Chandler council to consider contract renewal for Flock Safety cameras

The Chandler City Council is scheduled Thursday night to consider whether to renew a contract with a controversial tech company that makes license plate readers.

Chandler currently has about 40 Flock cameras, which have produced around 7,600 alerts this fiscal year.

At a meeting on Monday, the City Council was told that Chandler owns the data collected, decides who to share it with and keeps it for 30 days.

Police Chief Bryan Chapman said the system takes pictures of vehicles, not people.

“I’m sensitive, certainly, to the community feeling that this is just another surveillance tool that we share broadly with anybody. I’d like to remind the entire council that the confidentiality around law enforcement systems goes back decades,” he said

Chapman also said his agency has not shared data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The ACLU says Flock is building a nationwide mass-surveillance structure.

Chapman said his officers can’t blindly search the system.

“They can only query based on what our detectives are working towards for violent offenders. These are people who are fugitives from justice from criminal courts. These are not ICE detainers. These are not Border Patrol civil detainers,” Chapman said.

Chandler shares its Flock data with local law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Marshals Service.