Hazel Park, Madison Heights, and Southfield Police Share Experiences with Flock

(Mary Dupuis, Feb. 15, 2023)

Ferndale, MI – Ferndale City Council will soon be asked to consider approving the instillation of Flock Safety Surveillance cameras throughout the city to aid the Ferndale Police Department in solving cases.

Once in place, the cameras take photos of license plates on public streets which are quickly compared to a database filled with license plates of stolen vehicles, vehicles with alerts on them (such as Amber Alerts for missing children or Silver Alerts for older adults) and vehicles with drivers who have arrest warrants.

License plates are either entered into the system through the National Crime Information Center or by individual police departments.

Images are stored in the system for 30 days so if a crime is reported in the area, police can identify which cars were in the location at the time.

The system does not just track license plate numbers, but can also identify vehicles by make, model and year as well as by features unique to the car such as bumper stickers or body damage.

Although Ferndale has yet to give the system the green light, it’s being used in hundreds of cities across the country as well as in some cities in Oakland County. Hazel Park, Madison Heights and Southfield are all currently using the system and have been for at least six months.

At a recent community meeting, Ferndale Police leadership explained they had intentionally waited for six month before bringing the request to Council so they could see how it works out in neighboring cities first. Oakland County Times reached out to Hazel Park, Madison Heights, and Southfield police to inquire about their experiences.

Chief of Police in Madison Heights, Corey Haines, said the system has not only helped his city, but also others in surrounding areas. Haines said jurisdictions can allow each other access to their Flock cameras as a way for law enforcement to share resources.

“The most recent success story in Madison Heights was the recovery of a stolen vehicle,” Haines said. “A neighboring jurisdiction received a Flock notification regarding a vehicle that Madison Heights entered as stolen. The other jurisdiction acted on the notification and was able to make contact with the vehicle and the driver. The result of that contact was the recovery of a stolen vehicle and the arrest of the driver.”

The Chief of Police in Hazel Park, Brian Buchholz, said his department has had similar experiences in not only using Flock cameras to help their city, but to aid others as well.

“It’ll alert us if something bad has just come into town we can try to search for it,” Buccholz said. “That kind of thing has helped us not only in our own city, but it’s helped us capture subjects for other cities. One of the (cases) that was a good one is an armed robbery suspect was in a vehicle that we are able to stop and make the arrests for a neighboring jurisdiction. So we’ve had a lot of captures, warrants and other things like that for other cities.”

For as much as the system has been able to help the departments aid neighboring jurisdictions, it has also been useful within their own cities.

“As far as internally, it has helped us solve our crimes,” Buccholz said. “Even simple stuff like hit-and-runs it’s helped us…It’s really saved us time in identifying suspect vehicles and suspect drivers. In our experience 70% of crimes are done with the use of a vehicle, so it’s really helped us out.”

As Southfield has been using Flock cameras for the past two years, both Deputy Chief of Police Aaron Huguley and Lieutenant Matatall stressed the idea that the Flock system is used solely for investigative purposes.

“The issue is is that is oftentimes aligned with facial recognition software, and this has nothing to do with facial recognition,” Huguley said. “We’re not spying on people. We’re not using this technology to spy on people or identify anything that’s unknown. When the information is put into Flock it’s vehicle-related stuff…We’re looking for that vehicle in association with some type of law enforcement investigation. So we’re not looking for people, we’re looking for the identifier of the car.”

In addition to this Matatall said any time the department receives an alert from their Flock cameras, the officers work to verify that the system was correct in identifying the vehicle and the charges before any traffic stop is made.

Buccholz said initially city council members in Hazel Park were wary of the system being a form of government overreach, but he worked to ensure them that wasn’t the case.

“This basically is similar to if our officers were on the side of the road and see a vehicle go by speeding or something like that,” Buccholz said. “You’d punch in the plate and be able to know that information. This is not capturing peoples’ faces. It’s really specific to certain crimes. We do not act alone on these captures – we actually verify that it is wanted in the law enforcement database. We verify that it is wanted we don’t just act on the Flock cameras.”

Buccholz also said the Flock cameras have nothing to do with general traffic enforcement such as measuring the speed of vehicles or issuing tickets.

Members of the police departments in each city said Flock cameras have been useful to them and they have yet to come across any issues.

In January a representative from Flocked joined Ferndale officials to discuss the proposed technology. The City of Ferndale is considering a contract of 1-2 years. Cities can determine how many cameras they would like and where to place them. The cost is a $350 installation fee per location, plus $2,500 per year per location. Some residents and business owner expressed concerns over the increase of government surveillance, while others appreciate the system’s ability to help police solve more crimes.

The City is hosting a second community meeting, which will be Feb. 23 at Incubizo – 1938 Burdette Street in Ferndale from 6pm to 7:30pm. More info: Facebook