By Sydney Kodama | skodama@alextimes.com
Residents questioned Alexandria Police Department Chief Tarrick McGuire about automated license plate readers and their role in the city at a Sept. 24 community listening session.
Residents raised privacy concerns about the cameras and asked when they could be shut down.
The session, held at Del Ray’s James M. Duncan Branch Library, is the first of two organized by APD – the second will be in the West End at the Patrick Henry Recreation Center Oct. 7 at 6:30 p.m.
ALPRs, specifically Flock cameras, have garnered increased attention and criticism nationwide and locally. Sixty-one of the at-least 81 APLRs in the city are Flock cameras operated by APD.
Flock cameras use AI to track vehicles; the information is then uploaded to a database accessible to law enforcement agencies.
APD has now restricted access to its database for the 12 Virginia law enforcement agencies with Flock access who can perform immigration enforcement. However, residents are still concerned about who can access the data.
More than half of surveyed U.S. adults oppose ALPR “programs in their community,” but “57.5% … said their support for a local ALPR program would increase if their department adopted safeguards they personally selected,” according to a September National Policing Institute survey McGuire cited at the listening session.
Arlington County voted to discontinue Flock technology leased by the county and Fairfax County voted to stop installing new Flock cameras Sept. 15, according to WTOP.
McGuire is hosting the community listening sessions at City Council’s request.
“We need to move to getting to a new system and getting Flock out,” Mayor Alyia Gaskins said at a Sept. 8 meeting. “But the community has to have a clear way of weighing in on that.”
Members of Council indicated at the Sept. 8 meeting and to the Times that they are opposed to Flock cameras remaining in the city. Residents who filled the room at a Sept. 19 City Council public hearing asked that ALPRs be taken out of consideration altogether.
“They’re talking about how they don’t want the company Flock, but we don’t want any of this to be able to track and surveil our communities, especially our communities of color, which are mostly targeted,” Sindy Carballo, Tenants and Workers United youth organizer, told the Times at the public hearing.
At the Sept. 24 listening session, McGuire said he will bring the information he learns from the community back to Council to inform decisions about ALPRs’ presence in the city.
“My goal is to go back [to the] mayor and Council to say … what safeguards do we need to have in place as we move forward,” he said.
McGuire said he could not make “an independent decision” about whether to shut down the Flock cameras in the meantime.
Resident Sarah O’Connell told the Times after the session that she did not understand why the ALPRs could not be turned off during the community engagement process.
“I felt like I heard a lot of excuses and things that they’ve said before that are just easy to debunk and have been debunked,” she said. “… I didn’t hear any reason why they can’t just turn off the cameras now. … Why not turn off the cameras during that whole process while we evaluate things?”
O’Connell is a member of DeFlock ALX. DeFlock ALX and Eyes Off ALX are local advocacy organizations that have formed recently to organize against the use of ALPRs in Alexandria.
McGuire said he’s heard from residents supportive of the technology, residents who want ALPRs gone and residents who would be OK with ALPRs being used in policing with stronger regulations.
“I do think that there is a role for ALPRs here in Alexandria,” McGuire said. “I do think that we need to figure out again how to have stronger safeguards.”
McGuire also, earlier in September, requested that the city’s Commission on Information Technology send him any questions he should be asking potential ALPR vendors.
“I want to get it right for the community, and I think we can be a model for the nation,” he said. “… Just give me what your primary concerns are, and we will work through … those safeguards when we sit down with vendors.”
IT Commission member Steve Davidson offered McGuire the commission’s assistance in reviewing future ALPR contracts.
“The city got into a contract with [Flock] where I think we got in a little over our heads, and maybe the city was not aware of some of the issues [like how the data is managed],” Davidson said. “This table is loaded with people who have that kind of IT and data management expertise who can look at some of these agreements that we get ourselves into and identify the pitfalls and potentially prevent them in the future.”
McGuire mentioned meeting with vendors – alternatives to Flock – at the listening session but did not specify which vendors.
APD Communications Manager Tracy Walker wrote in a Sunday email that “an interview [with McGuire] is not available” and wrote “we are happy to answer questions in writing.” The Times first requested an interview on Sept. 18.
Walker did state why an interview is not available but emailed a statement on behalf of the department about how APD will use feedback from the listening sessions.
“Feedback received through individual engagements, public comments, and Alexandria Boards and Commissions will help inform the City’s broader evaluation of public safety technology, including potential governance, policy, and oversight considerations, Walker wrote in the statement.
“Community feedback will be considered alongside national best practices, available data, expert input, operational and public safety needs, and direction from City Council as the Department evaluates future policies and approaches,” she added.
In an interview, the Times would have asked about the vendors APD is meeting with, the potential involvement of the Office of the Alexandria Independent Policing Auditor in overseeing APD’s use of the Flock database and whether APD is able to suspend the use of ALPRs during the community feedback process.
A September Alexandria Times investigation found 56 instances of APD officers improperly labeling the reasons for their Flock database searches.
“Of the 56 instances identified for additional review over the three years, APD found no instance in which the ALPR system was misused for an improper, unauthorized, or non-legitimate law-enforcement purpose,” according to APD’s Q&A about ALPRs on a city website.
One resident at the listening session asked about the improper labeling, referencing the Times’ investigation. In response, McGuire said, “If we ever had an officer in our department or a non-sworn staff member access the system for personal advantage or gain or misuse, they’re not going to work here anymore.”
McGuire noted at the listening session that APD has requested criminologist Robin Engel, Ph.D., to assess its use of ALPRs in addition to the review of APD she has already undertaken.
“I brought her on as we’re working to build out our constitutional policing section of our police department to look at our traffic stops, look at our searches, look at our arrests and over the last couple of weeks, we have been talking with her about expanding, looking at ALPR data,” he said.
Third-party audits of APD’s ALPR program will begin by Thursday, according to the city website. A map of ALPRs managed by APD will also be available by Thursday. As of the Times’ publication deadline Wednesday, the map was not yet published. Three additional questions on the website are “pending response.”
For the September investigation, the Times located Flock cameras in Alexandria and created a map that revealed the locations of each camera, comparing Flock camera placements to income and crime levels.
Resident Joshua Byrnes told the Times he left the listening session with questions about how the ALPRs were decided on in the first place.
“I wasn’t satisfied with his replies, particularly regarding the data [used for implementation],” Byrnes said. “… I don’t know what the benefit is.”
O’Connell said she is optimistic that Alexandria’s government will take the residents’ concerns into account.
“With Arlington, for example, removing their cameras … I think that the tides are turning,” she said. “And I hope that our officials will see that it’s the people who they’re responsible to … but also throughout Virginia and throughout the country, that there is a sea change against this and that people want to have freedom of movement without being tracked everywhere we go.”
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