Public Safety & Criminal Justice Reform Committee - Regular Meeting

And also, I'm going to say, it's probably going to create a way for them to deal with this issue.

Okay.

They probably came to you.

This is fun. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I want to call to order the Toledo City Council Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Committee meeting. Clerk, call the roll.

Hobbs.

Here.

Williams. Kramer. Here. McPherson. Meldon. Morris. Here. Sarantu. Here. Also present, Gaddis and Driscoll.

I want to thank you all for being here today. First of all, if you want to make comment, there's a signing sheet to your left, my right, on the table there. Our officer is walking towards it right now. There's a signing sheet there, which we will collect. And at the end, when we open it up for comment, it will be three minutes. We've called this meeting today because there has been information that has been presented for both sides, for Flock and against Flock. And so what we wanted to do was come together today and have a conversation about Flock cameras. We know that everyone is passionate about it. We're asking that our comments stay towards the Flock and are respectful to everyone. We believe everyone is entitled to their opinion. And we're asking you all to please, if you have question or opinion, you can talk about the flock camera for or against at the end. So I believe we have some of the police department is going to present. We also have Ms. Rebecca Facey is here. And I believe there's someone here from the county. I'm not sure who that is. Good afternoon.

Maggie Cox from the Lucas County Prosecutor's Office.

Thank you. And Maddie Coff. Thank you. Maddie Cook is here. Mike Buck from the County Prosecutor's Office. So we have entities here, and we hope to do our best to get your questions answered today. And so our clerk is going to read the title of the ordinance. We also, Ms. Julie, if you can respond to the response we received from our law department on the one piece, just so we have it out there. And thank you.

The title is authorizing the Mayor to amend the existing agreement with Flock Group Incorporated for the Toledo Police Department's Real Time Crime Center for a one year continuation for portable automatic license plate readers. Authorizing the expenditure of an amount not to exceed $14,000 from the general fund and waiving the competitive bidding requirements of TMC Chapter 187 and declaring an emergency.

Okay, at this time, our Toledo Police Department is going to present. Thank you all for being here today.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council, for giving us this opportunity to come discuss this legislation with me here today is Lieutenant Holmes, Sergeant Bergman, and Lieutenant Thiemann. We're here to discuss the FLOC portable license plate reader legislation, hopefully address all questions and all concerns that You as a council will have for us. We know there's been quite a bit of information, misinformation, rumors surrounding this technology, and we're hopeful that we can clear all that up for you today. Also in attendance, in the audience, ready and willing to answer any questions are two representatives from Flock Safety, Josh Brandon and Trevor Chandler. I wanted to first talk a little bit, I've, over the last few weeks, heard a few of the concerns, some emails have been forwarded to me, and I wanted to just clear some things up straight away. They seem to be kind of the prevailing themes of the misinformation, I guess you would call it. Well, does the Toledo Police Department use FLOC technology for immigration enforcement? No, we don't. And we never have. Does the Toledo Police Department share the data that we collect through FLOC technology with other agencies that do immigration enforcement? No, they don't. Do we shower our information with ice? No, we don't. And do flak LPRs have facial recognition technology? No, they don't. I was asked by several council members to provide some examples of how we use Flock and some of the success stories. And that's the handout that you all should have. And I'd like to just go through a little bit of this with you, just so you can kind of get an idea of how the Toledo Police Department uses And again, this legislation is specific to our portable LPRs, but I know there's been a broader conversation about FLOC the entire program, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to just go over it. So we can go through some of these cases. Guilty of violence for murder in the past two weeks. November of last year, Jasmine Quinn was murdered shooting at Hidden Reynolds. Flock was used to identify the suspect vehicle. According to our detective sergeant, without Flock, the case likely would have been unsolved. March of last year, 17-year-old Joseph Johnson was murdered during a robbery in the 800 block of Woodward. Flock identified the suspect vehicle, which was quickly located and led to the arrest of those involved. Couple examples from this year, April of this year, Leon Oldham was murdered in the 100 block of Bronson. Flock was used to identify a vehicle at the scene, which led to the discovery of witnesses who had not been previously known. February of this year, Felonious Assault attempted murder at the Glass City Academy. Flock was used to track the vehicle in which the suspect fled, which helped produce additional evidence regarding his clothing and actions. Some other cases of note, in April of 2022, we had, tragically, a 7-year-old Desiree Hughes was murdered while in her car seat in the back of her father's vehicle. Flock identified the shooter's vehicle, and he was ultimately convicted at trial. October of 2022, multiple people were shot outside the Whitmer football game. Flock was used to identify the blue Dodge Charger in which the shooters fled. The day before that incident, the silent blue charger was confirmed to have been used the day before the Whitmer shooting in a homicide on Expressway Drive, resulting in three people injured, including one fatality. Multiple suspects were convicted in relation to both incidents. December of 2022, Kamarion Wilder and Kaishan Pittman, these were two missing teens who were ultimately found, deceased in the basement of a burned out building in the north end were murdered by Charles Walker and Brent Kohlhofer. 11 suspects were ultimately convicted in relation to the kidnapping and murder. Flock was used to verify movements and identify witnesses. March of 2025, Flock was used in an investigation of the murder of Kamani Lateeg. November of 2025, Flock was used to confirm the movements of the suspect as he drove around Malachi Calder's dismembered body. around the Toledo area. Those are high profile incidents. At the very bottom is an example of how we use Flock not just to investigate murders or felonious assaults. A generator was stolen from Las Agaves Restaurant. The detectives were able to locate the suspect vehicle on Flock with the generator in the back of the truck. And what I did was attach to this that photo of that truck with the generator so you guys could see, I don't know, some of you may have never seen what an actual Flock What a flock hit looks like, but this is this is the information that we get. We don't get the information. We don't get anything other than the location of the picture was taken and a picture of the vehicle. And that picture is what led to the arrest of the individual who stole that generator. I was asked by our detective bureau to let you all know that this is certainly not an exhaustive list. Our detective sergeant advised me that Just about every family case, they use flock in one way or another. It may not always lead to arrest or to information that's useful, but they use flock continuously. Our street crews use flock continuously to locate stolen vehicles. And as I stated at our meeting a couple of weeks ago, in my 25 years, I would say that the FLOC has been the most useful technology that we as a department have had, in my opinion, in those 25 years. So we value it, we use it. It's partly responsible for, you know, I looked at the last three years for our detective bureau for our homicide clearance rates. And the last three years, this year, we're currently at 81%. Last year, we were at 81%. And in 2024, we are at 87%. The national average, just for comparison, is 61.4%. I'm not saying that those incredibly high clearance rates All because of Flock, but it's certainly because of all of the technology that we've leveraged to investigate those crimes in conjunction with the hard work of our detectives. So for us, it's a tool that we don't want to lose. It makes the city safer. It makes us more effective. And as I told you, there's two representatives from Flock Safety here today, so with that we will we are happy to take any questions that you have to address any of the concerns that you've heard council member gaddis

thank you and thank you for this um i do have some questions it's not about how i it has nothing to do with the police i want to make sure you have all the tools in fact up until this vote i have voted to support you with flock but it is the questions that we have seen raised in the community as more and more reports have come out that concern me about how other people are using our data um so I appreciate that you brought up immigration. That is definitely one thing I have seen. In October of 2025, the University of Washington did a study and they audited the state of Washington. They revealed that there were back door access by border patrol in at least ten police departments that the police did not authorize the use. In May of 2026, Dayton announced the city would no longer use flock data after it found 7,000 cases of searches related to immigration enforcement made by outside entities. How often are we auditing who is looking at our information? How many times has Border Patrol Homeland Security, maybe a police department that has 297G classification. How often are they looking at our data?

If you wouldn't mind, I think I would like to invite the flock safety representatives to come up and address that specific concern, if that would be okay?

Yeah, I'd be happy. Thank you.

For the record, could you please give us your name, please, sir? Yes. For the record.

Counsel, my name is Trevor Chandler. I'm the Senior Director of Public Affairs for Flock. And so to address your question- Thank you. To address your question about federal access. So the instances that you referenced over the course of 2025 were from not hacks or backdoor access. Those were in regards to sharing settings that certain cities had turned on. And as you know, FLOC has both versions of statewide lookup and national lookup that cities can choose to opt into. And not all cities had a full appreciation of the mutual sharing that the national or state lookups allowed. And so when they were looking at their audit reports, they saw that there were searches that went against their community values. There were concerns raised about that. And the University of Washington report is one of those reports about that. So how can the city of Toledo ensure that that doesn't happen here? Well, first, there have been some significant changes that FLOC has made to our operating system over the last year to prevent any unintended sharing, especially with the federal government. So first and foremost, FLOC does not allow federal agencies, and this is an update made in 2025, to participate in either statewide or national lookup. They are not allowed into those mutual sharing pools that some cities choose to opt into. So the only way that a federal agency can establish a sharing relationship with any local agency, there's three gates to get through. The first gate is that that local agency has to opt in to even receiving a sharing request. And when I say a federal agency, this can mean even something like a national park or the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. So first, in the system, they have to opt into that. Second, that same national park has to submit the request to share with that, to have a mutual sharing relationship with that agency. And then third, that agency has to proactively say yes to that specific agency. So not only have we restricted access from the national and statewide look up, but we've also put in place a three gated system to make sure that there are no inadvertent sharing relationships that would go against a community's laws or values.

Thank you. Well, I got you. May I ask some questions? Okay. In February 16th of 2026, you changed four of your standard terms and conditions. One of them is the sale of data. Before it flatly stated that you do not sell. And now that is removed. How can you assure the people of Toledo that you will not be selling our data?

So our terms and conditions still fully prohibit the selling of any data. So that has not changed. What you'll notice with our terms and conditions is we actually made them simpler and more condensed. Usually if you look at your iPhone terms and conditions, It just gets 20 pages longer. What we had heard from our customers, from our city councils, and from the agencies that we partner with, that our terms and conditions were too wordy, too long, and not simple enough. So that's what that update did. That specific sentence was removed. However, that does not change. the legal standing in that document that explicitly states that the city of Toledo and all of our partner agencies own the data. FLOC does not own any of the data that our cameras collect on behalf of agencies, and our contracts and our terms and conditions still expressly prohibit the sharing of or selling of any of the agency's data that we work with. We're happy to provide a legal attestation specifically to that, but It's important to note that while that particular wording was modified, the principle and legal standing that UNR data and FLOC cannot and will not sell that data remains legally binding.

would love to have that legally written happy to um the also uh one of the other changes uh that have been noted is the perpetual licensing before it said 30 days and that information would be deleted now it says that you have the perpetual right

For flock to use the customer data to support and improve its services So therefore even if we don't have a contract with you any longer you hold all of that data Incorrect interpretation or understanding so you all still have the 30-day retention limit or whatever retention limit you all decide you are the ones that make that decision we have some cities that choose to opt for the default 30 days and Some cities choose to do shorter. Some cities, such as LA, choose to hold onto theirs for years. So that remains fully in the purview. And once that data is deleted, with all of its metadata, it is hard deleted off of the servers. So the perpetual licensing, this is standard language that allows Flock to utilize data to improve services. So I think everyone here can agree that accuracy is incredibly important. with law enforcement tools, especially law enforcement technology tools. What this allows FLOC to do is say, let's say there is a Ohio plate where we're seeing a small but significant enough error happening with either a zero and an O, or whether it's mistaking a civic for an accord. That allows us to identify that problem, that this Honda or this Civic is being confused with each other, and to utilize it to improve the system so that the Honda is identified as a Honda and the Civic is identified as a Civic and there aren't any mishits or misreads. So the reason it's perpetual is for machine learning to work you need to take one of the images. And so the way the machine learning works is our engineers will identify that the Honda and the Accord and the Civic are being confused. So they'll specifically seek out images of a Honda and images of a Civic to utilize that in the machine learning to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Those images are removed without any metadata. So it doesn't say, what agency it came from. It doesn't say what time. It doesn't say what location. It is used purely for the image reference for the machine learning to be able to distinguish between the accord and the civic. And that did not change. That was the same with the previous terms and conditions as it is with these terms and conditions.

Okay. In June 3rd, we've seen a lot of cities that are bagging their cameras. And they're bagging their cameras because Flock has not turned off the cameras. In a Fortune article on June 3rd, it says, in many cases, Cities have signed contracts with FLOC without realizing that they lack legal or technical mechanism to force FLOC to actually shut down the cameras upon cancellation. Do we have that ability?

Yes. You could, without even canceling the contract, the city of Toledo could shut off its cameras right now. Every city has that ability to turn off their cameras.

Then why are other cities bagging their cameras?

based on people simply seeing the cameras. They feel that they're there. They want to put a bag on them for that additional assurance. There's some concerns that the cameras don't come down fast enough. So with our contract with Toledo and every other city, flock leases the cameras. And so it's our responsibility contractually to remove them. That can sometimes take a month or two, depending on the work orders and making sure that we get to it. We always work to get them down when requested down as soon as possible. There can be delays in that process. And so to address some community concerns, sometimes cities choose to put a bag over them to alleviate additional community concerns while the cameras remain up uh in the process of them being taken down but flock does not insist on cameras remaining up flock does not insist on cameras uh remaining online after a contract has been ended these are predominantly additional community concerns in the process of them as they get taken down thank you uh just a couple more questions that's why i'm here i appreciate that in october of 2025 texas deputies

searched Flock for missing persons, but actually it was an abortion case. In the second search in which they put in the note box, had an abortion, searched for female, they probed about 7,000 networks accessing 83,000 cameras across the country. How are you stopping that? Was our network used? And how What are we doing as a city to make sure that when we're using things like Flock, we're not weaponizing legal reproductive health care in our city?

Absolutely. And so one of the real tenets of Flock is that community safety should not ever have to come at the expense of community values. And we've implemented several measures to ensure that's the case. Without getting into the specific details of that case, there was a lot of... mixed opinions both from that department and what was said and what wasn't said about the specific search of that case. Originally, she was being searched for as a missing person, and there's been a lot said about that case by that department and others. What I can't say is how FLOC responded to that is, one, they were enrolled in the national lookup feature, so I can't speak specifically to Toledo's audit logs as to whether that search hit. on Toledo's audit logs or was partially searched there. But what I can say is we have additionally put out additional safeguards for communities to protect their values when it comes to both that and immigration. So the most important ones are the fact that we now have both reproductive health and immigration filters. So that if you want to make sure that the city of Toledo is protected from searches like that from agencies that you share with, you can put these filters in place. And I know specifically that Toledo has an immigration filter in place. But we also have a filter in place for anything regarding reproductive health. So if any of those searches are made in any of the networks that you participate in, your data will essentially be skipped over. So those searches won't go to Toledo's data. In addition, it's always important to note that every city, every agency has full control of who they share with and how they share. And that's one of the reasons we're so proud that FLOC is the most transparent law enforcement tool in the country. A lot of these examples you cite regarding the Texas case, University of Washington, these have created real serious conversations at cities across the country about the importance of both the importance of sharing law enforcement data in order to capture criminals and identify missing persons, but also the community by community decision on how that is done. And the reason those conversations are able to be had is because of the permanent audit logs and the comprehensive transparency features that FLOC provides. There is no other law enforcement tool that provides the public and elected officials and the oversight to be able to say, what was this sharing request? Was this aligned with our values? And if it's not, we can shut that person off. That's something that no other law enforcement tool in the country provides, that level of transparency and oversight.

I appreciate that. A couple more? Yes. Okay. The Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained data sets representing about 12 million searches logged by 4,000 agencies. between 2024, December, and 2025, October, showing a pattern that when there were political demonstrations, the amount of searches around these demonstrations went up. This showed in February at the 5051 protests, the hands-off protests of April, and the No Kings protests of both June and October. How do we know that our network was, again, not used to surveil our residents on their constitutionally protected right of protected speech and protest?

I can't speak to that specific article, but I can speak to the concerns, the First Amendment concerns. First, it's important to note, whenever you have large gatherings of people, there's always the potential for a crime to happen in any large gathering of people. I can speak specifically to Spokane. They had this question because on Their agency searched and it said something to the lines of protest in the description again available in the permanent audit logs that they have And specifically I said that was because there was someone who was hit by a car at this protest And they were looking for that and they were able to fully show and so while there could be an increase in searches I can't speak to the individual agency's decision for why they put in those specific searches because whenever I Whenever you have a large gathering of people, there's always the potential for a crime to happen that it's the responsibility of your law enforcement to follow up on. And I think what this really comes down to, the question that I think you're asking, is more related to community trust in law enforcement, in their law enforcement to provide these searches and do it in an effective way, in a trustworthy way. And that's one of the reasons we provide the permanent audit logs in these transparency portals, so that When there's a large gathering, if there is something in Toledo where these sort of searches do spike during a particular day, you have the ability as a council to be able to provide the accountability and transparency to look into that. We also, for our searches, provide First Amendment protections in our searches. If there is a search for, say, you can't search for, say, a protester. You can't search for, you know, these aren't facial recognition. You can't search for people in the license plate reader system. You can't search for politically protected speech in the license plate reader system. And so from our end at Flock, that's one of the ways that we provide additional guardrails to make sure that to the extent we can from an operating system angle provide those protections internally.

I appreciate that, but you can vaguely put searches in. It doesn't have to be as specific. There's been countless studies as well about the vagueness of the searches and overstepping because of that.

Yeah, well, and one of the changes we made in response to those concerns is, yes, there used to be, you know, just putting a broad search term or putting a, like, any sort of broad search term. One of the changes that we made in 2025 was every single search made on the Flock LPR system has to have a NIBRS code in it. And a NIBRS code is an FBI designation for the many different types of crime they have. So you can no longer simply do a search and say, you know, missing person or even leave it empty if you want to. You have to choose one of these predesignated FBI NIBRS codes. And if it turns out that one of your officers is purposely mislabeling a search for they did, say they put in a search for a missing person and it turns out to not be the case, These transparency and accountability features allow you and your agency to hold that individual officer accountable. So that even if they do leave the search term empty, they have stated that this is the reason they are searching it, and they can be held accountable to that reason.

Thank you. I'm almost done, Chair. I have two more questions. One is, we recently passed legislation for $35,000 for a gentleman with the last name Mr. Upchurch who was His license plate was wrongly read by FLAC. In the docket, it says the Toledo Police Department regulations require officers to visually verify whether the license plate of an allegedly stolen car matches the information provided by the FLAC system. This is because it is commonly known throughout the Toledo Police Department that the FLAC system is unreliable and often misreads license plates. What's the success rate of the license plates?

The success rate is above 95%. So we're very proud of our success rate. But that terminology that you all have in your policy about visually confirming a plate before pulling someone over and taking action on it is actually best practice across the country. We are, at Flock, are the first to say you should not pull over someone just on a plate read. The extremely well-trained officers are trying to say, well, it says here that I'm looking – let's just use an extreme example. I'm looking for a red Ford Focus, and this is a black Ford pickup truck. It's very clear that I should not – that this is a mishit or a misread. And so there's another misperception of flock that – You know, there's this that if you get a hit on then you're automatically guilty, you're going to jail, you're the person in the wrong. Your officers know that just because there's a license plate hit, one, they need to visually confirm that it is the hit that they are looking for. And two, the person associated with the crime that that car might also be associated with might not be the person driving. And your officers are trained to have the judgment and the expertise to be able to take that investigative lead, which is what a flock picture is. It is not judge, jury, and executioner. It is an investigatory lead for your officers to use their extensive professionalism and training to take action based on that information that they have. Just as if they found a piece of evidence at a crime scene, they would use their professional judgment on how they would connect that in potentially finding a suspect. And so FLOC is a piece of evidence, is a piece of intelligence, an objective piece of intelligence that your officers can then use to make a decision on how to use it.

And then finally, I have a question about the polls. many of our flat poles are not crash worthy there's not crash really hardly hardware our stop signs any pole within the the clear zone has to have breakaway easy break away so that it doesn't impale so it doesn't start a fire at the bottom of the car and many of your poles fail that what are you doing in the city of toledo to make sure that they are crash crash safe i can i

I can't look into that specifically to get to a firm answer on their crash worthiness. What I will say is we go through the full permitting process for installing all of our cameras, and we abide by all the rules and regulations for that permitting process to put these up. So if that is a requirement for a permitting, I can check with our permitting team with the city of Toledo about that. Well that certification if there is a certification required, but we go through that every city We work in we have a full permitting team that works to make sure we are adhering to all the regulations In that city, and I'm happy to look into the crash worthiness for the Toledo cameras Thank you before I yield my time.

What do we have a national search? on filter on what filters do we have set and

So yes, we do have national search on, but we do filter out all immigration and reproductive searches. So those filters are turned on. We turned those on once we saw that flock had updated the system.

And could you give me an estimate of time when you turned those on?

June 1st of this year. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilman Driscoll.

Thank you, Chair. A lot of my questions were answered already. I appreciate you coming in. I'm glad to hear that we own our data. I'm curious, though, how long do we keep it? We keep it for 30 days. Okay. And so at any point, any police department can, across the country, unless they're searching or based on immigration or reproductive rights, can search our data. Is that correct? Correct. But that's not true of Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

Correct.

Okay, and Assistant Chief Braun, we passed some legislation earlier this year with regards to our cooperation around Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Is that what's governing the department's interaction with FLOC at this point in time?

No, so as we've discussed previously, the Toledo Police Department does not engage in immigration enforcement. And we don't want any data we collect to be used for immigration enforcement. So when we saw that the opportunity on our settings was to be able to not give anyone doing any sort of immigration enforcement related investigations access to our data, it was a simple decision for us.

Terrific. Let's say someone gets a hold of our data that shouldn't have it, and it's Flock's fault. This might be a question for the law department, but do we reserve the right to any legal action against Flock if they are, if because of their technology, the data that we collect is used inappropriately, or at least against our community values as we have espoused them and codified them?

Yeah, my I would I would assume that that would be a question for the law department Okay, I'm guessing that that as a city and as a police department we pay for a service and if that service falls short or results in Something that we never intended and I would I would venture to say we probably do have some sort of opportunity to Address that with flock right legally.

Yeah, we can't Always plan from a level in action But we got to put our money somewhere, so we have a bank where we put our money, and sometimes they get hacked. We use lots of services like that. I just want to make sure that we have some level of protection behind the scenes, but I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Driscoll. Councilman Sarantu.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have a couple of questions. So, what you're saying is that the Tulane Police Department controls the dissemination of information obtained through FLOC. Is that accurate? That's correct. Okay, so the department has to decide, persons in charge, as to what will be released and what will not be released upon request of, let's say the Tulane Police Department. contacts you about a murder suspect. What's the process?

With the nationwide lookup, they can do it on their own without actually requesting it. They have to request access to our data, and if we allow them access, then they can conduct that lookup.

Okay. All right. And if I'm correct, if I'm wrong, you've used FLOC information for stolen vehicles, cases of domestic abuse. rape, murders, all types of felony charges. Am I correct on that? Robberies?

That's correct. Just about any crime that you can envision, we've used FLOC technology to investigate those crimes. Also, FLOC is, I guess, a partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. If a child goes missing nationally, that information can be put in, you know, we don't have to do anything on our end. We can just get a hit if we happen to come across a vehicle or a plate. So, yeah, the things that Williams fought for, I can't overstate how useful the information is. And Councilman, to your point, we use it for just about every crime that you can imagine, including all of the ones that you mentioned.

I've come across a few cases in the area and statewide where victims with dementia or Alzheimer's have taken the car case, got into a vehicle, and the family discovers they're gone, and they're found three hours from Toledo because of a flat camera system. Am I correct on that? Yes. And again, you indicated earlier in your written statement that in the case of the murder of Connie, that Flock was used. Am I correct on that? That's correct.

I believe with that case, there's a gag order in place, so I couldn't get into specifics, but Flock was utilized in that case. All right.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Council Member Cramer.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for the presentation and for being here today. And I wanted to thank Council Member Gaddis for the extensive research that she did. We appreciate your diligence on that. I have some questions about the audit logs. Are there audit logs showing who searched the system and why?

Yes. And so both there is a network audit and an agency audit. So the agency audit is solely what your officers are searching for in the system. And again, audit logs are permanent unless you make an alternative decision. And then there's also the network audit. That shows every agency that your agency shares with. It shows their searches as well. So you're able to see not just the searches that your officers are doing, but also the searches of the agencies that Toledo shares with.

Okay, you said the audits are permanent unless we decide differently?

Yes, there's some states, Virginia just passed a law requiring the deletion of audits after two years. Again, it's like an additional privacy concern. We, by default, maintain audits permanently unless instructed to otherwise.

And what does Toledo do in terms of keeping those audit logs? Permanent. Permanent? Yes. Okay. Does council have access to those audit logs?

That would be a city and agency decision.

Yes, so we all have administrators that have access to those audit logs. Certain that we could share audit logs with you and whatever other information you're looking for. But yeah, we have access. I don't know how many people internally, Jeff, that we have access to those. But yeah, that's information that we have that we would be more than willing to share.

Okay, my last question. What safeguards are protecting our residents from misuse of the system?

Yes, absolutely. And again, to go back to the fact that FLEC is the most transparent law enforcement tool in the country. So from FLEC's end, obviously the end user and how it is used is the most important, which requires in all of these conversations regarding public safety technology, it's about trust between law enforcement. city councils and the people that they serve. That's the most important. From FLOC's end of the spectrum, we have striven to not just provide accountability features and call it a day. We are every single month updating our accountability and transparency features. For example, we have transparency portals we provide free of charge that agencies and communities can use to demonstrate accountability. how these are being used, how many cameras they have, who cities share with. We have the audit assistance tool, which proactively flags atypical search behavior that agencies can look into to proactively identify either out of context or atypical behavior with searches. We are every month putting in additional features, not just to make it available, because anyone can just say, here's an audit log, have fun. We're actually working to make it user-friendly so that people can actually see the patterns within their departments so that they can identify and become more communicate even more effectively with their community. This is something that we are very proud to be industry leaders in. There is no other law enforcement technology provider in this space that provides the level of transparency, accountability, and safeguard features that FLOC does.

Thank you for the information. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Morse.

Thank you. I don't want to take up a lot of time because I'm actually here to listen. The one thing I was wondering, Mr. Flock over here, if you would tell me, I know you're saying that we have nationwide sharing. Are there any departments that don't have nationwide sharing?

Yes, absolutely. Every agency chooses the level to which they share. There's a misperception about FLOC that, oh, if you join FLOC, you have to join the national sharing feature, that everyone's information gets dumped into the same big bucket. It's simply not the case. When FLOC is provided to an agency, it is provided just to their agency. And then that agency chooses who they would like to share with. In some cases, they choose a geographic radius. Like, we would like to share with other agencies within 50 miles. But then you have agencies that may border several states. And they say, we need the ability to share with this state, this state, and this state because of the regional nature of the crime in our community. And so that is a choice that is solely up to the agency on who they share with and how they share with them.

And just to kind of piggyback on Councilman Sorrento's example of Bowling Green. If Bowling Green contacted or was trying to do a search of our data and What if that officer misconstrued the Nibirscope code or what have you? So maybe it wasn't our officers that did anything that was inappropriate, but perhaps the Bowling Green He had a girlfriend and he wanted to see where she was going and that kind of stuff. I'm just kind of curious. I'm sure this system could be a what if for every situation. So I don't want to bog that down. But I'm just kind of curious because I have more faith in our officers. I don't know all the officers around here. I don't know. Maybe there are some bad eggs. So what can you tell me?

No, absolutely. And it's first and foremost, any misuse is unacceptable. And anyone that misuses the system should be held fully accountable according to the laws and rules of their agencies and communities. And with that, what we have seen is there's been publicly reported maybe two dozen examples of misuse. Again, every single one of them unacceptable. That being said, we have around 100 plus thousand users of Flock every single month, millions of searches, and that amounts to about one one-hundredth, probably less, of the overall users. So I think it's important to note that With FLOX transparency and accountability features, those bad users, those bad apples are much more likely to get caught using this system than any other law enforcement system in the country. And so to that question about a neighboring town you're sharing with and how to identify misuse there, that is a key part of the auditing guidelines that we provide and we offer as well as our audit assistance feature to help raise those concerns quicker and faster. And it's also something that your agents can easily ask, and your community can ask. You can go to Bowling Green and say, we've seen this many searches from this officer this many times. Can you please give us a reason so that we can have confidence that this is actually the case? And if they say no, you can remove access. Once you have a sharing relationship, you can revoke it at any point in time. These are not permanent. They can be adjusted to your community based on a situation. And, again, part of it comes, especially with your regional collaboration, comes to a level of trust with those. And with any level of trust, there's the opportunity for that trust to be heard. But our transparency features allow for that to be caught as quickly as possible, identified, and to be addressed in the way the community sees fit.

Okay, thank you. And then lastly, so how often are the audits, how often are they provided? Is it every month? Is it every week? Do we get a notice on the phone that something's happening?

You can audit every hour. FLOC does not control the audits. Your agency is the one in control of the audits. Again, there's different standards for different agencies that we've seen. Some do it annually, biannually, quarterly, monthly, but again, You can run an audit every single day if you'd like. We provide the capacity to do so.

Thank you. So maybe that's the question of Toledo Police. How often do we audit?

Our policy is a 12-month look back. And it's kind of interesting because typically how that would look is you would go in and kind of randomly pull some searches. And when you have the volume of searches that we have that's kind of the only way to do it. But FLOC did just, and Trevor, you can probably speak to the system they now have set up with the audits where they have designed a system that If it even looks like it could be fishy, it'll give us a list and say, hey, instead of doing random pools, maybe look at these. And, you know, nine times out of ten, ten times out of ten, they're still legit. But, Trevor, if you could speak a little bit about that system and how you have that system.

Absolutely. And, again, compared to other law enforcement technology around the country, I can't speak to specific policies. that Toledo has. But for body cams, for example, when agencies across the country typically do audits of their body cam footage, like your chief was saying, they'll just change to a random body cams, and they'll do a random overview, kind of a spot check of quality. FRAC is actually making it easier to do those spot checks through our audit assistance tool. So again, the audit assistance tool raises to your agency's administrator saying, Here are some things you should look at. It doesn't mean there's been misuse. It doesn't mean anything's been done wrong. But say there has been an atypical behavior like the same license plate being searched a bunch of times or a search being done outside of typical work hours. There could be incredibly valid reasons for that. There could be a missing kid, and that's why they searched that exact same license plate. or it could be something not so innocent. What this does is it raises it to your, and it shows you which officer is doing those searches. So it raises it to your administrator's attention, being like, if you're gonna check, if you're gonna do a spot check, these are the ones you should probably check first. Because these have the most atypical search behavior, and they'll allow your administrator and your agency to go to that officer and be like, we saw that you were running the same plate five, like, ten times in two days. And that was flagged as atypical behavior. Your officer then says, yes, there was a shooting that day, there was a lot going on, and we were regularly checking for this vehicle that day. Great, you check it off. But that audit assistance tool allows your officers to have a greater line of sight. It shouldn't be the only thing. We definitely encourage all of our agencies to do thorough audits to however they do. Some people have third parties come in to do audits. But what we wanted to do, again, wasn't just say, here's the audit log, have fun. We wanted to say, not only are we giving you a permanent audit log, That is the most transparent in the country. We're also providing you the tools to identify most effectively the potential issues that your agency could be facing.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Trevor.

Mr. Flock is good, too.

Councilman Sirotsu.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a follow up question for Mr. Flock. What is your estimate of searches done nationwide in the United States by departments? How many?

By day, or month, or it's similar. In a year, billions. Billions.

With a billion or only ones with an M? Billions. Billions, okay. And like you said, two dozen cases where they were abused. Two dozen out of at least one billion. Correct? Correct. Okay. All right. In the last couple of years, our officer, I believe with the Westbrook Police Department, was getting information about somebody through the LIDS system, the state system. They still call it LIDS? Okay. I used to work for the courts. That's what they did then. But the officer was terminated. Because there was no reason for them to check. So they were, obviously there were audits done, and the last one was identified as running a check on this person. And apparently this officer, as I recall from the bullet article, had a personal relationship with this person. So these situations have occurred before was invented. Am I correct in that, Assistant Chief?

Yes, you're correct. And just to state it as clearly as possible, whether it's flock, leads, Anything else we use our policies are crystal clear that the information that we search is Strictly for law enforcement purposes only so that that's everything so we don't want anybody using leads to try to track down Girl that they want to go on a date with what I want to miss using flock for any reason that they might want to do that so internally We've tried to make it as crystal clear as possible that this these tools are for law enforcement Purposes only and they're only to be shared with other law enforcement agencies that have a legitimate Use for them as well.

Thank you for clarifying that. Thank you. Mr. Chair. I

Thank you, Deputy Chief Braun. Thank you so much for this time. Thank you, sir. I'm going to ask as the TPD exits out, I'm going to ask Ms. Facey and I believe Ms. Cook, if I'm saying that correctly, to come and talk about it, Flock as well. Our lead city prosecutor and county prosecutor. Is it Wood County? Did you say Wood County?

Lucas County Prosecutor's Office.

Good afternoon, thank you so much, Chair, for having us here. Rebecca Facey, Chief Prosecutor for the City of Toledo. I'm very grateful for the conversation that is taking place this afternoon and for the very thoughtful questions that have come up here for the flock of camera folks and for TPD as well. Certainly as a prosecutor, this is a tool that we use regularly. In Toledo Municipal Court, I would say at this point the majority of our hit and run traffic accidents are solved through flat camera technology. So certainly something that we use regularly that we have come to rely on. But I think it's important to have this conversation and recognizing our role in it as the professionals who are responsible for enacting this technology. I was at the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys National AI and Data Summit two weeks ago in Washington DC and The purpose of those conversations was how do we balance the technology that none of us have created but ultimately are responsible for in the criminal justice system. And how do we not abandon those tools or hide from them while also being ethical and following our constitutional mandates as attorneys and law enforcement. So again, very grateful for this conversation and recognizing our role in it. I'm grateful to hear from FLOC the amount of control that we do have locally here in Toledo to govern this tool. To not just abandon it, but to be able to use it to the best of its ability, again, ethically. I would mirror the question, Councilman Sorrento, that you just asked. In law enforcement, in our courts, we do have access to a lot of personal information beyond just the flat cameras and whereabouts of our citizens. We have access to lots of personally identifying information that we are trained in. that we are required to protect, that we will absolutely lose our jobs and would lose our law licenses if we used that information for anything other than express law enforcement purposes. So while this is highly personal information, Where I recognize the privacy concerns and myself don't want to live in a surveillance state. Recognize that the folks and professionals who are in the positions to handle this material are held to a high standard that we have been all along. So I offer that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Ms. Facey. And Ms. Cuff, please.

Good afternoon, council members.

Back up just a little bit.

Sorry. I'm usually pretty loud, so usually I'm not used to needing a microphone. But afternoon, as I said, my name is Maggie Cook. I am the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division of the Lucas County Prosecutor's Office. An office I have served in for the last 13 years. Quite frankly, other than a brief stint in the Lucas County Public Defender's Office, that's where I've spent all of my career as an attorney. In that position, I have represented hundreds if not thousands of victims, men, women, and children alike in this county. Not only have I represented those particular individuals, I have represented the citizens of Lucas County as a whole. And quite frankly, the majority of our cases that come through our court are from the Toledo Police Department and within the city of Toledo. In doing that, I have sought justice for victims and their families. I have held individuals who have committed crimes in our community responsible for their acts. And I hope that through my work, I have made this community better each and every day. And that's something that I now train the new attorneys in my office to do. But we cannot do that without evidence. I cannot stand in front of a jury of our community and say find this individual guilty because I said so. There has to be evidence. and flock cameras have assisted us since they have put in place in the convictions of all levels of crime, from hit skits to thefts to drug abuse to missing and endangered children or kidnappings to murder and violent felony offenses. I know Assistant Chief Braun hit on a few of those. But I would like to talk about not just how that has been investigated or how it's been an investigatory tool, but how we've actually used those in criminal prosecution. In State of Ohio versus Jerry Scott and Paris James, the trial for a murder of a woman and her eight and a half month fetus. The state of Ohio was able to use images captured on flock camera to corroborate surveillance video of the suspect vehicle and its route of travel immediately after leaving the victim's home where she was brutally murdered while her two teenage boys also slept inside that home. With the flock image, we were able to corroborate that the vehicle that was seen on sometimes grainy surveillance video was in fact a vehicle that was owned by the father of our eight and a half month old unborn fetus. Not only that, through corroborating that, we were able to tie the murder weapon that was found abandoned in a local park to being on the routes of travel of our two defendants the day or in the hours after our victim's murder. In State v. Charles Walker and Brent Kohlhofer, the case that was cited by Chief Braun involving the two teenage boys who were kidnapped and found in the basement of a burned down home. Flock camera images of Charles Walker's vehicle coming to and leaving the Chase Street, 3000 block of Chase Street, prior to going to collect the two boys from the home on Maumee Avenue, was again used at trial to confirm that it was that same vehicle that we see on surveillance video captured in a nearby corner on video. Before Charles Walker left the Chase Street address, and then again after, after the two boys had been retrieved and put in the trunk of Charles Walker's vehicle. Coincidentally or not, while awaiting a verdict in that case, on my drive home, I was rear-ended on the highway due to congestion. When I pulled to the side of the road, the person who struck me, Took off. I was able to partially capture their plate, provide a detail of that plate as well as the type of vehicle and the direction they were traveling. And that case was investigated using flock cameras and the driver of that vehicle identified and prosecuted. Thankfully, just like in my case, In Mr. Kolhofer and Mr. Walker's case, we also secured a verdict of guilty, again, using that flock information. I know there are concerns about nationwide sharing, and understandably so. But that's also important for us here. While this is a case out of Sylvania, it still certainly can give this council reason why that nationwide sharing can be important. State v. Shawn Landis, a case where an individual stalked someone he went on a date with years ago, stalked him all the way from Vegas, if I'm recalling correctly, I believe it was actually Salt Lake, Utah, to Ohio, where one of the two victims was attending law school at UT. Flock cameras showed Mr. Landis' vehicle entering into Ohio in the days prior to his murder, having traveled from New Jersey. Not only did they show his vehicle in Ohio, and specifically the Toledo area in the days before the attempted murder, it showed Mr. Landis' vehicle traveling to Indiana, where he then boarded a Barron's bus. Which we were then able to use flock cameras to show that he traveled back to Ohio on consistent with the cell phone data location. Again, at trial we were successful in securing a conviction for that offense. I could honestly go on about the cases that we have used and the evidence that we have presented at trial to secure those convictions. But it would probably take me much longer. And quite frankly, those victims deserve more than just a passing recognition. We understand that there is great power behind the flock camera system. And as Ms. Facey said, that is something that we are trained in within our office. Not only are we trained in it, but when or if there is abuse of that system, we take that very seriously. I am currently a team of individuals prosecuting a man for attempted murder. While he was attempting to locate the victim of that offense, he reached out to a family member who worked and had access to government databases. That individual used that database for an illicit person or illicit reason to provide him information. As soon as our office was aware, we brought in to our office and disclosed the violation to those who needed to be informed. That individual was swiftly fired and criminal charges were filed. So it is possible and we do hold those individuals who violate the standards and the requirements that you all have set and that our community expects of us. We hold them responsible. So with that being said, I don't know if I can further express how much of an invaluable measure or tool this is not only to law enforcement, but to the successful prosecution of criminal cases. And I appreciate you all listening to me today.

We all thank you for being here today. And I don't see any lights on from our council members. So thank you, too, for being here. Thank you, Chair. And we really appreciate you taking the time to be here today.

Thank you.

If you, at least for a few minutes, will hang around in case we have some questions for you, we'll bring you back up to the mic or into the pit. At this time, we're going to have our public comment. There will be three minutes, and we're asking you to please state your name and speak directly into the mic. There may come a time where we need a representative from FLOC to come back up or Deputy Chief Braun or one of our prosecutors. But we are going to do our best to answer every question that you have. Our first comment is going to come from, I believe, Mr. Richard Arnold. You have a clock here, you have a clock there, and a clock there where everyone can keep time.

Richard Arnold, thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'll be brief. I'm experiencing deja vu. I went through this last year at the county commissioners. For anybody who doesn't remember this, at the July 15th meeting last year, they approved a $62,500 contract with Flock Group for the software for the safety license plate readers. No problem. And then the next week, on the 22nd, they rescinded that in a split vote. I was there. I had a ringside seat. It was ugly, and it turned ugly fast. It was a big public spat that was well covered by the news media, and it all went up in court. But what came out of it was an erosion of public confidence in both county commissioners and the law enforcement. So I'm in favor of this technology. I think it's a useful tool for TPD. But can we see a little more civility in these chambers? I don't want to repeat what happened last year. So can we see a public dialogue based on mutual respect? So thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. And I'm going to do my best with every name, please. I believe this is Gwen Goldsberry, I think. And if I didn't say it right, please correct me.

Yes, it is. Can you hear me correct? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, awesome. Yes, it is Gwen Goldsberry. Yeah, so- I don't think we should be in favor of flock. I mean, our law enforcement, quite frankly, is an embarrassment. I mean, we have officers telling people to enjoy poverty. That was a few weeks ago. So I don't think we can trust them to be holding themselves accountable, A. B, I don't think we should be using flock on principle. We are eroding our public safety. I mean, I can drive. So I'm transgender. I will say that clearly. I can drive to the Planned Parenthood downtown, take a consistent route. And then that can be mapped and sent nationwide. Although, yes, it does not go to the filters for abortion. And for immigrant safety, what about transgender people, right? We see nationally that there are rollouts of states introducing transgender bans on health care, transgender bans on accessing life-saving medication. What stops our state government from doing the same thing That means when I go, my license plate could be tracked by federal agents that would wish to, you know, stop me from accessing my care that I receive pretty regularly. Another thing, looking at the time, is the... Crime in Toledo. As you see, the last couple of weeks, there's been shootings. There has been a kind of rising crime. We should be working to prevent that, not to react that. Flock is a reactionary element, right? It is not preventative. It does not ensure public safety in a way that actually helps the people. It takes away money. We could be investing into more social workers. It's a waste of our time. Can I see my time?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I believe this is Susan Kahn. It's Keen. Keen. It's difficult. Thank you, Ms. Keen. Thank you.

I am speaking on behalf of Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition based in Toledo, Ohio. NWPC strongly opposes of any and all contract extensions of the portable FLOC license plate readers for TPD. For the same reasons we oppose the city of Toledo's contracts with FLOC for their stationary license plate readers, and for the drones on the grounds that this technology is part of and feeds into the mass surveillance dragnet of US citizens created by Trump and implemented across this country, violating privacy rights, free speech rights, under the First Amendment and our Fourth Amendment protections that prohibit unreasonable searches and seizures without warrants, without probable cause. It is open to unauthorized federal access, including by ICE, to target immigrants for deportation, has been proven to be used by various police departments in Texas to stalk women, moving across state lines for illegal abortions. We are all seeing with much more clarity now what dangers this technology puts us in. This private company misrepresents itself as making us safer when in fact the company makes us less safe. And any and all contracts with it should be permanently revoked. With respect to First Amendment, the Electronic Freedom Foundation found more than 3,900 agencies across the nation that logged hundreds of unwarranted searches using flock safety cameras in 2025, of 50-51 protests, of hands-off protests, and no-kings protests across the nation, confirming that flock license plate readers have been used and will be used. To target activists simply exercising their free speech rights and right to dissent. With respect to ICE, Cleveland.com reported that more than 160 immigration related searches appeared in Cleveland's flat camera audit logs over a 30 day period recently. Months after the city says it turned on protections designed to block such searches. City officials say the fault isn't theirs, it's Flock's. The records included dozens of searches explicitly referencing ICE and other immigration related searches. As of June 22nd of this year, 71 US cities have rejected Flock's safety cameras. By ending contracts altogether or by pausing or suspending their activity upon further examination, of their efficacy and constitutionality. They are canceling their FLOC safety contract because they are no longer trust how the company handles or shares a massive amount of vehicle location data information. Local municipalities in Ohio have pushed back also against FLOC. In fact, there's one tutorial that rejected a proposed contract in Cleveland, Ohio that will end their contract on June 29th.

Thank you, Ms. Susan. That's your turn. Thank you.

Hello, my greatest concern is given the most recent incidents in the news including the recent incident with the police and I can't remember his name right now, but the rapper just down south, I can't think of his name, where they had entered his house. And ironically, it wasn't flock that caught the people who were necessarily breaking the law, it was his own personal cameras. So given the state of the country, the authoritarian lean of our current government, and the resurgence of very apparent white nationalism, what, if you use flock cameras, are you going to exactly use to control their use if an overriding federal government agency like a rogue cia unit starts going after our trans friend over here like like how do you stop the big boys from getting the information and they're the ones we're most afraid of um that's what i want to hear from here is how do we put the information into the hands of the people who are going to uphold um uphold equal application of justice under the law And that's what I wanted to hear. And I've heard Flock has a lot of safeguards, but yeah, all safeguards can be gone around at some point, hacked or whatever. So my question is, what do you do if an overarching government agency comes after something that is not necessarily that, a crime even? It's just a person existing. Thank you.

And Mr... Can our Deputy Chief or Mr. Chandler, yes, answer that question? He wanted to know if there's someone overreaching, how then do we protect? Especially on the federal level, if they're overreaching and want this information, how do we protect them from getting it?

Absolutely. So it's in FLOC's contract. If FLOC were to receive a subpoena or warrant for any of the city of Toledo's data, which again, the city owns, not FLOC, we would redirect them to the city agency where your city would decide on how to respond to that warrant or subpoena.

And so you would not be given this information. It would come back to whatever city that is contracted with, correct?

Yes, and that is in the contract that, again, we do not own the data. If we were to be approached, say, by a DA who wasn't aware of that situation, we would say, we do not own the data. You should go directly to the city's legal department or to the agency, and then your city's legal department would decide on how to respond to that.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Sean Nestor.

Hello, my name is Sean Nestor. I live at 2357 Scoutwood Avenue, and I am asking everybody on Toledo City Council to vote no on the renewal of this contract. I've heard and I've listened to everything that's been presented today, but I want to remind you that of course, if I'm a law enforcement officer, if I'm a prosecutor and I'm only worried about local public safety, I'm going to say, give me all the tools I can all the time. I'm never going to exercise restraint. because my job is tunnel vision, trying to address public safety. The challenge is that you guys have a responsibility that doesn't just include public safety, but everything else. This is not just the public safety committee, this is public safety and criminal justice reform. You're supposed to be taking into account the ways that sometimes tools and concentration of power in government can result in disastrous effects. And by the time you've allowed these powers to accumulate, they're almost impossible to de-escalate. That's why, as you were sworn in as council members, you swore to uphold the Constitution. I would ask each of you to seriously consider the line about Search and seizure. And how this is supposed to be reasonable. Is it reasonable that all of us, every single one of you, everybody in this room, when we've been driving, there is a database somewhere of where we've gone. Even though we are not suspects in a crime, we have committed no crime, but that data is recorded. Historically, up until technology changed things, that was something that you could not do. There was a reason we exercised restraint under the Fourth Amendment to say that you can't just collect data on everybody all the time. Suddenly, because there's a technological tool, we're doing an end run around constitutional protections. And if we allow it to happen, if we just say it's fine because it's helping people, I believe it's helping people. I don't doubt that. That's not in dispute. The problem is what are the long-term effects? Do we really trust that we're going to be able to hold accountable a highly politicized federal government that has, let's see, murdered U.S. citizens? Do I have to bring up Alex? Do I have to bring up Rene Good and Alex Pretty? Is there any accountability for the law enforcement officers to track them down, label them domestic terrorists, and shot them in the head? There's not. So I am not comforted by local assurances or software companies telling me, no, no, no, we have privacy in place. I work in cybersecurity. I understand that company is never going to admit to their flaws. They have them. And they will be abused. They will. There is no doubt. They will. It may not be a lot today. It may not even be a lot tomorrow. They will happen. They will monitor everybody going to and from those No Kings protests. And depending on the posture of our state or federal government, that will be used to punish people. It will. And that is why I'm asking you to respect the Constitution. Respect the Fourth Amendment. Exercise the constraints that are in place for a reason and do not allow it to be eroded because some technology comes by and says, don't worry, it's fine. And yes, we can save people, but at what cost? Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of council, my name is Tom Preston. I'm here today to urge you to reject the renewal of the contract for FLAC camera surveillance systems. Simply not a discussion about cameras. It's a discussion about the relationship between its citizens and government. It's a discussion as whether every resident of Toledo should be tracked, cataloged, and ordered simply because technology now makes it able to do so. Supporters of these systems will tell you that if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. The argument is fundamentally backwards. The Constitution was not written to protect guilty people. It was written to protect innocent people from government power. Every day, ordinary Americans drive to work, attend church, visit doctors, make friends, participate in political activities, attend support groups, and simply live their lives in peace. None of those activities are crimes. Yet systems like Flock creates permanent records of where these people travel, when they travel, and who they associate with. The question should be not why citizens should fear government surveillance. The question should be why government needs to collect and store information on movements of innocent people. History teaches us that surveillance systems rarely remain limited to their original purpose. The powers granted today for one reason become the powers used tomorrow for another. As Councilperson Geddes just explained earlier, with a payoff of $35,000, we've seen alarming examples around the country where automated surveillance technologies contribute to innocent people being detained, investigated, or arrested because the technology got it wrong. When a government database says that you were somewhere or a camera system identifies that a vehicle is being associated with an incident, suddenly the burden shifts. Instead of the government proving guilt, the citizen finds himself trying to prove innocence. That is the exact opposite of the American legal tradition. But liberty has never been measured by how effective or efficiently government can monitor its citizens. If that was the standard, the freest society would be one with cameras on every corner, a tracker on every vehicle, and a government file on every resident. That is not freedom, that is surveillance. The proper way of government is to investigate actual suspects based on evidence, probable cause, and individualized suspicion. Not to build databases that record the activities of everyone in the hope that information might become useful later. Mass surveillance treats every citizen as a potential suspect. A free society treats every citizen as innocent unless proven otherwise. The choice before council is a larger than a contract renewal. It's a choice between expanding government surveillance or preserving the privacy and liberty of Toledo residents. I urge you to reject the renewal of contract and some measures that Toledo values its constitutional rights. Thank you, Mr. Press. You're welcome.

Robots. Hello. My name is Christina Rodriguez. I would just like to reiterate what everyone else who has spoken against these cameras has said. I have a great concern about this company amassing so much data, about the surveillance state, about this information being used to target people, women who are seeking health care, immigrants in our community. And I just urge council to please vote against this. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mike Ferner. I live in Point Place, 113th Street. I found this extremely interesting and informative. I want to thank Councilwoman Gaddis for her insightful questions and was able to put down some concerns just based on the conversation here today. The representative from the company talked about the feds not being able to get into because there's a filter preventing that. My friends in the peace movement have encouraging me to sign up for signal because then you can have these confidential chats. And I said, nonsense. If the federal government wants to find out what you're doing, they're going to find out. Secondly, the data collected for being wiped after 30 days, I know some of the people are saying, well, you have this information forever. We're told that, no, it's wiped after 30 days. Now, maybe I've watched too many forensic files show, but it seems to me, in limited technical ability, that there are a lot of ways of going back to these deleted files and bringing that information out. The next point is that it... If the city wants to opt to release information to the federal government, it can do that. From everything I've heard, it sounds like it's going to be an administrative decision. And the next time there's a big scare and the hammer comes down to take care of all the people that are causing problems or suspected thereof, we're going to see things like the Patriot Act. and how the feds leaned on phone companies and other data companies to release information, and that information was coughed up in a second. We had to rely on private companies caring about constitutional protections, and they don't have a very good record at that as far as I'm concerned. And the last one talks about the FBI codes. I forget the term for it. But the FBI codes that if you want to search for something, it's got to be in one of these FBI-identified crimes. You can't just go poking around. Well, in the United Kingdom, a lot of the people in this room would be in jail because in the United Kingdom, they passed a law. that says, if you say that you support Palestine action, that is a crime, and you are a domestic terrorist. Now, Lord knows, I hope that doesn't happen here, but you don't know what the political atmosphere is going to be like. So to me, it's not a question of whether it's useful locally. I think it is. But we're in an age where there's things down the road that we have to look at. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. Michael Haines.

I guess first of all, my name is Michael Haines. I'm president of Toledo Police Patrolmen's Association. My statements are, how can we refuse technology with where we're at today? We'll basically be blasted into the Stone Age police-wise if we don't have the opportunity to use technology. As the deputy or the assistant chief said, There's going to be crimes, missing people, and so forth that won't be found as quickly or if at all. As far as being surveilled that we keep hearing, I guess we should all get rid of our phones. Google, Facebook, Insta, all that stuff. That tracks us every single day. Game players, how many people have just hit agree on the 30 pages of user agreement because they don't want to read the 30 pages of it and most of it doesn't make sense anyway. We're all being tracked. It all gets sold. This and that. This, that is how every platform does it. That's number one. Number two is accountability is what I keep hearing also. You guys, you ladies and gentlemen, are our accountability. You're going to track with your depth and detail of questions and how involved you are with this particular platform. You will be paying attention to what we are doing, making sure the chief, the deputy chief, our administrators are performing it correctly with the logs and that kind of stuff. These cameras are placed in public spaces where one has no reasonable expectation of privacy in the public, on the same roads, intersections, and public areas that we all travel every day. They do not peer into homes, track personal habits, or monitor private behavior. They capture only what is already visible to any passerby. We allow ourselves to be subjected to the everyday surveillance by games, apps, Instagram, Facebook, on our own phones that we blindly agree to the conditions and terms. That information is sold and we actually pay for them to sell our information and collect it. Flock cameras have become an essential tool in responding to some of the most urgent and heartbreaking situations we face. When a child goes missing, minutes matter. When an adult with dementia or Alzheimer's wanders from home, every second counts. These cameras allow officers to quickly identify the last known direction of travel, narrowing search areas and dramatically increasing the chances of bringing vulnerable people home safely. They are equally critical in locating stolen vehicles, tracking cars used in serious crimes. Whether it's a robbery, shooting, kidnapping, or a statewide alert, flat cameras give law enforcement the ability to follow a vehicle's path, not just locally, but across country, county, and state lines, and even nationwide. This is how modern policing works. It's fast, it's accurate, and it's data-driven. These cameras are not used for frivolous tracking. They are tools for curiosity, convenience, and not personal interest. Their use is restricted to legitimate policing purposes, period. Every search is logged, audited, and accountable. The system itself, as Representative Flock explained, will not be Tampering footage will not be altered, spliced, manipulated, or distorted. Thank you, Mr. Haynes.

Thank you, sir.

I will email every one of you the rest. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Haynes. I believe this is Belinda Corabias. I'm sorry if I didn't say it right. I'm sure I said it wrong.

That's okay. Sorry. Belinda Corabias.

Thank you. So good afternoon. My name is Belinda Covarrubias. I am the director of El Centro Hub. I am a member of APPS and a community advocate. I grew up in the Old South End, and I serve families in that community, immigrant families, working families, black and brown families who work too often.

Put your mic down. We can hear you. There you go.

Black and brown families who are too often overlooked. So today I am here to speak for them and I'm speaking as one of them. I want to share a typical day, my typical day with all of you. In the mornings, I take my son to summer camp. There's one flat camera on that route that I know of. Then I go to work and we pass two more that I know of. After my workday is done, I take my son to football practice. Three more cameras. And then I would love to say that I go to the gym every day, but I mean like three to five times a week, three times a week I go to the gym, five more cameras that I am passing. Those are only the cameras that we know about. I'm not a criminal. My son is 11. He is not a suspect. We are a Toledo family, and we're living a Toledo day. And yet, as we come and go, our location is photographed and logged more than 20 times before that day is over. What I need this council to hear today is historically, surveillance has never fallen evenly across this country. It has always pressed hardest on black and brown communities, Immigrant families and working people who have the least power and the most to lose. Whatever the map of this camera looks like, what I can tell you is exactly who carries the fear. The families that I serve. That is not safety. Real public safety. The type of safety that I believe in must be equitable. It must protect everybody. Or it is not safety. It is control that is directed at only some of us. As Hub Director, I see firsthand what that does. Families are afraid to ask for help. Months ago, this council passed Ordinance 09526, and it was my privilege to stand with the community that worked with you to pass it. You promised that Toledo would not use our resources for immigration enforcement. You said that Toledo is a welcoming city, and we believed you. So please do not let a camera contract undo that promise. In Dayton, two hours away from here, with the same cameras, an audit found its data search for immigration more than 7,000 times. 7,000. Dayton already had a written policy forbidding exactly what we're hearing today. It stopped nothing. Dayton suspended that program and bagged all of those cameras. We do not want Toledo to be the next Dayton.

Thank you, Ms. Belinda. Thank you.

Good afternoon, council. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay. As before, this council- Could you please state your name? I'm sorry, Rebecca Bundy. Thank you. I was before this council a couple months ago seeking protections for our community against overreaching and unlawful enforcement against immigrants. Although council may not see the impacts of such decision, I guarantee you that the impacts from stances like that one, as well as this decision today on Flock, is felt by newcomers and other marginalized individuals in our community every day. I ask this council again to step up for members of our community who are most vulnerable. I understand the benefits and appeals from systems like FLOC. I know that they impact investigations and the ability to hunt down those expected of crime. This is not a stance against local law enforcement. However, what I see is a growing surveillance state that does not make us safer. and does not have the boundaries we need. Our cameras and trackers are not new. The aggregation of data, the increasing power of artificial intelligence, which interprets the biases of our society, and the caliber of mass surveillance of our persons do threaten the freedom and privacy of all of us. Safety depends very much on who is the watcher and who is the watched. It is undeniably impacted by indomitable characteristics of both parties. And even when we limit our data, we can't fully limit where our data goes once we share it with another entity. And I have seen non-TPD law enforcement act as an instrument of ICE in many instances. As I have said before, the egregious behavior of what I see in my day to day includes blatant violations of constitutional and basic human rights. I have seen this against those who are here legally and those who are without status alike. It is no secret that the federal government has taken an extremely offensive stance against newcomers as well as dissenters. Federal government in its own communications to officers instruct them to turn the creative knob up to 11. I heard testimony from an officer just a couple weeks ago, which plainly stated that they don't follow the law on warrantless arrests that lead to indefinite detention without the opportunity to see a judge for weeks or months, maybe years. The behavior is ongoing. To know such surveillance in these times where it is incapable of truly limiting its use is playing with fires. More of us like me won't feel that fire right away because of the privilege of my skin and where I was born. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt all of us, though. We ought to be very mindful of our privilege in deciding what is worth sacrificing for safety and whose safety we're talking about. I encourage this council to decline to renew its contract.

Thank you.

Yes, Amanda.

Hi, my name's Amanda Russell. I grew up in the south end, Nebraska in Westwood. My mom's 30 years Jeep, my dad helped build the city. My uncle is a scientist here, I'm an inventor here. I own a local landscape company. I have my own case going on right now with the TPD camera. A man approached me in AA because I run the local AA groups, asked me to help him traffic children. I refuse. The next day, a girl, young girl, runs into me on Monroe Street in Douglas after my AA meeting, after I chair an anniversary meeting. I ask the prosecutors. I call them. I talk to them. Somebody cancels my meeting with them. Why did they do that? And then I sit at the desk with Toledo police, I ask them, can you pull that camera to see where the girl come in my lane? They say, only if it works. How do you know if those cameras are going to work? How do you know that Toledo police are going to be working in real time and that the people, the victims like me who are involved just doesn't get swept under the rug? Why are there no flat cameras up by the strip clubs? Why are they trafficking kids at the Quality Inn right now? I'm curious because I keep asking questions and nobody wants to answer me. You're ruining my city. And it's upsetting me. It's upsetting my friends. I know there's big money here. There really is. I do really well in my company. I love it. I love it. I don't need people targeting me. to do things to me. It's unfair to me. I do not want to work with those people. I cannot even get, when I walk into the safety building, I can't even get those guys at the desk. Oh yeah, man. That's how I feel. I'm shaking right now. They won't even walk me upstairs to go talk to a detective. Why? Please. I can't even bring my kids to my mom's house because I'm too scared. I cannot even see my youngest son because I am too scared. Do you know how scary those people are? They will kill you and toss you in the river. I'm upset. I don't understand why they keep sweeping things under the rug. I don't know who's involved with placing the flocks, but I would say we need one up by the quality end. Those are new owners for the last only year. I sit up there, I go out with my boyfriend who works for the city. He tells me stuff. It's upsetting to me to hear the things that are not being addressed, are not being looked at, don't care. How do you just not care about the kids in the city? Cuz you all lived your life, so they don't matter? That's wrong. That's how I got treated my whole life. I was just a tax credit. For my mother. And I didn't really get raised real good. I had bad parents. Busy and a bad parent.

Thank you, Ms. Russell. Thank you. Russell Shackleford.

I'm Russell Shackleford, and I believe that according to a recent Trump executive order, I might be a domestic terrorist, too. Philosopher Jerry Buntham, way back in 1786, coined the term panopticon to describe a prison architected such that a single guard could observe any prisoner at any time. The prisoners would never know if someone was watching. They just had to assume that every action was being scrutinized. Flack has taken the idea of the Panopticon and applied it not to a prison, but to the United States of America. In September of last year, Forbes magazine ran an article about Flack CEO Garrett Lanley, where he claimed that his company will eradicate nearly all crime in the United States of America in the next 10 years. And I'll eat my hat if that happens. I think the argument is that unless and until the crime rate drops to absolutely zero, we need to arm our prosecutors and our cops with every trick in the book, even if that means the complete erasure of privacy. In a free country, the job of the police is hard. In a police state, the job of the police is easy. By partnering with FROC, the Toledo City Council are active participants in the construction of a low-place state in the United States of America. Trevor forgot to mention that FLAC intentionally restricts officers to be as vague as possible when using the FLAC system, suggesting that every single search can be documented with the same one word explanation, investigation. Sheriff's deputies in Johnson County, Texas used Flock for an investigation when they were tracking a woman suspected of going out of state to get a legal abortion. As of two weeks ago, 404 Media has reported on more than a dozen cases of corrupt police officers using Flock to illegally stalk past, present, or prospective romantic partners. And that's just the stories that hit the news. There's a lot more abuse out there that we don't know about. Remember just down the road in Rosswood where two police officers in a row, a former police chief and his son, got busted for blatantly abusing their work database access for personal reasons, including creeping out of your home when they pulled over? Well, Flack has great advice for officers like that. Just describe the search as part of an investigation so that then the department can avoid public scrutiny and accountability. Wink, wink. Officers around the country have been given access to their city FRAC accounts to immigration enforcement, ICE, HSI, CBP, bypassing controls, and legislative approvals. Power should be coupled with accountability, but FRAC erodes accountability. Many officers in many departments violate their department policies by sharing FRAC data with their buddies in federal law enforcement because FRAC instructs officers to conceal the details of use. It's not just law enforcement that use FRAC data. Beaufort City Schools in Georgia use FRAC to kick students out of school. They falsely claim that a student wasn't living in a district and being under access to an education, socially stigmatizing her or her peers and causing havoc for the family involved. All because the FRAC system indicated that the parent's car was spending the night outside of the district. The parent later explained that they had lied on a vehicle to a relative whose car broke down.

Thank you, Mr. Schockfer. Thank you, sir. I support this statement. Jessica Castellani, I believe.

Castellani.

Castellani, I'm sorry.

That's okay. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, so my name is Jessica Castellani. This is my first time ever coming to a city council meeting, so thank you for your attention. A lot of our concerns have been covered already. Something that I did want to kind of clarify. teach philosophy adjunct and so this is something very close to my heart but at the same time I'm in the tech spaces and so I've overheard a lot of the concerns that have been brought up before but as people have mentioned what is most important today is that there are two issues that come with a surveillance state that people have already mentioned first is that it is harmful and it can show the exercise of of our civil liberties. With respect to civil liberties, consider surveillance of people when they're thinking, reading, communicating to others in order to make up their minds about political or social issues. Such intellectual surveillance is especially dangerous because it, one, can cause people to not have these debates, these conversations, but two, as people have said nationally, those who are um disagree with the government have in many ways been called domestic terrorists um and that this tracking could become a source to come after us for our right to petition our first speech our fourth amendment right to have privacy and to have private communications and even though that is in public We should still be free to have these discussions, whether we're safe in public or not. And then secondly, it poses the effect of a power dynamic, as we've mentioned before, where there is the watcher and the one being watched. And this can cause discrimination, coercion, and a threat of selective enforcement, such as being blackmailed for something that you aren't even being surveilled for. They just have this information now. And I'm also, again, I'm trustworthy to lead our own city council. But once that information gets out of our hands, that's very scary. And I would just like to point out that there is an organization that is against flat cameras. I decide, well, it's deflock. It's deflock.org, and you can visit their website, and it gives you a lot of information against flock cameras. There are over 100, 36, 500, and 31,000 flock cameras across the United States. But 71 cities have rejected them. So I would just suggest that when it goes to better law, and social support instead of more technology. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Kevin Boyer.

How are you guys doing today? I'm Kevin Boyer. I don't know. How are we sitting here having a conversation about mass surveillance right now? I don't understand how you can't just hear that and not fully understand that it's not okay. Do you guys know who Garrett Langley is? No? CEO of Flock? So you're going to give him all that data, don't even know who he is? Have you guys read the contract? Clearly not. You had so many questions about it. So you haven't read the contract. You don't know who owns it. You know who Larry Ellison is? He's the guy who gave Garrett the money to start the company. And he said, when everyone knows they're being watched, they will be on their best behavior. I don't know how you can't just hear that and think that's not okay. I don't know. Most of these people covered most of it. Another thing, you do not own the data. Toledo Police does not own the data. I don't care what a big tech salesman says. You don't own the data. Is the data center here right now? No. It's an Amazon Web Service data center. It goes there, and they let you have it. So who has access to that data center? You have absolutely no clue. These cops have no clue. Those two lawyers have no clue. That salesman doesn't even have a clue. He's here to sell you the snake oil. So with that, I'm out of my time. Thank you.

Lindsay Cunningham.

Hi city council members. A lot of what I was worried about was covered. But I'm going to ask that you address many things before. passing this agreement. Questions that I'm concerned about are, first of all, he said that the data goes to the Amazon server, if that is true. In November of 2025, YouTuber Ben Jordan was able to hack 80,000 plot cameras in less than 30 seconds. That is a real security and data breach. And that is our private information going to whomever is able to hack the plot cameras. I have no idea if those security breaches have been addressed or not. Also, there is a data sharing agreement that the TPD has. How many agencies are a part of that data sharing agreement? And who are they? And is there a public record of who can access that information without any proof or consent from the TPD after they have signed the data sharing agreement? I would really like to know who has access to it. You also mentioned that there are filters put in place June 1st. What is keeping any enforcement agency or agency from turning those filters back on the people? The programming is fairly simple. You can literally use those filters to target immigrants, to target women that are going through reproductive health. Sorry, I'm not good at public speaking. I agree with the ideology of Antifa, and I have bumper stickers on my car. Mike Navar literally said in a statement to the Toledo Free Press that he can use a bumper sticker to more easily find a vehicle. So what assurances do I have as a citizen that another agency that does eventually get a hold of that data is going to use that to track me and my movements as I run the two businesses that I run, small businesses in Toledo and try to help the community. I'm everywhere with my car. It's literally how I survive. Let's see. If you are going to go through with this, because I don't want to, I understand that there are serious benefits to technology locally. If we go through with this at all, I would hope that you have an agreement made through the council and the TPD first, and you set lots of regulations and lots of standards on who can access that data. If you are the only thing standing between the TPD sharing our information with everyone else, for the most part, we kind of need you to step in and do that. Because there is serious lack of trust in our state and our federal government, but definitely our state too.

Hello, Council. My name's Jared Steele. I did not prepare anything today, so thank you for your patience here. I just wanted to say that Flock's main goal of selling us their product is fear-mongering. They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of our world that we live in. They want us to be afraid of our own city that we live in. I have been all over Toledo by car, by bicycle, and on my feet. I do not feel scared in this city. This is a wonderful city that I grew up in, that I love, that I want to see doing better. I believe that rather than investing in surveillance systems, that I believe all of the examples that were given talked about crimes that were, or people that were caught for crimes that had already been committed. These cameras are not preventing new crimes from happening. Watching people constantly is only going to add more stress, more fear, more anxiety. I don't believe that the common average citizen wants to be watched and tracked everywhere that they go. As far as the representative from FLAC, we have no reason to trust anything that he is saying. He is a PR specialist, public relations specialist. His job, his whole job is to go make bad things sound good. I'm urging you as a resident of the city of Toledo to vote no on this matter.

Thank you. I'm sorry if I'm not saying it right. I apologize.

Hello, everyone. My name is . So as a Palestinian and a second generation immigrant, I know what it looks like when surveillance becomes woven into everyday life. In Palestine, my family lives under military occupation where they're being watched constantly and every part of their life is surveilled. So because of that experience, I deeply appreciate the freedoms and the sense of security I have felt for most of my life here in Toledo. So I would hate to see us heading down a path where most of our lives are surveilled. And that's why I'm asking you to not renew this contract with FLOC. As mentioned, with many of the examples people have already shared, across the country, communities have learned that these systems don't always stay within the lines that they were promised. Like I know there were answers to a lot of the concerns, but the issue is the repeated trend of them not staying within the limits that were promised. In San Francisco, an audit found that local camera data was searched hundreds of times on behalf of federal and out-of-state agencies, despite the fact that they had laws that were saying they were going to prevent that. Likewise, in Illinois, investigators found federal agencies including Customs and Border Protection were accessing license plate data, again, despite restrictions that were in place. Other investigations have shown that ICE has been able to obtain information through partnerships with local law enforcement, which is concerning to us as a community because, again, it really just continues to create this distrust between the system when people aren't actually getting what is promised or something changes or there's a loophole. Toledo prides itself, of course, in being a welcoming city. People come here to build lives, create families, start businesses, and contribute to the community. But people can't feel welcomed when they're actively being tracked and watched. And like mentioned earlier, Being surveilled in this way really backs people into a guilty until proven innocent rather than the other way around, which is how it's supposed to be. I've heard a little bit of the argument that since recently we had a shooting and there's all these crimes, we should be having this. But I want to reiterate, like mentioned from several people before, that unfortunately, us having these cameras didn't prevent what occurred. And I urge you guys to actually place resources towards preventative measures rather than stripping away the rights of everyone with the hopes of being able to track certain things. So I think the examples of the misuses are a lot more significant than the 12 or two dozen that was mentioned earlier just simply with what was shared in the room today. And again, I think that those numbers really have to do with all the technicalities that are set up, technically this word and that, but ultimately I think that our community doesn't want to be increasingly surveilled, so I ask that you guys place funding towards preventative measures, because there's a lot that our community can benefit there. So, thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Enrique Garcia, and I'm here to tell you to please oppose the Flock cameras. Flock is integrated with an AI named Palantir. So Flock isn't just pointed at you, it's tracking you. It's listening to you. It knows your habits, your routes. It zooms into your phone. There's no reason why anyone should be able to do that, have that type of power. Mr. Flock here mentioned that they're putting many security systems in place to not allow any access. I just want to personally say I was able to access about 10 Flock cameras' login interface. which is the equivalent of standing in front of your house and turning on the doorknob. I just, you know, that's not a good security. Clock systems shouldn't be allowed to be placed in the open internet. Another thing I want to say is that I agree with the chief prosecutor, Ms. Stacey, When she said she does not want to live in a surveillance state, a surveillance state is a dangerous state, so we should take her word for that. That's it. Thank you.

I want to thank all of our council members for being here today. I want to thank the community for coming out today. That being all, this meeting is adjourned.