‘We needed to get rid of these’: City turns off Flock cameras, cites misuse concerns

TEMPE, Ariz. (KPHO/Gray News) — The city of Tempe announced this week that it has turned off its Flock cameras with plans to end its contract with the company.

Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said the cameras have helped law enforcement, but the city’s decision followed reports of problems with the technology surfacing at other agencies.

“These cameras have helped our police officers do their jobs, and we don’t discount that. But the risk of misuse is too great,” Woods said. “We have to be able to provide public safety in a way that maintains the trust of our community. For Tempe, that means taking these cameras down.”

Officials said residents may continue to see the cameras around the city until Flock Safety removes them.

While the system stores data for 30 days before the data is automatically deleted, the city stressed that no new data is being collected.

Tempe has 33 Flock cameras around the city.

Tempe City Councilmember Bobby Nichols said the scope of data the cameras collect was part of the concern.

“When a camera captures every single car that goes by, that’s where the real risk comes into play,” Nichols said.

Nichols added that he believes moving away from Flock will benefit residents and their data.

“I think people started to get the understanding that we were able to move away from this and moving away from this would actually make our residents a little bit safer and protect our data across the board,” Nichols said. “We needed to get rid of these cameras. We needed to stop looking for other ALPR providers.”

The moves come as some residents say they are reconsidering how much surveillance they want in daily life.

“I feel like, as a society, it’s better if we’re just kind of, like, not constantly under surveillance. Like, we don’t need cameras watching people all the time,” resident Andrew Faherty said.

Despite the pullback, police have credited surveillance cameras with helping solve cases.

The Phoenix Police Department pointed to a photo enforcement camera that recorded a suspect attacking it as one example of the technology’s evidentiary value.

Officers have also credited the cameras with helping locate suspects and assisting with missing person cases.

Tempe now joins other Arizona cities in ending its use of the Flock camera system amid privacy concerns from the public and recent reports of other cities’ misuse of the technology.

According to the town of Cave Creek, it was ending its contract with Flock Safety, effective immediately, following privacy concerns and a recent camera theft.

Additionally, Chandler officials said the city was immediately discontinuing use of its cameras after finding an “anomaly” during an audit.

“At the end of the day, we obviously saw over the last couple of months that there were things that were coming out with other agencies where people were misusing them and they were finding sort of irregularities in some of their audits,” Woods said.

Tempe officials noted that its police force was not found to have made any improper use of its system during its monthly audits.

Apache Junction currently continues to use its Flock cameras despite a former officer reportedly misusing the system to track down his wife, arguing that the cameras have been helpful in finding missing people and criminals.