DAYTON — The City of Dayton is indefinitely suspending the use of its fixed-site Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR), otherwise known as Flock cameras.
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Dayton Police Chief Kamran Afzal said on Friday that the new commander of the Support Services Division noticed a higher level of data sharing in October and that the department began an investigation.
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He added that the majors rotate divisions, and this specific major had just joined the Support Services Division in June.
An internal review revealed that the former commander of the Support Services Division failed to implement the safeguards he had a hand in developing and presenting.
Afzal confirmed that the individual will no longer serve in the Dayton Police Department.
They were given the choice to resign or be fired.
A network-sharing feature was enabled, allowing more access to data than was originally intended.
The department initiated an administrative investigation, which found that the error led to around 7,100 search requests citing immigration-related purposes from various law enforcement agencies.
“We found it ourselves. I would have hoped the previous commander would have found it and reported it, but he did not,” Afzal said.
Afzal added that the requests weren’t specific to Dayton and that the department can’t confirm if any data was returned or if any action was taken regarding those searches.
As of April 7, all ALPR sharing has been disabled. The department had previously disabled sharing with federal agencies in January.
“It does reveal egregious violations of policy and has certainly led to a deterioration of trust,” Shelley Dickstein, Dayton City Manager, said.
The department has been using ALPRs since 2023. They recently received approval to expand the program, but Afzal said that will not be happening at this time.
“This is still pretty disappointing, and disappointing would be a pretty mild word. My choice words I cannot say live on the air, or how I really feel, but disappointing and disgusting would be another word I would use,” Afzal said.
The investigation is ongoing, and an external review will be conducted.
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