COLUMBIA — At least 10 law enforcement officers in South Carolina have been reprimanded this year for inappropriate use of surveillance cameras like those operated by Flock Safety.
Most of the reported misconduct occurred in the Upstate and involved unauthorized searches of the camera system to track lovers and other acquaintances.
In the Midlands, only one case of officer misconduct using surveillance cameras or license plate readers has been revealed so far this year, involving a Richland County sheriff’s deputy, according to information from the ACLU of South Carolina.
In light of mounting questions nationwide surrounding Flock cameras, we took a look at local policies surrounding the controversial license plate readers.
What happened in Richland County?
A Richland County deputy lost his job in July for inappropriate use of the department’s Flock camera system meant for reading license plates and tracking vehicles.
A news release from the department said former deputy Russell Kenton II misused his access to the Flock system by researching information that was not meant for law enforcement purposes. The agency did not provide details about what information Kenton was researching or for what purpose.
The misuse was discovered in an audit conducted on July 24, and Kenton terminated and arrested a few days later.
“I hold my deputies to a higher standard because of the trust our community places in them,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said in the July news release. “Any act that violates that trust is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
The Richland County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to questions about how it will ensure such misuse of its Flock system doesn’t happen moving forward.
The sheriff’s department’s Flock policies
Like a couple other Midlands law enforcement agencies, the sheriff’s department has an online transparency portal for its Flock usage. Those portals often look different for each agency that chooses to publish one.
Flock Safety says more than 1,500 agencies have published a transparency portal.
The Richland County Sheriff’s Department, for example, has included in its portal a policy that establishes guidelines for the use of automated license plate readers.
“The portal gives your community a direct view of your policy, retention period, sharing partners, and search activity, in your agency’s own words,” Flock said in a blog post published Aug. 13.
The company urged agencies that had not published a portal to “please, turn it on.” But not all Midlands agencies have.
According to Richland County policy, deputies who receive an alert must visually verity that the tag info provided in the alert matches one connected to an investigative or enforcement interest within the department’s jurisdiction.
Before any search in the database is conducted, authorized users have to first enter the case number associated with the search, the policy says. Once it is confirmed that an alert is valid, appropriate law enforcement action can be taken, if necessary.
The policy requires deputies to first confirm that vehicles identified in alerts are still wanted or listed as having investigative significance before any action or stops are initiated.
Richland County Sheriff’s Department’s manager for license plate readers determines which employees can access the database, and any requests to use the system are handled on a case-by-case basis. The data is to be used for official law enforcement purposes only and can be shared with other criminal justice agencies for the same reasons, upon written request.
The sheriff’s department did not respond to multiple requests from The Post and Courier for more details about its use of Flock .
What protocols are in place at other Midlands agencies?
Other law enforcement agencies in the Midlands have different policies for how they use Flock.
Flock in Irmo
Irmo’s Police Chief Bobby Dale said his department uses the Flock system daily on investigations. The license plate readers in the town take pictures of the back of cars and capture certain characteristics, such as bumper stickers. But the main focus is the tag on the back of the vehicles.
Dale considers the camera system a tool to help the department solve crimes, find victims and hold criminals accountable. But he acknowledges that misuse has been happening throughout the country.
“Almost everyday for the past week or two, I’ve seen where officers are being suspended, fired and arrested for basically tracking their ex-lover through the area that they work, just to know where they are,” Dale said last month. “That’s not what we’re using it for. That’s not what it’s intended for.”
Irmo police’s policies for employee misconduct includes inappropriate use of the Flock system.
“We have policies in place for everything,” Dale said, noting that law enforcement misconduct also includes things like misuse of tasers and handcuffs.
Most of the Flock entries made in Irmo are by department investigators.
Patrol officers will get alerts through a system app, too, when certain cars enter the area.
“But they can’t just open that and have free access to any and everything,” Dale said.
The officers have to go through a multifactor authentication process to verify they are the ones accessing the system.
Investigators in the department are able to create custom “hot lists” that can include cars associated with situations like burglaries where the vehicle’s tag is the only information law enforcement has.
“They could put (the tag information) in the system, and if that car came back into the area and hit (a license plate reader), it would alert our officers,” Dale said.
At the same time, Flock has a preventative audit software that will alert the Irmo command staff if a certain tag keeps popping up in the system. In addition to that, Dale said the department has created a policy requiring an in-house audit be conducted quarterly to review what the officers are putting into the Flock system or running for investigative reasons.
If it is determined that an officer in the Irmo Police Department used the Flock system in a way that is against the agency’s policies, Dale said he would assign the case to the professional standards unit, which is essentially the assistant police chief.
An investigation would be conducted like it would with any other case. This includes looking at body cams, incident reports and other statements to make a recommendation on how the office should be disciplined, if at all.
Transparency portals in Lexington and Elgin
Like the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, Lexington police have an online Flock transparency portal that shows the public general info including how long data is retained and the number of cameras in the area, plus more detailed stats such as the number of vehicles detected, user searches and hotlist hits in the last 30 days. The Elgin Police Department also shares that information publicly.
Lieutenant Rick Hazewinkel with the Lexington Police Department said his agency utilizes the Flock transparency portal just so people will have an idea of what the retention rates are for the still images captured by the license plate readers.
“Because basically, all Flock is is a still shot in time with a vehicle and a license plate,” Hazewinkel said. “It’s not end all be all. Just because you see it doesn’t mean there’s any type of enforcement off of it. It just means it’s something that an investigator could use to do some more investigative work and potentially come up to help a victim of a crime.”
Law enforcement agencies in the Midlands have said the license plate readers only capture pictures of the back of a vehicle and the tag. That data is typically retained for seven days, a recent change from the previous 30-day default retention period.
Flock Safety said an analysis shows that more than 90 percent of searches without a full plate are conducted with a week.
But in cases that may take longer, “detectives can preserve specific ALPR d