Manvel votes to defund Flock cameras

The city of Manville says they're done with flock cameras. City leaders held a public hearing tonight to hear comments for or against flock cameras in their community. Now we've told you how the mayor, Dan Davis, has recently spoken out against flock. Fox26houston.com's Jillian Hartman joining us live outside City Hall with those details. Jillian. Yeah, basically an hour ago the mayor and city council members voted to basically deflock Manville. They voted 6-0 to no longer fund flock and cover up all the flock cameras in the city as soon as possible. Here's that vote. I would make a motion to direct staff to no longer appropriate funds in the proposed budget for flock camera, as we do have a tight budget anyways, and we need to use those funds elsewhere. Direct staff to turn in a 30-day notice to flock safety and to, within the next 24 to 48 hours, immediately cover all Manville-operated cameras within the city of Manville. Do I have a second for that motion? I'll second that motion. We have a second from Councilman O'Plager. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes unanimously 6-0. Thank you, everyone. Mayor Dan Davis made that motion tonight after he peppered flock representatives with questions. Mayor Davis originally voted for these flock cameras back in 2024. He says now this is not about license plate reader technology. It's about flock as a company that's behind these cameras. Here are some of the questions he asked the flock reps who participated in tonight's hearing over Zoom. Can flock use our data to build other products, train AI, track travel patterns, speed and traffic, create analytics, or combine it with information from its nationwide network? So it's not a part of the nationwide network unless you opt into the nationwide sharing feature, which you have not. And to continually improve the cameras, I think whether folks agree with the cameras or not, they can agree that on the fact that it's important they're as accurate as possible. And so we are continually working to make them as accurate as possible. So that is what the machine learning aspect of the cameras do, is to make sure that the reads are as accurate as possible. Okay, so flock does use our data to build other products, yes or no? We use them to improve the cameras to make sure they're as accurate as possible. So that's a yes. Does flock use our data to train its AI tools? That is a part of making our cameras more accurate, yes. Okay, so that's a yes. Does flock cameras, our cameras that we have, does it track speed and traffic patterns? They are capable of tracking overall speed, aggregated speed and traffic patterns. They cannot associate an individual car with a speed. Yeah, that was interesting to hear those questions going back and forth between the mayor and the representative there from flock. I'm glad you used that sound bite to really give our viewers some insight. Because even if you don't live in Manville here tonight, that conversation around flock is happening all across our community. In fact, we heard today that Willis, Texas, they too are no longer dealing with flock. They're shutting that system down there. But I'm interested though, Jillian, at that meeting tonight there in City Hall, what do community members have to say about these cameras specifically? And you know, a lot of the times people lean on the fact that these flock cameras can in fact solve any crimes happening in their community. Did the police chief or anyone from the police department attend that meeting? And if they did, did they speak at all? Some community members, I heard from one woman who had a lot of questions. She wants to make sure that these cameras are not misused. And we heard from another woman who had a lot of concerns. And she wants to get rid of them right away. And she said, remove them all. Now, like you just said, the police chief, we did hear from the Manville police chief and the chief deputy at the Brazori County Sheriff's Office. They both say that these cameras are a proven public safety tool. Vehicle involved in a robbery, aggravated assault, shooting, homicide, kidnapping, or other serious offense may leave the area before officers even know exactly what vehicle they are looking for. That is where strategically placed license plate readers can make a difference. The purpose is not to put ALPR cameras everywhere. The purpose is to place cameras at strategic locations where they can help us identify vehicles entering our community and provide investigators and officers with information when a vehicle becomes relevant to a criminal investigation. For Manville, this is particularly important because of our location in major transportation corridors, including State Highway 288, Highway 6, and the roadways connecting Manville with neighboring communities. There are documented cases across Texas and throughout the country where the ALPR technology has provided investigators with critical information. I also acknowledge that law enforcement agencies have not done enough to adequately educate the public to respond to legitimate concerns about how the technology is being used. We have the responsibility to do better. But the answer to those concerns should not necessarily be abandoning a proven public safety tool. The answer is to ensure that the tool is properly regulated, appropriately used, and subject to meaningful accountability. So I also thought this was interesting. So police also said tonight that 535 agencies outside the city here have access to Manville's flock cameras, and a majority of those agencies are in Texas. So the mayor did mention that he fully supports local police having these tools like license plate readers, but he has serious concerns about data privacy, potential cybersecurity risk, and how flock handles citizen data nationwide.