Eugene City Council recommends turning off Flock cameras

This story was updated with new information at 5:25 p.m. Oct. 8.

The Eugene City Council on Wednesday, Oct. 8, voted to recommend that the city manager turn off the license-plate reader cameras that have been capturing vehicle data in Eugene since May.

The unanimous vote came during a work session with Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner to discuss the technology, which is owned and operated by surveillance technology company Flock Safety.

The meeting followed months of community questions over whether the cameras, which automatically capture and store license plate and vehicle data to help police investigate crimes, were an effective public safety tool or a threat to residents’ privacy. 

Councilors who strongly opposed the technology during Wednesday’s meeting — Eliza Kashinsky, Jennifer Yeh, Alan Zelenka and Matt Keating — said they simply do not trust Flock Safety, a private company, to handle sensitive data.

Those concerns are compounded by the reality of the country’s political landscape, including fears of misuse by federal agencies and executive branch overreach, they said. 

“Given the current national environment and the vendor that we’re working with, at this time, I feel like the risks outweigh the benefits,” Kashinsky said. “This is the wrong tool at the wrong time, and I can’t support us continuing to use it.”

The city signed a contract with Flock Safety in March and began installing the cameras in May without input from the public or the city’s volunteer citizen Police Commission. Privacy concerns have dominated public comment during council meetings since.

Due to Eugene’s council-manager style of government, the City Council doesn’t have the power to make operational decisions like shutting off the cameras, so Wednesday’s vote is a recommendation to City Manager Sarah Medary.

However, Zelenka noted during the meeting that he has never seen a city manager pursue a policy that runs contrary to a council majority.

The council also doesn’t have the power to end a contract, as that responsibility lies with the city manager. Policies on the city’s license-plate reader cameras, or decisions on whether Eugene should formally cut its contractual ties with Flock Safety, will be examined in future discussions, councilors said Wednesday. 

Medary said she had concerns about turning off the cameras. It’s “hard to imagine” how the city can “make a difference” in its public safety efforts without using the technology, she said.

“I get, we get, hammered about this all the time, around metal theft and theft from stores,” she said. “There is embracing technology in all of our different work. We’re embracing it across the board, across the city.”

Medary added that the Eugene city charter limits individual councilors from influencing contracts to prevent favoritism, and that her role is to focus on the technical and contractual details. 

After councilors began discussing the motion to recommend turning off the cameras, Skinner didn’t directly comment on it, though he had acknowledged their concerns, answered questions and shared more detail about the city’s partnership with Flock Safety in a presentation before the vote.

“Part of what I’ve tried to stay focused on as your chief is to try my best to be mindful of some of the hypotheticals that could happen,” Skinner said before the vote. “But [I] have to make my decisions, and my decision-making is deeply rooted in the practical, of what I see is the benefit of the community.”

In his presentation, Skinner said the city adjusted a clause in its contract with Flock. 

The clause previously stated that Flock Safety may disclose footage to law enforcement, government officials and third parties if required by law, or if the company has a “good faith belief” that such data-sharing is “reasonably necessary” for legal, security and emergency reasons.

The city swapped the clause with a version that removed the language about emergency reasons and added more specificity around disclosure. The new clause is as follows:

“We felt like that was a little bit too general, and so we went back to Flock to better understand how we might adjust and change our contract language to better meet our needs here in the city of Eugene,” Skinner said.

The city also revised contract language surrounding anonymized data, security breach obligations and data storage and transfer, though edits to specific clauses weren’t shared during the meeting.

Skinner also shared more details about the license-plate reader cameras. 

The license-plate reader cameras do not have pan-tilt-zoom capabilities or the capacity to be manipulated remotely, he said, also sharing a view of the cameras. 

He also explained how Flock Safety’s search function works. In order to make a query, officers must select a reason for performing the search and add a computer-aided dispatch number that links back to a “legitimate law enforcement purpose,” Skinner said. 

Skinner shared a pie graph showing that searches on Eugene police’s license-plate reader database accounted for 1% of the department’s searches over the last 30 days, unlike other regional and national databases that are used much more frequently.

Skinner also ran through lists of positive outcomes in part due to the help of the license-plate reader technology, including arrests in a May double homicide, a man arrested in July on charges of raping a teen, and multiple stolen vehicle recoveries.

“We’ve heard a lot from our community and community forums and public testimony, but the one voice that we haven’t heard is the voice of the victims that are being served by this technology,” Skinner said.

Councilors were not swayed by Skinner’s presentation, though they thanked him for the additional information and his work for the community.

“I like that you went back and got some changes to the contract. They seem like great changes,” Yeh said. “But what it boils down to is: I’m not sure that I can trust this company. They seem to have a track record of contracts being violated.”

Keating said: “At this point in history, I’m incredibly concerned about a surveillance state, or about entities outside of Eugene using or abusing our movement, our data and our images, et cetera, for nefarious reasons.”

Other issues about the cameras and the Flock Safety contract surfaced during a question-answer period with Skinner and city staff.

Yeh asked how much the system will cost Eugene once the grant funding expires. Skinner said the expectation is that Eugene reapplies for the grant and uses that funding.

Zelenka asked about the process required if the city decided to end the contract. The city attorney said Eugene would pursue a mutual termination of the contract so it could negotiate with Flock Safety about receiving a refund, given that the city prepaid using grant money.

“It’s a bit unknown to what extent [the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission] might ask us to pay this back,” Skinner said. “That is to their discretion.”

Lookout Eugene-Springfield reached out to the city to ask why Eugene police and the city of Eugene did not have a more expansive public engagement process before signing a contract with Flock Safety.

“Like other equipment and service contracts within the city, this was handled through our standard procurement processes,” said Elle O’Casey, the director of communications in the city manager’s office.

An organizer with Eyes Off Eugene, an activist group opposed to the cameras, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.