Flock cameras shut down for part of Harris County | What's Your Point?

Exactly one month after voting to increase property taxes to the highest level in history, Harris County Commissioner Leslie Briones has unilaterally decided to decrease public safety in Precinct 4 by shutting down crime-fighting Flock cameras. We have to maximize the benefits while mitigating the harms. But for Precinct 4, I've heard you loud and clear. We've taken action, decommissioned the cameras, Precinct 4 is out. Never mind that your fellow Democrat Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez is an unabashed supporter of Flock cameras as a vital crime-fighting tool. Never mind that Houston's police officer union believes you've just compromised the collective public safety of the people you represent. Panel, we are repeating our invitation to Briones to come on this show and defend any of her controversial decisions. Bob, Flock cameras, do they work? They do work, and the issue with Flock cameras is people are upset about the abuses that have happened. You can regulate that, and you can create enforcement just like we do if an officer unfairly looks, inappropriately looks at somebody's criminal history, background, driving records, all these kinds of things, license plate lookups. You regulate that, and you control that. Flock cameras work because they increase police activity in a targeted way. they they solve kidnapping crimes missing children you know the these Amber Alerts that we get all the time those can all be picked up on Flock cameras burglaries can be solved because you can see what cars are going in and out of specific areas guys looking up where their girlfriends going that's inappropriate and it should be regulated out and made a crime to miss a felony yes all right bill let's talk about closure rates yeah so this is as y'all know this is one of my big gripes is the fact we don't solve many crimes so I I thought it'd be interesting to go look and see how Harris County is doing on that. And so we've got stats for Harris County Sheriff's Office. We also have stats for Precinct 4, which is where Leslie is the commissioner. So homicides are all handled downtown. 49 murders reported in Harris County. They solved 19 for a 39% clearance rate. Rapes, 295. 41 cleared for 14%. In Precinct 4, 27 rapes. Three were solved for an 11% closure rate. Burglaries out in Precinct 4, 538 were solved. Robberies, there were 91 out in Precinct 4, 31 were solved. Let me tell you what, the criminals are not unilaterally disarming in this technology race. There was a great story out in Memorial where there was a burglary ring that were using drones to surveil houses to figure out who wasn't home so they could go hit those houses. We need to get these. And by the way, these were county cameras. if they were being abused, who didn't put in the rules to make sure they weren't abused in the first place? Okay, just make abuse of Flock cameras a felony. That stops everything. Charles, you got a problem with this? Look, the new Hobby School polling showed that there is a majority of folks in Harris County right now that want controls over these Flock cameras. Yeah, I mean, because they popped up and they grew really quickly without the controls in place. And I agree that you do need these law enforcement tools in various capacities, especially when you're competing with criminals who now use technology to their advantage. But you should have the protections in place before you deploy the tool so that you can protect people's civil liberties and everything else that comes along with it. And we did not do that. We still have not done that. Harris County has asked for a committee to review this, that they're going to get results back in February. And so I don't agree with her unilaterally doing this because you're creating a patchwork of kind of policy in the county. Is everyone going to do it or is everyone not going to do it? And also, it doesn't answer the question as to the data of what happens to these decommissioned ones, because that's already been collected. So I don't think she should unilaterally do it, but I don't agree that we should deploy these without protections in advance. Quickly? Yeah, no, I think it's a gutsy move on Leslie's part. I think we do need Flock cameras, but they have to be in target. It has to be highly regulated under one agency. There seem to be overlapping agencies trying to regulate this. And put one on top of the ICE vehicles to take and check the right license plates and find the right person. Quickly, Bob. So there's no right to privacy on the public roadways. That's one of the biggest arguments against flock cameras. You do not have a right to privacy on the roadways. Yeah, I think it's nebulous, the privacy invasion. When we come back, three criminal arrests and placing innocent lives in danger. The coming referendum on a local elected official's fitness for office.