Facepalm: Once again, Flock is making headlines it would rather avoid: the company has admitted that it reinstalled its cameras in a California city after the police force canceled its contract and took them down. Flock, for its part, is pointing to an automated system that thought the cameras going offline meant there was a fault, though it also seems to be blaming the city for removing its cameras too quickly.
Grass Valley, California, is one of the many cities that have dropped Flock license plate cameras. It comes as the company faces criticism over the extent of its devices' surveillance network, the sharing of data with other agencies, the cost, and, most controversially, their misuse by police officers.
However, Fox40 reports that less than a month after Grass Valley Police Department (GVPD) publicly ended its contract with Flock and removed all cameras from the city, the company reinstalled at least two of them without permission – a concept that often seems lost on Flock users.
"Some of the cameras which were no longer showing connection – because we took them down – have been serviced and replaced," GVPD said. "We've learned and dealt with at least two."
The department said that Flock Safety was following the maintenance provisions of its contract despite receiving a letter canceling the contract on August 11. GVPD said it continually takes down any reinstalled cameras and monitors other locations.
In a statement to Fox40, Flock said the city of Grass Valley removed the cameras itself shortly after announcing its decision to terminate the contract, before the cancelation and equipment-removal process had been completed in its systems.
Flock said it handles the removal of the cameras as part of the cancelation process, but because the city took them down before the process was complete, the system assumed there was an equipment failure. This caused it to generate replacement work orders, resulting in crews being dispatched.
It's not like Flock needs any more bad publicity, but it's probably tempting fate with the attitude of, "hey, you shouldn't have removed our privacy-invading, heavily abused camera system so quickly after canceling the contract."
The backlash has become so intense that police have asked rival Axon to redesign its cameras so people stop mistaking them for Flock's. That followed four former Savannah police employees being arrested over alleged misuse of the system, while Florida police used a fake camera to catch a vandal and charged him with three felonies for destroying it. With cities dropping Flock at a record pace, the company might want to make sure its systems can tell the difference between a broken camera and an unwanted one.
