South Fulton leaders to host Flock camera townhall

And just a couple of minutes ago, the city of South Fulton officials held a news conference talking about flock and their plans to hold a town hall tonight related to flock and the safety measures surrounding it. Take a listen to what officials had to say during that news conference that is going on right now. Today, we are here to announce that tonight we will host a robust town hall to discuss flock cameras. This has been a hot topic in our community, and we know that these talk-around towns are addressing those things. So let me say this. Cameras do play a vital role in reducing crime and catching criminals in our community. As we have seen in many news reports, there have been reportedly about 40 cases in metro Atlanta of misuse and about 75 incidents statewide this year alone. Our communities need effective tools to solve crimes and to recover stolen vehicles and missing persons. However, residents also deserve protection from anyone who would use these tools unlawfully. I support responsible use of Flock cameras, but tonight we will talk about that at the Southwest Arts Center at 6.30 p.m. One of our panelists, which is State Senator Jahal Howard, who represents, again, Cobb and Fulton counties under the Gold Dome, he is sponsoring a bill to provide some of those protections. The goal is to decrease access and increase accountability. So Senator Howard will now speak, and then we'll take questions. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, Mayor Gumbs. Happy to be here, State Senator Jahal Howard. At the end of the day, people are fired up for good reason. Trust in our government, trust in institutions is low across the country and across the world. And so Flock cameras is just one of those lightning rods that connects to a deeper sense of mistrust when it comes to our data, when it comes to surveillance. At the end of the day, folks want to be safe. Folks want to make sure that their information is protected. And that's what we're going to talk about. Time out is time out for like lazy conversations and just having just political back and forth. let's have a real conversation discuss the nuance the pros of automatic license plate readers like like Flock and also the cons and let's make sure we have real guardrails at every level whether we're talking about the city level like city of South Fulton whether we're talking about county and as a state and also the international and national implications of data being shared across across our country let's have a real conversation and that's what we're about We'll be right back.