Three months ago today, four police officers in their squad cars wrongfully ambushed me and my wife after tracking us with Flock cameras for days. On Tuesday, our city council voted to cancel its Flock contract.
Tuesday, I was on vacation, headed to Canada to fish on Lake of the Woods. Local news stations were asking me for comment regarding the upcoming council meeting with Flock on the docket. I woke up Wednesday morning to a text from a friend with a photo from KARE11 News, the local NBC affiliate, reporting that the Plymouth City Council had almost unanimously voted to cancel the Flock contract. The lone holdout on the seven-person council was Plymouthâs Mayor, Jeff Wosje.
âI know people have concern, but Iâm weighing this against what we all talked aboutâthe ability to keep our residents safe and catch the bad guysâversus basically the bad PR that Flock has,â Wosje said, according to MPR News.
âAnd Iâm going to come down and on the side of our public safety, our police department, to say if they need a tool in their toolbox. Iâm going to be OK if thereâs a little heat to take for that,â Wosje reportedly added.
Wosje is up for re-election in November and is facing off with Deputy Mayor Clark Gregor, who voted with the rest of the council to cancel the Flock contract.
The Drive reader Doug Maltby was at the three-hour council meeting, which took place after a two-hour Flock study session. Maltby said Chief Fadden presented a case during the study session of how Flock is used by the Plymouth Police Department, how it helps solve crimes, and why itâs important for keeping the public safe. Maltby noted that Chief Fadden came prepared with a slide addressing my wrongful stop on June 28, knowing it would come up, though it wasnât set to be part of the presentation if it wasnât brought up during questioning. It was brought up.
Chief Faddenâs presentation noted that Plymouth was no longer sharing its Flock data with other west metro police departments. It previously shared data with about 36 other departments. Maltby noted that Faddenâs reasoning for the change was that counties up north had been searched for immigration purposes, and that caused the city of Plymouth to take pause.
Itâs unclear how long it will take for the cameras to be removed from Plymouth or whether another automatic license plate reader system, such as Axon or Leonardo, will take its place.
Less than two months after my interaction with the police, Flockâs CEO Garrett Langley admitted the companyâs failures that put innocent people like me at risk and announced changes.
Now, three months after the fact, the city I live inâthe one put on the national stageâis ditching Flock.
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