Lansing moves to de-Flock

Backus listed more than half a dozen local crimes he said were solved through the use of license plates, including violent and recent cases.

Lansing City Council members voted 7-1 on a resolution Monday calling on the city to cancel its contracts for Flock license plate cameras. The resolution urges the city to act but the city administration and police department would need to take additional steps to cancel the contracts for the city’s seven locations of Flock cameras.

Council members heard hours of residents, including Congressional candidate William Lawrence, urging them to oppose the cameras amid widespread distrust.

Many cited national incidents in which police officers have been found to use the camera network to stalk exes, track protesters and other abuses.

Virtually all of the speakers were opposed to Flock cameras and several said they planned to run for office if council members didn’t approve the proposal. One speaker said council members would support “mass execution chambers as long as they were built by unions.”

Council member Adam Hussain said he was uncomfortable taking a “tool out of the toolbox” of the Lansing Police Department.

He said many of the speakers, like he had done, had weighed the “impact on public safety with the potential for misuse” and made a decision of conscience to call for the removal.

Lansing Police Chief Rob Backus defended the department’s use of the cameras, which were installed at intersections primarily in the north side of the city starting in 2024 with the help of grant money that paid for the previous years. Backus said the department has internal controls over who can use the data and the department does not allow others to have access to local data, including federal agencies.

The measure was introduced by council member Ryan Kost, who said he was surprised that Backus had been invited to speak at the meeting. Council President Peter Spadafore said several council members had requested the chief.

He said the Flock cameras capture a view of the rear of a car and the license plate, along with a timestamp and officers can infer the direction of travel. The cameras, he said, do not include any identifying information beside the license plate and it does not capture images of anyone inside the vehicle.

Kost said Backus had said at a meeting earlier this year that Flock information wasn’t critical to solving many of the cases.

Backus said the license plate information from the cameras was critical to the cases and he disagreed with Kost.

Kost said he doubted Backus’s assurances of local control of the data and said there are avenues for abuse.

Spadafore was the lone opposition and said the proposal was rushed with unclear consequences for the city beyond the contracts.

Additional language: The Lansing City Council formally requests that the City Administration and the Lansing Police Department terminate all existing contracts and agreements with Flock for the operation or use of automated license plate reader cameras

“Lansing City Council further requests that the City Administration refrain from entering into any future agreement for AI-assisted automated license plate reader systems until the City has facilitated robust public engagement, a transparent privacy impact assessment, and established clear policies governing data collection, retention, sharing, auditing, and oversight.”