DAYTON — Community members want answers after the City of Dayton announced it will indefinitely suspend the use of its Flock cameras.
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News Center 7 Malik Patterson talks to a coalition leader who considers this a small win LIVE on News Center 7 at 11:00.
Leaders with the Dayton Police Department announced the program was suspended after discovering the cameras were being misused.
The Coalition of Public Protection has been against the Flock cameras before they were even installed.
Now, they want answers.
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“Honestly, our goal is for the contracts to be ended,” Melissa Bartolo, with the Coalition of Public Protection, said.
Bartolo and the coalition started the ‘DeFlock Dayton Campaign’ years ago.
She said they were always fearful of what the cameras could be used for.
“We have heard from the investigation so far that there were 7,100 times that these cameras had been accessed for immigration enforcement,” Bartolo said.
Outgoing Dayton Police Chief Kamran Afzal said the new commander of the Support Services Division noticed a higher level of data sharing in October and the department opened an investigation.
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 commander 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.
“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.
Bartolo said when it comes to Flock cameras and license plate readers, it will be hard for the community to trust the department.
“The infringement on our privacy as well as the security of the data, and so we’re asking for the contracts to be ended and for us not to have this technology at all in our community,” she 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.
News Center 7 will continue to follow this story.
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