf of abriendo puertas para soluciones apps or privacy first as well um i would like to say that accepting this surveillance technology proposed in today's ordinance sets a dangerous precedent It suggests that every Toledoan is guilty until proven innocent, shifting us away from the long-held American principle that we are innocent until proven guilty. Today I'm asking you all to take a stand against the cynical notion that surrendering our privacy and in effect criminalizing every Toledoan will bring us security. Besides the lack of transparency in the use of the survey lens technology, the multiple red and blue leaning municipalities that have already found this massive flaws and rejected it, the abundance of departmental, or the absence of departmental or specialized committee checks and balances for this technology, and the lack of clear-cut AI policy that could provide guardrails for this technology, let us consider the fiscal element. Who does this government funding enrich? Toledoans or an entity with no stake in our community? I stand here today as someone who serves the community daily, attending mental health needs, concerns of Spanish-speaking community members, housing and development, and other social services. As such, I would like to suggest alternatives that can create a safe environment For those in our community without giving taxpayer dollars to a corporation with no communal stake in Toledo. Funding after school programs is an investment in Toledo's security. Funding job training is an investment in Toledo's security. Redesigning our city to do away with the food apartheid is investing in Toledo's security. Ensuring safe and drinkable water is an investment in Toledo's security. Lifting all economic boats is an investment in Toledo security. Partnering with health agencies to secure or to ensure universal access to physical and mental health services in our city is a vote for security. Training our police to engage in community policing is an investment in Toledo security. Investing in surveillance technology that enriches the cynical corporation is not security. As a transplant from Texas, I know the cameras that filmed the mass shooting in Uvalde did nothing to save those children's lives. What could have saved them was a community that supported every citizen with every social service safety net possible. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. We appreciate the time that you've given us to speak here. However, it is a shame to keep talking about this very unpopular topic regarding the surveillance cameras. By voting to extend a one-year extension to allow the use of these cameras, you're showing us that you're siding with the agencies that use the cameras, not with the community that have concerns. Like doctors and pilots, law enforcement is one of those professions that has no room for mistakes. These spy cameras, such a powerful tool, No one should have access to this type of tool. There's no room for mistakes. We've seen many mistakes in the country. We can't have any of these mistakes here in Toledo. The technology tracks every movement, learns your routine, records your audio conversations, zooms into your phone. Outside agencies also have access to this data, not just the Toledo law enforcement. Toledo has no control over this. Unless you have an extensive experience with information technologies, years of experience, you do not understand this technology. This means it is also responsible to push this technology on Toledo. Remember who you represent. Thank you.

Nalix, Arturo, Arturo, Nalix? You're not here. Susan Keene, Keene, Keene? Yes, ma'am. Come on, Ms. Susan. Yes, ma'am.

Good evening, can you hear me? Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Susan Keen. I'm speaking on behalf of Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition in partnership with Apps and Privacy First. We strongly oppose Council Member Martinez's proposed ordinance for the expansion of Fox surveillance license plate readers and pan-tilt cameras in District 2's intersections and on school campuses. On the ground that this and all mass surveillance technologies are linked to and the mass surveillance dragnet of residents and U.S. citizens created by the Trump administration and implemented across this country, violating privacy rights, Fourth Amendment protections under the U.S. Constitution that prohibits unreasonable search and seizures without judicial warrants and probable cause, and opens up unauthorized federal access, including by ICE, to target immigrants. If this ill-conceived ordinance proposal at issue today is allowed to move forward in this committee, it will prove to be an irreputable betrayal of Toledo's immigrant communities. And a severe breach of Toledo ordinance 0-095-26 designed to protect local immigrant communities by establishing cleared legal boundaries against federal civil immigration enforcement. We have obtained credible and verifiable information that TPD shares its flock camera data with 269 jurisdictions across the country. involving 27 states that have 287 gig agreements with ICE, effectively creating a functional side door, back door, for federal immigration enforcement to track and locate members of our Toledo immigrant community. Scaling up Trump's national deportation infrastructure for an immigrant residing in Toledo, excuse me, Driving across Ohio or state lines, this means routine driving, even in a city with welcoming local policies, carries a continuous risk of automated detection by an interconnected statewide and national network of ICE-deputized local police. In this way, TPD's data sharing practices are in direct violation of Toledo Ordinance O-0945-26, designed to protect our local immigrant communities from ICE. Mass surveillance and predatory predictive policing.

Thank you, Ms. King. Thank you, ma'am. Baltimore Velazquez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, City Council folks.

I represent the other flock.

I just want to reiterate some of the comments made by my colleagues in the room today. But I want you to think about this city outlawing these cameras outright. Because, number one, the benefits don't outweigh the risks. I appreciate the local law enforcement since 2017, since we signed the code of conduct, not just with FLOC, but a combination of organizations including the NAACP, the Coalition of Community Toledo Community Coalition, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Latin's United Flock, and the Homey's Union. that we did everything we can to increase the report with our local law enforcement in order to solve crime because we want crimes uh... reported against ourselves and we had flat we i counted last week we have a hundred and eighty nine uh... families that uh... uh... associate members they got mixed immigration status in the city, and they are worried. As a matter of fact, I've got a bone to pick with you all about a recent case in South Toledo. We'll go over it sometime. Because we want to have a good rapport with law enforcement. Now, I appreciate you wanting to have any tool you need to solve crimes, but the benefits of these flaw cameras do not outweigh the risks. We have heard reports here from access to this data from national law enforcement agencies that are running roughshod over our Constitution, and obviously we don't want them targeting our people any more than we already are. You've heard the testimony here today, and this is only going to increase that. So you're playing into a national narrative here of this corrupt administration that we have in Washington You've got the biggest spy agencies in the world in Homeland Security and the FBI, the CIA and everything. You don't think they can get into the information of these flock cameras? Of course they can. You have to be sleeping if you don't believe that at all, that you can protect who has access to this information. Now, I'm all for helping the local police department solve crimes. That's why we work hard in that code of conduct to teach every child that we have in our homies union. We use it as part of our curriculum to how to respect the police, how to talk to them, how to conduct yourself with them. But we want that in return. Only when we have that kind of collaboration between police and community can we succeed in achieving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of the people of our city.

Sean Nestor.

My name is Sean Nestor. I'm here to speak against the flat cameras, against both proposals. I come here offended. I'm deeply offended at the way this council has handled this issue. You know that there are dozens of people waiting to speak today who have waited two hours through a filibuster that is essentially a public relations effort for the city to talk about this issue. You would not go out to the community and have weddings when you are to talk about this. If you are confident about the safety matters, you will go to the communities and you will do it. I'm offended at the way there is constant misrepresentation of the concerns, the hand-waving that goes on. Yes, I know there's privacy concerns, but here's what the privacy concerns are that you have not addressed. There is a federal government that is deciding what crime is. And that crime is saying that if you overstay a visa, if you look like an immigrant, we will hunt you down. We will break open your door without a warrant. We will throw you in the streets. We will throw you in incarceration without representation. We will move you across this country. We will torture you. And in some cases, we will murder you in the streets. That is happening. That is reality. That is not misinformation. To keep saying that that is misinformation is deeply offensive to us, to our intellect, to the reality of what we see. There is a compartmentalization that keeps happening. I keep seeing here that ALPRs, yes, Flock is primarily known for their license plate readers, but the reality is we also have the PTZ, which is not just license plate readers. I'm offended that earlier today when these law enforcement officials talked about this, they downplayed the reality that part of Martinez's proposal is the introduction of more PTZ cameras, which are not just monitoring vehicles. They are monitoring people. And when we see this deliberate misrepresentation, it is offensive. It is an insult to us. I have been in rooms with all of you where you have gone to the community and you have said the words, your voice matters. We want you to come to council. We want you to speak up. Well, here we are. You have dozens of people here wanting to speak to you. You have received hundreds of emails. You have seen thousands of social media comments. And what are you doing? You are saying, we don't care. We're doing the opposite. How is that telling people that their voice matters? You are telling them the opposite. When we constantly talk, as we do in this community, about cynicism and voter engagement, this is why. Because when people step up and they try to communicate, you shut them down. You misrepresent their concerns and you ignore them. You handpick the choices, the words that you want them to hear. So I'm going to close on this. All of you need to do deep, deep soul searching. Do you want to be... Do you want to be public servants worthy of the title of elected representative? Or do you want to be craven opportunists? Memberships in the misleadership class that constantly works to build their own career by selling out their constituents and ignoring their concerns. Thank you.

Alison Pratchant.

A minute to adjust.

My name is Alison Pritchard. I am here as part of the apps group. I am also a certified internal auditor and a member of the city's advisory audit committee. I'm happy to hear that council has asked that the city auditor be tasked with an audit of these activities and I'm happy to support in whatever capacity I can. I echo the commentary of my neighbors and want to add some additional context related to audits of flock, ALPR or PTZ cameras. It is critical to have a clear understanding of how this technology works and is used in addition to strong defined governance covering acceptable use data storage and sharing, access requirements and limitations, complaint and misuse investigations, and audit processes. This is not a one and done activity. Strong governance requires regular, ongoing, and frequent controls and independent audits. This is particularly critical for any schools that may be using this technology given the risk to minors. We cannot simply rely on vendor developed filters or audit logs, nor on audits conducted by the users themselves. As any auditor will tell you, independent assurance over the completeness and accuracy of data is critical. As TPD has indicated earlier today, they are not reviewing access above vendor configured audit flags. Given the high stakes associated with not only misuse but system error as referenced by Councilperson Gaddis earlier, implementing these items while the technology is in use will continue to open the city and its constituents to significant physical and financial risk. We just heard how an investment of $40,000 has proven effective at lowering recidivism. We heard earlier from Paul talking about how we can invest that type of money into other programs that will prevent crime, that will raise our citizens' standard of living. We could have been doing that with this money all along. I had a few other things to say, but I think that covers it. Continuing to subject our neighbors to these risks when we know there are significant issues is shirking your responsibility that has been entrusted to you by virtue of your position on this council, which I think Sean just pretty clearly iterated as well. Thank you.

Belinda Covanuvius, I think I said it right.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am here today as Hub Director of El Centro Hub, a member of APPS, and the proud daughter of immigrant parents. On a daily basis, I work to advocate for and serve our most vulnerable families, our immigrant families. I'm here today to talk to you about a promise that you unanimously made to us in March. This council passed ordinance And I want to read to you one line of this ordinance. No department, employee, public official, or public servant of the city of Toledo shall use city monies, equipment, or personnel for the sole purpose of detecting or apprehending any person based on the person's suspected immigrant status. To me and to the community that I serve, these are not words, these are a promise. and you unanimously promised to protect the constituents that you are charged with serving, the constituents that have elected you. City money, city equipment. These mass surveillance flat cameras are city equipment. We are aware that the data sharing agreement sends Toledo's flat camera data to over 2,000 organizations. Of these organizations that TPD shares with, 269 jurisdictions across 27 states have 287G agreements with ICE. In your ordinance, you define what a 287G agreement is. It turns local officers into immigration officers. Across the nation, it has been proven that city after city, the data these cameras collect cannot be protected. Dayton, Columbus, Hamilton County, Evanston, Oak Park, there's so many. Every one of them had policies in place meant to protect the data. But what we are learning is there is no guarantee that the data is protected. Once this information is in the FLAC system, it cannot be controlled. The promises that you have made to us cannot be kept. You cannot put limits on data that you cannot hold. An audit only tells us what has already happened. Today, you have the opportunity to show that we can trust our city council to honor what you say, to honor what you promise. I urge you to stop the District 2 expansion, pause the use of flat cameras, and cancel all of Toledo's contracts with the mass surveillance technology flat.

Jessica Molina.

Jessica Molina. I appreciate the time to talk today, although like Sean said, it is actually really offensive to say we didn't have to have this public hearing. It just doesn't sit well with constituents. President Williams, I heard you say that you wish the hot topic was the diversion program. You don't understand our plight. Our fathers with legitimate visas are being arrested, detained, deported by the local law enforcement in this city. They don't get the opportunity to go through the diversion program. So I wish that was our hot topic too, but it's not. In March, we were grateful that the ordinance passed. In May, we came back with concerns. We had, in my opinion, very reasonable measured asks. We said, please pause. the flock surveillance, please conduct an audit. Just reassure us that you're not violating the ordinance. We ask for public oversight. It all feels very reasonable and measured. None of that has happened yet. And since then, we have learned, as you've already heard, that our data, TPD's data, is shared with jurisdictions that have 287 agreements. Today, we also heard Lieutenant Cook respond. The question was, can you tell the misuse from other jurisdictions? The response was no. You can only assess that FLAC program, the auditing that they're using is FLAC generated. It's not an independent system, and it's only internal for TPD. So if one of those 287G agreement jurisdictions wants to misuse our data and access it, they can. And yet you're still using the system. You're still committed to this. Regarding the District 2 proposal, we had the opportunity to meet with many of the people who are up here in a very similar format, nearly a two-hour meeting that felt like it was intended to just delay and just deplete us. We did not get depleted. Regarding the district to proposal we reached out to every single organization and school that was listed as a partner. They are not They are not publicly committed to being partners. None of them You cannot go into this proposal. You cannot fund this proposal when the schools themselves do not publicly want to be named partners We were initially asking you to pause and We have since changed our minds because there is no shame in changing your minds. There's no shame in it. In fact, it's reasonable.

Thank you. Anita Rios.

Hi. I'll tell you just straight, I'm a lifelong Toledoan. I was born and raised in this city. I live in your district, Bernice. I live on Robinwood. And I live a block down from where that shooting took place this past summer. And I'll tell you what, I know there's flock cameras up there. I'm not safer in my house that I have lived in for 30 years. I'm not safer now because of those cameras. Maybe if somebody kills me or shoots me, they'll be able to catch the person but I'll still be dead. And, you know, I'd share that to say this is not a solution. This is an illusion of a solution. This is not what's going to make our communities safer. This is just a... It's going to make us all less safe because, you know, one really, really important thing about all of us standing here and the police and all of us is that we live in the United States of America. That's supposed to mean something. They have liberty and freedom. It's supposed to mean that Councilman John Hobbs does not see it as an option to listen to his constituents to hold this meeting. It really isn't an option. You really didn't have an option but to do this. And maybe you think you didn't have to do this, but you did. And the thing is, It's only meaningful if we live that freedom. It's only meaningful if we demand that liberty. And it's only meaningful that you sit in those positions if you listen to us as your constituents and you do the right thing.

Thank you. It is the age of AI where the billionaires who invented it are not telling us it could end the world and very soon. Let that sink in. Concerning surveillance and our privacy rights, it's not cliche to cite Orwell's prescient 1984. For many of us, it was required reading for English lit class where we might have found it quaint. It is no longer quaint. Here's five quotes. Whichever way you turned, the telescreen faced you. The telescreen could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. In the far distance, a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a blue bottle fly, and danced away, again, with a carving flight. It was the police patrol snooping into people's windows. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. Big Brother is watching you. For young people and those who came of age in the last two decades, they have no experience of a time when surveillance was not ever present. For some, it began in the crib with cameras monitoring the rise and fall of an infant's sleeping chest. It tracks their playgrounds, classrooms, porches, shopping, and their constant location as they drive. It tracks them at stadiums and dance halls and malls and everywhere. Surveillance tracks their private conversations with Alexa gadgets, spies on every click on the three to six devices they use daily, records them with sinister predators wearing meta glasses, and watches them with secret cameras in hotel rooms and Airbnbs. Every one of these surveillances will likely be justified by someone, albeit there are some which still might be thought creepy until they were just another surveillance experience. Surveillance has not made us any safer. Multiple school violence incidents occur daily. Theft from retail businesses is rampant. Porch pirates swipe those Amazon packages. People are still shot in the street or on presidential stages in Butler, Pennsylvania, or that's what we're told anyway, and my nephew is a cop in Butler, Pennsylvania. Liberty is not lost in one giant chunk, a sweeping edict from an autocratic dictator. No, lost liberty has been death by a thousand cuts. In the age of AI, where only people of my generation and older remember the non-surveillance of our lives, flock cameras with the many abuse reports by authorities with access aren't just a cut. They are a gaping gash that the bots of coming times will be more than happy to exploit thanks to decisions like I hear you trying to make. Big Brother has been and is and will watch us. Stop participating.

Austin Gray, Austin Gray.

Hello. I'll be speaking here against the flat cameras. Full transparency, I currently live in the city of Oregon, although I have lived and worked here throughout my life. I graduated from the University of Toledo with a degree in computer science and engineering. I'm pretty qualified to speak on this. I've been conducting my own audit of Oregon, so I'd like to read over some of those things to maybe give you guys some insight some perspective into what these numbers look like. I got the records from Oregon for about over the period of a year. There was 8,515,574 searches performed by 5,036 different organizations. I know that the chief here said that you guys only share with about 2,036. I took the time to list out the top five federal agencies that were looking at our cameras, by the way, of which there are only 11 in Oregon, 10% of what they have in Toledo. The U.S. Postal Service is at number one at 39,000. The FBI is at number two at 36,000. And ICE is at third with 3,700. We have the ATF of Tennessee at 2,000 and the ATF of Kentucky at 359. The city of Toledo, they performed 38,599 searches that involved the cameras of Oregon. These numbers are pretty staggering. I really didn't expect this. And I just wanted to come up here and say that today I submitted my own FOIA request to the city of Toledo. Oregon got back to me in five days. Pretty much a lot better than 78 days. And when I get this back, I would be more than happy to sit down with any one of you at any time, anywhere, for any amount of time and discuss this and go over this data in front of you directly so you can see these things with your own eyes. and have someone who is there who can explain. This is what this means. This is the breadth of the data. Anywhere, anytime, I will happily meet with any of you, even though you guys don't represent me because I live in Oregon. I will happily do this for any of you. Thank you for letting me speak here today.

Thank you. I think it's David Geeler. I'm sorry if I'm not saying the last name right. What is it? How do you say it?

Gettert.

Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely.

Thank you. My name is David Gettert, and I am a big, scary drag queen. I am nowhere near as scary as the disgusting, unconstitutional mass AI surveillance of our citizens that we have right now. We sat through an entire two-hour presentation. Let me first point out that it was basically flock PR. Flock lies. Flock lies and obfuscates. They do it to police departments. They do it to cities. They do it to citizens. I just saw a presentation in which our police force, I won't say lied, but definitely obfuscated what Flock does, what its capabilities are, and what it's doing. full rewriting of their own words and testimony will be damning to the flak system in Toledo. I don't have to say anything, but I'm going to. FLOC says, and their spokespeople say, that FLOC is only for license plate reading, that it does not collect any of this data. That's a lie. FLOC also has multi-geo search capability, convoy analysis, Nova and Raven. These are all extant systems that FLOC already uses to track people, to track individuals, and to track their association. Let me be very clear. These FLOC systems can and do, by FLOC's own PR admittal, track by bumper sticker. Any system that can track or search by bumper sticker is a system that can track or search by belief. That is what is going on in Toledo, Ohio right now. That is unconstitutional and un-American. And the Supreme Court upheld that right in 1928, 1958, and 2021. In 19... Justice Brandeis said that the right to be left alone was the chief and most fundamental of American rights. He was speaking directly to this freedom of association. In 1958, in the NAACP versus Alabama, the NAACP was trying to search and track by association. I'm sorry, Alabama was trying to track NAACP members through association. That was deemed unconstitutional, and that is what is happening right now, every day, on the streets of Toledo.

The basic argument that I heard presented was trust us.

And let me say, I do trust you. I do trust law enforcement to solve crimes the old-fashioned way. If you could do it then, you could do it now, and maybe in a way that does not dramatically, dramatically impugn on our rights. This was not voted on, and you do not have the consent of the governed. And having the consent of the governed is pretty important. I am here with privacy first, but my words are my own. And I think that you need to pay attention to the people and take these cameras down. If not, we'll do it by a citizen-led ballot initiative. Or, I would suspect, freedom-loving Constitution embracing gusts of wind. Thank you. Have a great day.

lisa milan milan if i didn't say it did i say that correctly lisa milan or nolan okay lisa nolan maurice norris um maurice morris maurice morris

Good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak before you today. First off, I want to address the honorable Navarre that was here earlier and speaking of the constitutionality of flock. But what she failed to mention, the United States Supreme Court has recognized the modern surveillance technology can create significant privacy concerns in Carpenter versus the United States. The court recognized that the government access to detail historical location information can implicate a person's reasonable expectation of privacy such as and reveal extensive record of an individual's movement. City Council should take seriously the constitutionality and the privacy implication of creating database capable of documenting people's movement. Now I also heard from the police department. Search and delete. Search and delete. You need a search warrant If you're going to find out anything about me, you can get around it. Delete. If you delete anything in a database, we can find it. I got a computer information and forensic background, and this man sitting in the audience could tell you. If you delete something, you could bring it back. I have broken my computer system on purpose. And I was able to bring back that information using a different environment. So it's gone, but it's still there. So I oppose the continued expansion of the use of the flock cameras in Toledo because of serious concerns regarding privacy, misuse, access, and accountability. And we all know law enforcement, given any extra tools or expanded authority, will abuse it. They will find their way around it. I understand the importance of giving law enforcement tools to investigate. However, expanding surveillance authority without strong safeguard creates a potential abuse. Most importantly, the community deserves transparency in who exactly has access to flock. Public safety is important, but so are our constitutional rights. We should not have to surrender one in the name of another.

Gavin Moss. Gavin Moss.

I'm Gavin from Scott Park, and I am here to voice my opposition to flock. First, I want to go to a couple of the points that the pro-flock arguments, uh, arguers made. Uh, there was a lot of really punchy anecdotes, a lot of, uh, A lot of really careful wording and a lot of misguided quotes. First of all, there is not one single iota of public data of any kind of survey, any kind of statistic at all that supported any of the claims that they made. There is no discernible evidence for any kind of reduction in crime caused by flood cameras in any area. But there are a couple of real statistics you could look up, such as about 1 third of the flock cameras in LA have been false positives, such as over 70% of flock Targeting has been false positives in another town in California that forced them to drop The force them to drop flock in the current agreement that they had with them. These are some real things Maybe there maybe somehow Toledo has the holy grail of data that can just prove everything wrong that we already know But in order for that happen that there has to be another in the first place as to stop stalling it So yeah, I can't wait to see the audits and I can't wait to see just where the statistics lead

Louis Vailhorst or Vailhost?

Well, I just want to say it doesn't seem like there's a clear vision for what the city council has in terms of what they want FLOC to be. A lot of the presentation was about purely vehicle surveillance, but near the end we heard a lot about how we want it in schools, we want it to help break up drug busts, especially inside of buildings. This is clearly a very different thing from pure license plate reading. If we want a clear idea on what we want Flock to be in the first place, then maybe we can have a discussion on what to do moving forward. First of all, let's make a decision. Do we want Flock purely as a license plate reader or do we want Flock as a way to help in surveillance situations? It seems like there's a very clear bait and switch here of just ignoring the thing people actually have an issue with. At the end of the day, Flock is a technology company like many technology companies. They're operating at a loss. They don't actually care too much about the grants given to them to set up in these cities. What they really want is the ability to have it all set up so that they can create a net loss or sunk cost fallacy. Once it's all set up, then they can more or less do whatever they want to do. They'll even set it up for free in some cities. which they have done before. What they really want is people's information. Pretty much any technology company would pay hand over fist for knowledge on when you actually leave your work, what bars you go to, what grocery stores you go to, when you go to them, and what reason would Flock not have to sell that data like almost any other technology company has done before, Facebook has done before, Twitter has done before. Every single technology company seems like they know information is the actually valuable thing, not just raw dollars. I don't believe Flock as a company is morally good or morally bad. They just want money and that's how they're going to make their money. Thank you.

I think it's Joe Rosales or None. Sorry if I'm sucking. It's hard for me to read the last name. I apologize.

It's kind of a complicated last name. I'm Joe. I'm Gavin's remit. Personally, I would rather this whole flock business be gone. I don't want every place I drive being tracked by any department across the country. My heart stands with the rest of those who spoke, but my mind knows that these cameras might stay up. um so if the city council insists on having flock cameras there should be strong oversight in their use because flock is just another part of the surveillance state we have heard across examples especially that the council president brought up that flock are part of surveillance systems that are used by law enforcement Ring cameras, CCTV, car tracking, we are tracked every minute of every day online, with little oversight as well. The government has no oversight on these aspects of surveillance outside of their ability to oversee the police and other law enforcement agencies, and this technology that we're going to be paying for with taxpayer dollars should be overseen even more so. Right now, I assume every time that police use a Ring doorbell or CCTV camera, they need permission by the people who own those cameras. And yet, Toledo's information is shared throughout the country for ends no one in this room agrees with without our permission. Still, these bills stand as a stamp of agreement for Toledo police to use cameras that Toledo is paying for. But oversight is not just one agreement that we make today. If we plan on giving ongoing permission, it should be tied to ongoing oversight. FARC use should be clearly notated in cases, its usage should be repeatedly audited, and it needs to be subordinate to the public and our freedoms. Thank you guys so much.

Joshua Pritchard. Joshua Pritchard. Mr. Haynes, Michael Haynes.

Good evening, council people. My name is Michael Haynes. I represent the Toledo Police Patrolman's Association. This will probably go over like a lead balloon, but I'm actually kind of split both ways. My policeman side, my member side of it most certainly is very strongly for the flat cameras. The flat cameras are very useful in solving crimes, solving crimes quickly, helping victims, all the same things that we've heard in this sick little thing over many, many months. I'm also a giant conspiracy theorist. So that is what it is. And do these cameras come up as everything else that we do in life? Yep, there's cameras everywhere. Everything we touch, everything we see, everything we do is camera-recorded, flocked, sold, bought, all that stuff. Is this just another piece in the cog? Yeah. The risk-reward is... The reward is... We as police officers need to be able to do our job in a more quickly, more expedient fashion. What I really find as the problem is, is we are losing members, officers quickly. We need to gain technology, use technology to help to offset that type of thing. We do that because we have to offset our manpower, if you will. That is one of the things to do. if this should not succeed and you we get rid of flat cameras essentially people blowing us back into the stone age as police officers and i heard i know i heard that you know when we do it the old-fashioned way well it's not it's just not that easy anymore it's not the old-fashioned way times of change it's not nineteen twenty or nineteen thirty it's twenty twenty six and things are done differently bad guys do things differently uh... and we have to catch up and keep up with it that type of thing I know or I believe that you guys putting the proper bowling bumpers on and paying attention to what's going on and whatever precautions that you can to protect the city of Toledo and the citizens that have concerns up here. And that's what your job is. And I have full belief in you guys. But my law enforcement side says the fly cameras are very good and we should keep them just for that business. Thank you.

Mandy Lehman.

Um, I am a victim of crime. I have lived my whole life in poverty. I understand. And I know like the things I've experienced aren't what other people necessarily have experienced in crime and my heart breaks for them. However, I also feel that my privacy is vital. Part of what keeps me protected from the people that harmed me is my privacy, my right to privacy. Part of what allowed me to raise my children the way that I feel was best was knowing that they had a right to privacy in school. And that they could grow up knowing what I thought they would know, is that they could trust the police. that they could trust that they were going to be safe and that they weren't going to be judged based on their poverty level, based on their gender identity. I grew up in foster care in Lucas County. And I was scrutinized. I was treated like trash. I was treated like I was less than because I was a foster kid. And the thing is that when I heard the subject earlier, I was so happy to hear that there's a diversion program for adults. Because that is one of the things that saved my life, was having caring people around me who gave me, helped me find the coping toolbox to do better, to know that I didn't have to be a product of my past. And if these cameras are invading people's private lives, tell me what is it that's going to protect them from being penalized for minor things. Why is the system, why are we using a private corporation to, quote unquote, protect our safety? When I see, and I appreciate the work that the police do, I know it must be incredibly stressful. I understand that. And that's being said by someone who came from a lot of trauma from the police. My dad was shot by police over state lines. I have a major issue with the data being able to be used across state lines. Because my understanding is, even within the state, police are not allowed to go over their jurisdiction. I have a problem with my neighbors, whether they are immigrants, whether they look like immigrants, whether they're in poverty, being treated as if it's OK to watch what they do and scrutinize them. I have a problem with the fact that right now our country is anti-queer, anti-trans.

Councilman Martinez.

Thank you. Thank you. Did everyone get a chance to speak? Yes. Okay, so we're moving next on the agenda. The second portion of the agenda. There was two items. One was the- The second item. Yes, that was the D2 district safety initiative. So first of all, thank you everyone that has spoken. So I've been taking notes and listening. And it seems like everyone kind of has already had their mind made up about what this program is. And maybe it's my fault for not explaining it appropriately. So it's a safety initiative program for District 2. District 2 has, if you're not familiar with District 2, It looks like the state of Louisiana, Broadway all the way to Reynolds Road, all the way up to Hill. We've had three major murders in the last eight months. And really what this started off as, it was a concern on the Evaldi shooting happening in South Texas. Hour and 17 minutes of an active shooter situation, complete police failure. And you're right, cameras aren't going to, could not have protected those children. It was a lack of effort on the police force at that time. So then I started getting me thinking, what would happen in the event of an active shooter situation? What protections do we have as a district representative to help make sure that this doesn't happen in my district? So I started researching federal government policies to see if there was a letter of support that I could provide to help the schools to apply for grants. And unfortunately, under the new administration, everything froze. Then was not deterred, so then continued to look and see if there's anything at the state level. Then at the state level, unfortunately, at the time, State Representative Williams was trying to figure out a way to help get cameras as necessary. Unfortunately, there were some poison pills in terms of if you did this, this is what you had to do. So I had ongoing conversations with all of the schools in my district, whether they were private, public, or a charter, because I wasn't going to discriminate what type of school you went to. And there were very specific regulations at the federal and state level in terms of who could apply for these grants. Thankfully, I live in a higher AMI area where a lot of times these grants don't qualify because unfortunately the population makes too much money so we don't qualify. And we can already tell that the federal government and the state government's not going to do anything about gun control and getting guns out of children's hands. I was trying to be proactive to ensure that at least, if we can't take the guns out of their hands, we can at least provide our first responders the resources necessary to address the situation as quickly, as efficiently as possible, and not going in blind. That's where all this kind of stemmed from. And then a year later after that, there was another shooting at Annunciation in Minnesota, where little children were praying. So I have a 10 and 8-year-old now. And I am very concerned about their safety. And I wanted to be able to be proactive to help, not take away any type of potential resources. So I got creative. So the district two safety initiative is partially, is only one part with having to do with the schools. The other part is, having to do with adding additional cameras. So District 2 has the least amount of cameras in the entire city of Toledo. District 1 has, excuse me, District 4 has the most. District 3 has the second most. District 6 has the third most. District 4, excuse me, District 1 has the fourth most district after me then it's district five has a lease and then there's me so i think we have roughly 37 cameras in district 2 in various areas there's also some gaps in our coverage where individuals can go in and out of different municipalities undetected because there are no cameras in our adjacent or neighbors So, or they can catch the interstate and ride up north or south, depending on where they're gonna go. So, I say all that, to say that, you know, what this really was meant to do, and I wrote some notes here so I can make sure I'm articulating this correctly. So really the purpose was real-time monitoring, securing the problem, and live feeds. So in the event that something happens, an officer can respond in real time, know what's going on, and call back up if necessary. It allows them to visualize the situation quicker and more accurately. Improves emergency response, so making sure that they have all the resources necessary and footage. And then also a targeted action plan to ensure that whatever happens, that we are prepared, whether it's first responders, EMS, or it's TPD, fire department, whomever. And then of course, deterred criminal activity. And pros and cons to if cameras really do deter. you know, crime or not, but I would agree that they would, since what we've noticed, and you can see there's been a migration of crime from North Toledo Central City area to out the surrounding areas. So that being said, so let me tell you about the uh school portion of this first of all it is voluntary i am not requiring anyone who doesn't want to be a part of this to participate if this does not fit your school's ethos or your community and this is only specifically district 2 schools they do not have to participate um what i am providing is specifically like a modem and lieutenant cook and all of the principals went through rigorously and looked at all of the exterior cameras and by the way this is only exterior feeds it's not interior i think there's a lot of misinformation that we're spying on your children and they're that is not the case and other key vulnerable areas for school systems. So one of them that TPS identified was Rogers High School. There was a drive-by shooting two years ago now. They were able to catch the culprit, thankfully. And then, weirdly, I have Bowser Stadium, but not Bowser High School, and there is no real vantage point for the school to be able to monitor it. By the way, it should be also noted that TPS has like a $12.5 million closed loop security system. So we also have working agreements with all of the schools to share information. So that's already established. That being said, what we went through is systematically and only identified key cameras that would be associated with an active shooter situation or trying to figure out if something happened. So as I delved into the weeds on this, it became less about an active shooter situation. And I do want to say that I'm not trying to be overly cautious about this, but there are protections already in place for these schools. So our schools are safe. So I want to make that perfectly clear. But their gap is from the time something happens in the 911 call, to the time a police can respond, there can be significant time lapses. And then once the responding officer responds, they may not have adequate either backup or trying to figure out situation awareness. So that's kind of what this came from. So we only took the most necessitated and the most important cameras, identified them, to link to this particular modem. And that's it. The only time these cameras can be activated is with a 911 call. And then from there, then the police can respond appropriately moving forward. So that's one bucket of this. The second portion of this is additional cameras in the public right-of-way, which on our website have identified, and we will continue to put them up so everyone's aware where they are. So they would be at Heather Downs in Holland, Sylvania, so near St. Joan of Arc. Airport in Holland, Sylvania, South Detroit, Holland, Nebraska, and Hill. And then we do also have non-flock cameras at the trail near Sherwood, along with Reynolds and Hill area. And those areas were identified as key areas strategically for our police officers where we've had problems. and then so those are two kind of separate things i am also very conscientious of costs to you know our public school system along with other private and charter schools so this would cover a one-year hardware software installation In subscription fee, it does have to be a five year contract only because of the type of funding that is being used, which is capital improvement slash different. So there are restrictions on it after year one. Any school can opt out if they don't feel there's any value to it. Again, there is no poison pill in this. I'm not requiring it. This is just to help give an additional layer of safety to our schools and hopefully add additional layer to protect 5,500 children in my district. So that being said, If and when this gets approved, the next step would be for TPD and the schools to have a private memorandum to discuss all of the policies and procedures that need to be into place to ensure everyone is comfortable, including parents, about what this is and what this isn't. thereafter they would get installed the public right-of-way port the second portion is on the public right-of-way it's the public right-of-way and they would still fall under the new policies and procedures of the toledo police department along with the ai policy that we that the administration has recently adopted and then that's it So again, voluntary. In the event that schools no longer want to participate for whatever reason, that is absolutely okay. Any funds that aren't used, they will go back into the District 2 DIP allocation, and I will find additional use that fit this particular requirement. program that we can use. So whether it's park equipment, anything like that, it has to be physical, tangible items. It can't be for programming. I wish it could, because I would love to be able to do diversion programs in my district. Everything that you've just said, I agree with how this money could be best used. I hear you on that. So that being said, I am actually going to hold this in committee until such time as after the audit is complete because I want to make sure that moving forward that I don't have to rewrite this and then making sure that it follows all of our guidelines and if there's any recommendations from the audit that it'll be adjusted accordingly and then we can have another conversation about this in the future. That being said, I'll give my time. Thank you.

Thank you all for coming in and having a great meeting tonight, hearing both sides, hearing all sides. Thank you all for your participation. And if there be nothing else, this meeting is adjourned.