Kent renews contract to keep crime-fighting Flock cameras

Flock cameras, posted at high traffic and criminal activity areas across the city to capture a vehicle’s make, model, color and license plate, have become a key crime-fighting technology for the Kent Police Department.

“The cameras have had a tremendous impact on solving crime,” Kent Police Assistant Chief Jarod Kasner said in a Feb. 20 email. “As you may know, the cameras use license plate reader technology to identify vehicles as they pass into camera view. They have aided in crimes such as stolen vehicles, assaults, homicides and the location of missing people (i.e. a Silver Alerts on vehicles).”

The Kent City Council on Feb. 18 unanimously approved renewal of an agreement with Atlanta, Georgia-based Flock Group Inc., at an annual rate of about $77,000 for 20 cameras and the hardware and software programs. Revenue from the city’s red-light camera program will pay for the Flock cameras. Kent Police started using the cameras in January 2023.

“Since the first year of service (2023), Flock cameras have been instrumental in aiding or solving several hundred Kent Police cases and locating multiple stolen cars, stolen license plates, crime vehicles and missing persons within the city,” according to city documents given to the council.

Flock cameras do not photograph occupants of a vehicle and do not have facial recognition. Photos of the vehicles are kept for 30 days.

Police and Flock employees decide where to place the cameras.

“There are a lot of factors that go into deciding camera placement,” Kasner said. “The primary criteria were locations that had both high vehicle traffic and persistent criminal activity. We worked with Flock and examined lighting considerations, placement on ingress and egress routes within the city, as well as positioning them on city property.”

Flock and Kent Police developed hotlists, which gives officers instant alerts on computers in their patrol vehicles if a captured license plate matches a plate for missing persons, Amber alerts, felony warrants, stolen vehicles or stolen plates. All hotlist hits are required to be verified by an officer prior to any law enforcement action being taken, according to Flock.

Data is used for law enforcement purposes only, according to Flock. Data is owned by the Kent Police Department and is never sold to third parties. The system may only be accessed by Kent Police officers who have been trained in its use, for official and legitimate law enforcement purposes, and for a valid reason associated with an official case report or investigation.

Kent Police used vehicle information captured by the cameras to help arrest a 17-year-old Tacoma boy recently charged with first-degree murder in a November 2024 shooting at the intersection of Military Road South and Veterans Drive.

Prince J. Mayamba allegedly walked up to a vehicle at the intersection and fired six shots, killing the driver, a 21-year-old SeaTac man. Detectives used license plate information to track the vehicle that reportedly helped Mayamba leave the area.

All of the law enforcement agencies across the nation that contract with Flock have access to the information captured by every other department’s cameras. Neighboring cities to Kent with the Flock system include Auburn, Covington, Federal Way, Des Moines, Renton, SeaTac and Tukwila.

“The cameras have also assisted with solving violent crimes for other cities,” Kasner said.

Flock claims to have cameras in 5,000 communities. The company, which started in 2017, in addition to law enforcement agencies, contracts with neighborhood groups and private businesses.

Flock provides a transparency page for each agency that compiles how many license plates the cameras capture in 30-day periods. The Feb. 20 posting on its Kent Police page lists the capture of 566,675 license plates or about 18,889 per day. Out of those, 1,274 matched hotlist categories. A total of 531 searches were made by officers.

Opposed to cameras

Despite the help to police agencies, the American Civil Liberties Union is one group that questions the invasion into people’s private lives.

“Flock is pushing the adoption of surveillance devices by private parties and folding them into a larger, centralized network that is fast becoming a key policing infrastructure, all while pushing to expand beyond license plate recognition to other forms of AI machine vision and simultaneously making it much easier to install and connect outdoor cameras,” according to an ACLU white paper published in 2022. “If successful, the convergence of these trends — whether under the aegis of Flock or other companies — threatens to bring an entirely new level of surveillance to American communities, where it will further undermine Americans’ privacy, disproportionately harm historically disadvantaged communities, and generally shift power to the government from the governed in our nation.”

A resident in Norfolk, Virginia filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia challenging the city’s use of more than 170 Flock cameras to read license plates, according to the Institute for Justice website. A judge on Feb. 5 allowed that suit to continue despite the city’s motion to dismiss the case.

“Unlike red light or speed cameras, which are triggered by specific violations, Flock cameras record every vehicle that drives by,” according to the Institute for Justice website. “The cameras then upload the data to a server and create a ‘vehicle fingerprint,’ which allows anyone with access to the Flock database to track everywhere that vehicle goes, all without a warrant.”

Institute for Justice attorney Michael Soyfer praised the judge’s ruling.

“This is a massive first step toward protecting the Fourth Amendment rights of everyone who drives through Norfolk,” Soyfer said. “These cameras can track people’s every move over a prolonged time period. If the government wants to do that, it should have to get a warrant.”

Kent’s Flock start

Mayor Dana Ralph proposed in her 2023-2024 budget to provide up to $92,00o to pay for the Flock system.

“State-level police reform bills have made apprehending criminal suspects significantly more challenging,” Ralph said at the time about the reasons for adding the cameras. “It will provide police with a better opportunity to locate suspect vehicles and solve crime.”

The first year’s contract (2023) with Flock cost Kent $73,767, of which $32,000 was paid with a grant from the Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority, according to city documents.

The contract automatically renews on an annual basis, unless terminated in accordance with contract terms. The second year’s contract (2024) will cost approximately $50,692 due to credits received for uninstalled hardware. The ongoing annual renewal cost is estimated to be approximately $77,000.

An officer looks at information provided by the Flock cameras. COURTESY PHOTO, Flock

A Flock camera captures a vehicle’s make, model and license plate that police officers can view on computers. COURTESY PHOTO, Flock