A County Commissioner in North Carolina refused to let dozens of residents speak opposing Flock surveillance at a public meeting this week, instead forcing the group to designate one single spokesperson.\u201cHow many people are here for public comment dealing with license plate readers AKA Flock?,\u201d Michael Garrison, the chairman of the Madison County Board of Commissioners began the public meeting by saying. Nearly everyone in the audience\u2019s hand went up. \u201cProbably most everybody. Per our county policy, I\u2019m going to respectfully ask that you guys take a few minutes to converse with each other, designate one person to speak \u2026 we\u2019ll move forward with only one person, whoever that happens to be.\u201d\u201cWhat? No. We all want to speak on this,\u201d someone in the crowd said; others can be heard trying to object as well.\u201cYou will not speak on Flock tonight,\u201d he responds. \u201cOne person designated. You can pick that person \u2026 if I gave everyone three minutes to say the same thing, which is opposition to Flock, we\u2019d never get done \u2026 I\u2019ve spoken. I\u2019m not debating this. I am taking advantage of our policy as it is written to streamline this process, you can either do it or not.\u201d\u201cYou\u2019re in a room full of people who care!,\u201d a person in the crowd says.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re not going to engage in this back-and-forth conversation,\u201d he responds. \u201cWe\u2019re going to allow one person. Pick a person or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Madison County Sheriff\u2019s Office has been using Flock\u2019s automated license plate readers, which scan and analyze the time and location of cars as they drive by, since at least March, according to a Facebook post by the Sheriff\u2019s Office. Records compiled by HaveIBeenFlocked.com based on public records requests show that the Sheriff\u2019s Office searches Flock hundreds of times per month. Over the last year, citizen privacy groups have successfully pressured their local governments into ending contracts with Flock. But in some cities and municipalities, residents feel like their concerns have been ignored.\u201cThe Sheriff Office claims they are only using this technology for serious crimes, yet published audit logs tell a different story,\u201d a website called Madison for Privacy says. \u201cMadison County has searched the nationwide database over 1,200 times over just a 60 day period. In a county over only 20,000 residents, its hard to understand what could warrant this many searches.\u201dMembers of the audience and several of the commissioners then argued back and forth. The commissioners said that the citizens constituted a \u201cgroup\u201d who all had the same position, and therefore could only select one representative to speak for seven minutes, which the board said was longer than the three minutes each person would normally be allowed to speak for. Residents argued that they were not a \u201cgroup\u201d but were there to give different perspectives on the issue and that they were concerned about the surveillance as specific individuals: \u201cI\u2019m not here as a group, I\u2019m an individual,\u201d one person says.\u201cI\u2019m not here to argue with you,\u201d a commissioner responds.\u00a0\u201cSo you\u2019re going to decide to not listen to your citizens, that\u2019s what you\u2019re saying,\u201d a woman in the crowd says.\u201cWe\u2019re going to follow the policy,\u201d the commissioner responds.\u00a0\u201cCan we request that there be a special meeting,\u201d about Flock, a resident says.\u201cIf you want a special meeting, you go back to the 250 years that the sheriff has been the elected official in the state of North Carolina and you have that meeting with him. This board, we don\u2019t own Flock cameras, I\u2019ve emailed some of you this. We don\u2019t pay for Flock cameras. We don\u2019t operate Flock cameras. We have no interest in Flock camera or Flock camera discussion. That\u2019s your elected sheriff. So if you want to have a meeting with the person that\u2019s involved with that, then you\u2019ll have a meeting with [him], not with us that\u2019s a legislative body. We don\u2019t control the sheriff\u2019s budget. We give him X number of dollars, he does with it what he wishes. I\u2019m not having this discussion. Either you select a person or not.\u201dOne of the residents suggests that the board of commissioners could pass an ordinance about Flock cameras; he is cut off by Garrison, who says again that the residents can pick a person to speak or not. Eventually, the residents do select one representative, who was allowed to speak for seven minutes.Garrison\u2019s argument is that the Board of Commissioners gives the Sheriff\u2019s Office a budget, and that the Sheriff can spend the money on whatever it wants to. He suggested that the board therefore does not have oversight of what surveillance technology police are buying or what they are using it for. This fact highlights a problem many communities around the country are facing: Cities and counties are sometimes buying Flock surveillance technology without any transparency, with no public process, and with very little oversight. Citizens around the country have also felt like their elected officials are not listening to their concerns about surveillance.\u00a0It is common practice at city council and county council meetings to allow all residents who have shown up to speak provide public comment, which is one of the reasons that these types of meetings are often many hours long. At the Madison County meeting, these residents were not allowed to speak, which is much different than the practices we\u2019ve seen at other, similar meetings.\u00a0Later in the meeting, another resident explains that their public records requests for details about the Sheriff\u2019s Office contracts and use of Flock have not been sufficiently responded to. She was allowed to speak because she was providing comment about her requests for public records, and not Flock specifically. \u201cI\u2019m here to talk about the lack of government transparency and accountability that I\u2019ve seen come up with the Flock issue, starting with tonight. I think that it\u2019s disgraceful the way you are refusing to let citizens speak to their elected officials,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve repeatedly asked you to hold a public meeting for us to discuss this, so I\u2019m very disappointed to see a lack of transparency.\u201dThe Madison County Board of Commissioners and Madison County Sheriff\u2019s Office did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
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