While they eventually advanced that deal to a final vote Thursday, commissioners deferred another proposed contract from Dart that drew strong opposition from various community groups, to fund artificial intelligence-fueled video surveillance at the Cook County Jail.
Dart requested approval for a $1.12 million deal with Safeware for the use of Briefcam, video software powered by artificial intelligence. It is supposed to use facial recognition technology to “detect various types of potential security breaches throughout the Department of Corrections,” according to the proposed contract legislation.
In the days ahead of Wednesday’s scheduled vote, the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice and 80 community, faith and policy organizations urged commissioners to hit pause and fix other health and safety issues at the jail before turning to AI that might trigger false positives or privacy violations.
Recent deaths at the jail because of a failure of corrections staff to provide timely medical care during drug overdoses, guards being unable to respond quickly enough to fights because they are “cross watching” — having one officer supervise two tiers on the same shift — and “violence from sheriff’s deputies and other incarcerated people” deserve oversight, the groups argue. But that oversight should come from people, not artificial intelligence, they say.
Commissioner Jessica Vasquez requested the AI proposal be deferred, likely putting off consideration for at least one month.
A separate $900,000 contract for additional license plate readers from Insight Public Sector also drew pushback, but ultimately passed. The 145 total readers — including the 71 already deployed — would be used “as part of multiple strategic initiatives to address and reduce auto theft and related incidents” in the sheriff’s office’s patrol areas.
Several commissioners said they view Flock Group, which is part of the contract, as a “bad actor.”
The latest proposal is an expansion of an emergency contract first awarded in 2022 with Flock Group to respond to an uptick in carjackings, car thefts and shootings.
The initial scope included 25 cameras and access to its cloud platform. Insight obtains its services through a national government purchasing cooperative, which uses Flock.
Flock has drawn scrutiny nationally for its work with federal immigration agencies, as well as a case in which an out-of-state police department used Flock license plate reader data to track a woman who had an abortion.
And Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias has alleged Flock improperly shared Illinois data from its broad network of license plate readers with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, a violation of a 2023 Illinois law explicitly barring outside law enforcement from using license plate reader data “to track or penalize individuals seeking abortion care or criminalize a person’s immigration status.”
“The goal that the sheriff’s office has to make our community safer, to react proactively … is incredibly important, but when we have vendors who have been on the record violating state law … I think we have an oversight issue with this vendor, I think this vendor is not a good actor,” Vasquez said Wednesday during a meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee.
Vasquez and fellow progressive Commissioners Alma Anaya and Tara Stamps all voted no after grilling Dart’s staff about potential loopholes to those data protections, how ever-changing tech capabilities would be monitored and how the contract was awarded. They requested regular monitoring reports, copies of the service agreement with Flock, and copies of the agreements other local agencies sign with the sheriff to access the network of cameras.
Thirteen other commissioners voted in favor after more than two hours of debate, setting up the contract for approval at Thursday’s board meeting.
During the committee debate, representatives for the sheriff said they went to great lengths to strengthen data protections in the license plate reader contract. The technology “advances public safety while operating within some of the strictest guard rails and accountability measures in law enforcement,” said Jason Hernandez, Dart’s head of intergovernmental affairs, adding the office has a “zero tolerance policy” around misuses of data as part of its user agreement with Flock.
Outside of administrative access — like sticking to the county’s 30-day deletion policy — the company can’t use, share or make reports using county data without explicit written consent.
“The system does not contain facial recognition, biometric identification, does not do predictive policing or autonomous enforcement activities,” Hernandez said. “It can’t access personal communications.”
Both the sheriff’s office and several suburban police leaders said the readers were essential to picking up stolen cars, missing people or fugitives.
Sheriff’s office leaders said 210 agencies have access to sheriff’s license plate reader data.
In a written public statement, William Alexander, chief of the Posen Police Department, described the readers as “one of the most effective force-multipliers we have ever seen,” and a “silver bullet” that has helped solve “murders, violent carjackings, burglaries, and shootings … When a suspect flees a shooting in one town and enters another, our ability to share real-time data allows us to track that vehicle across municipal lines. It turns a fragmented map into a unified shield.”
©2026 Chicago Tribune, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
