But on Monday evening, city officials hit the brakes. The language of the contract left room for interpretation. How exactly would the cameras work? Who, precisely, would have access to the footage? And perhaps most pressing: who would be accountable if things went wrong?
While a Flock representative was on hand to answer these questions, the commissioners wanted city staff to do more digging.
The public comment period featured some opposition to the system. The Facebook comment section showed familiar tension.
There have been voices in favor, too. There are people who believe that safety is a straightforward equation: more cameras, less crime. Critics of the plan rarely challenged the core question: Would Flock cameras make Bay City safer? The answer, at least on a statistical level, might very well be yes.
“Absolutely. Without question,” said Bay City Department of Public Safety Director Caleb Rowell, when asked if the cameras would make the city safer.
The head of Bay City’s public safety department is pushing for the implementation of the cameras, which he said work as a force multiplier and have already been budgeted for in the current fiscal year’s budget.
He believes the opposition to the cameras stems from a misunderstanding of what the system does.
“I think, for instance, you walk in City Hall, you’re on camera from the time you get in here to the parking lot outside,” Rowell said. “I think that’s a lot more intrusive than taking a picture of your car as it drives by.
“I think people are under the assumption this is gathering, pulling data every time a car drives by and selling it to all sorts of places, and that’s just not the case,” Rowell added. “It’s not what the product does. It’s a picture of the back of a car for law enforcement to use, that’s it.”
Bay City’s 7th Ward Commissioner Chris Runberg said the camera system might make Bay Citians safer, sure, but at what cost?
“I mean, a lot of things would make residents safer,” he said. “We could put an officer in every single street corner, run every single plate. But is that a reality we really want to live in?”
Runberg acknowledged that having an officer on every corner isn’t feasible, and while the Flock system would be a more efficient way of running plates, this argument doesn’t recognize that people have a right to their privacy.
“While a lot of things can make people safer, staying in a padded four-wall cell with three meals a day, you’d be perfectly safe,” he said, before paraphrasing an iconic Ben Franklin quote. “Somebody who would give up a little bit of liberty pursuing security would deserve to lose both.
“That’s kind of where we’re coming at with this. I don’t think we believe that we should live in a surveillance state,” he added. “I believe people have a right to their privacy, and I take the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment very seriously in that regard.”
The debate will continue at a future commission meeting.
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