Brunswick residents voice concerns with Flock Safety cameras

BRUNSWICK — Residents brought up safety and privacy concerns for Flock Safety cameras at Brunswick City Council's meeting Monday. Police Chief Robert Safran said the city formed a committee to outline policy for camera use and to determine camera placement for the city's Flock cameras in 2021. The cameras were installed later that year with the approval of Council. "To dispel any rumors, the city started with 10 cameras, and it still has 10 cameras," he said. "Some of the misinformation on social media was that we're adding all these additional cameras." The cameras take pictures of license plates as vehicles pass by, and the plate image is stored for 30 days until it is purged from the system, Safran said. Cameras in Brunswick cover one lane of traffic. "It's based on the plain view doctrine," he said. "Essentially, a vehicle on the roadway, its license plate and the operator have no expectation of privacy. Capturing this image of their license plate is not a Fourth Amendment violation. It's not a search, if you will." Resident Colleen Crowley expressed concerns about the cameras being trained to detect things other than license plates, such as faces. "I'm very scared about where this could possibly go," she said. "Even though you guys may have the best of intentions and believe everything that these people said that there are so many advantages. We know how well that works. Things always end up getting out of hand." Safran described the cameras as a "force multiplier" for the department. They can be used proactively for warrants, stolen vehicles and Amber Alerts and reactively for investigations. Successful uses of the cameras were provided by Safran. For instance, the suspect of a rape involving a 12-year-old girl was tracked and arrested in 2023, and a robbery suspect was linked to a second robbery and arrested in 2024. Cameras are also used when there are hit-skip crashes, speeding motorcycles and thefts. Safran said about 75 percent of the 140 incidents that have occurred at Meijer in the past two years are related to theft. "We use the Flock cameras to track suspects to make arrests," he said. "These aren't people stealing just a pack of bubble gum and some shoes. There's a theft ring that's operating out of the Detroit, Toledo area. We linked that, because of Flock, to other thefts in Northeast Ohio, so the cameras are invaluable for that sort of thing." Resident Jennifer Arida believes the risks outweigh the benefits for a community like Brunswick. "The way these cameras have been popping up across the nation without the general public's knowledge is creepy and shady," she said. "Now that more and more people are noticing, the backlash is starting to grow. Please do the responsible thing and remove these cameras from our city and protect your residents." The Federal Bureau of Investigation runs Criminal Justice Information Services, which has 13 points of criteria for criminal information systems. Safran said Flock is in compliance with the criteria. "The representative I talked to on Wednesday, he said at the beginning there were individual cameras that were attempted to be hacked into, and Flock has made some changes to their system, so it is a secure network," he said. "If the safety committee wanted, I could probably arrange for someone from Flock to come here and talk to you about firewalls and 256-bit encryption and all those things." A Brunswick sergeant is in charge of the city's Flock system, and he can see who is logging in and what they are running, Safran said. The system requires multi-factor authentication. "There's an internal audit, if you will," he said. "In the four-and-a-half-years we've had the cameras, I've never had a complaint of them being misused. If we did, there is an audit trail that would be available to check into." Arida focused her concerns on cybersecurity and how the data from the cameras could be used and shared. She said artificial intelligence is making it easier for hackers to bypass security measures like multifactor authentication. "We are in a new era of AI, where technology is developing faster than the public understands, and faster than the laws can catch up," she said. "The only responsible thing to do is to take these cameras out of Brunswick and end the contract with Flock." Contact reporter Madisyn Woodring at (330) 721-4049 or mwoodring@medina-gazette.com.