Suburban Chicago residents push back against Flock license plate cameras

People are pushing back against surveillance technology and their neighborhoods. Flock cameras, boy they have become the talk of the town. They read the license plate of every passing vehicle. Oftentimes officers use that as a main tool when they're trying to solve crimes. Warrenville residents though say they are concerned about block cameras and their privacy. Gabriella Primus is joining us now and Gabby they plan to bring those concerns to City Council tonight. Yeah Natalie and I was about to say you might have heard of these cameras at home because they're gaining national attention even here in Chicagoland. A lot of other suburban towns are talking about this. Like you said, community members in Warrenville are rallying those concerned neighbors to show up at City Council meeting tonight and demand an end to these automatic license plate reader cameras in 2022 and again in 2023 Warrenville approved contracts with a company called Flock Safety to install 14 cameras along major state and county routes. Organizers claim those original deals were approved by City Council with very little notice or public or input from the public. They point to a non appropriation clause in the city's contract that would allow Warrenville to walk away without major financial penalties. They argue the cameras are an overreach of government surveillance and that infringes on personal privacy. So far 14 people have RSVP as going to the meeting and 65 are interested. Now while flaw cameras are not explicitly on tonight's formal City Council agenda, city officials are well aware of the growing pushback in a recent post. The city and police department defended the program calling the cameras an essential investigative tool to catch criminals entering or leaving town. Officials emphasize that the cameras only take still images of vehicles, not continuous video or audio and do not use facial recognition technology. Police also note that data is deleted after 30 days. So we reached out to the city of Warrenville to find out whether the council will be discussing flaw cameras tonight, but we have not heard back just yet. But the opposing group does tell us they still plan to attend the meeting now. Yeah, I was discussing this with a law enforcement officer downstate over the weekend and you know, I said, what's the deal with these flock cameras? And he indicated that in their jurisdiction, like 90% of the homicides, Gabby, that they have solved really been because of these flock cameras kind of triangulating a person's whereabouts and connecting them to the crime, which I thought was interesting. But the issue isn't necessarily our police, you know, going to be pouring over this data and determining where you were at what time. It's that third party that you mentioned that flock organization or business. No one knows what happens to the data once they get it and could they potentially sell that data for profit and where would it go? And I was like, okay, that makes sense. I didn't realize that itself was the issue. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously causing a lot of conversation around our area. And like I said, there's other suburban towns that are looking into this too. There's a growing list. Maybe I can mention that in my next report here about some other municipalities that are that are looking into getting rid of the flock cameras that they didn't necessarily know were in their community. Interesting. Okay, Gabrielle Primus live in the newsroom. Thank you, Gabby. And we'll have more good day Chicago when we come back.