St. Paul and county leaders at odds over Flock camera future

Okay, our top story here at five o'clock tonight is St. Paul City Council president is pushing to end the city and county contracts with flock. The company behind the automated license plate reader is under fire after recent reporting shows ice agents access local data during metro surge. Fox nine's Emily profile is live for us in ST paul. Emily, the county sheriff told you today ending the contract is a non starter, right? So that back and forth between the city and the county. You guys is kind of on display right here where I am right now. We found out ST paul owns to flock cameras and I asked the department, they said there aren't any plans right now to expand the flock camera program. But most of the flock cameras within the city's borders are actually owned by Ramsey County, just like this one over here. And the Ramsey County Sheriff, as far as we could tell, said that there are 11 of those Ramsey Emily, we know that Sheriff Fletcher is really a law and order kind of guy. So it doesn't surprise me that he's pushing back, getting rid of these things. How valuable does does he see them? Right? Yeah, he brought that up in my interview with him earlier. He says that since the county has been contracting with flock for the past three years or so, he's seen specifically carjackings and stolen vehicles trend way, way down. He also says that a lot of times stolen vehicles are used to commit other crimes. So being able to track those cars through those license plates there on some kind of hot list that the department has access to being able to track those cars makes it easier to solve a wide range of different types of crimes. He says it's also made it easier to track the suspect that goes outside of the jurisdiction. So we're talking other counties in the metro or even out of state. You guys, we have 35 cameras. Um, it's a huge county, half a million people. Those 35 cameras on a daily basis. If you talk to these gentlemen here, you'll find out that they have alerts for stolen cars every single day. Very, very valuable. Um, but we're not saying that we need 100 cameras. I mean, this is this is where the balance comes in terms of enough cameras to help us do our job, but we don't want to know where every single person is. So then, Emily, what are the city council president's concerns and why does she want to end use of flock? I want to know. I did ask Council President maker for an interview today, but I didn't hear back. We do know from a video that she recently posted in her social media that she's got some concerns about reporting that revealed earlier this year outside agencies outside of the metro, outside of the state, even accessed local data, and she had some concerns about how that local data was accessed to be used for civil immigration enforcement. A lot of that happening during metro surge. And there are also just concerns over privacy in general. What kind of access and tracking departments and other outside departments outside of the state have access to when it comes to regular everyday people that are driving through the streets of ST Paul. We also just found out that this is all going to be discussed during council this coming Wednesday. They're gonna hold a special meeting, and then they're going to introduce this resolution from Council President maker during the council meeting on Wednesday. All right, sorry. This is an issue that a lot of city councils and county boards are gonna be talking about. They had been all summer and will continue into the fall to Emily profile line for us in ST Paul tonight.