POLK COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — New surveillance cameras appearing on Polk County roads are either a necessary crime-fighting tool, or an invasion of privacy, depending on who you ask.
“I think it’s a great set of eyes. I think what it does is it helps the community from anybody that’s doing anything wrong and I feel safer,” said Robert Padilla, who lives near a recently-installed camera on Old Polk City Road in north Lakeland.
While Padilla gives it a thumbs up, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is sounding the privacy alarm.
“In our society, the government doesn’t look over your shoulder and record everything you do unless it has individualized suspicion that you are engaged in some form of wrongdoing,” said Jay Stanley, ACLU’s privacy expert.
The cameras are being used by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, which, records show, signed a 5-year contract with the company Flock Safety in 2021.
In the redacted contract obtained by News Channel 8, the company states it offers a “software and hardware solution for automatic license plate, detection through (redacted) technology platform, and upon detection the (redacted) create images in recordings of suspect vehicles and can provide notifications to Agency.”
The contract shows each camera has a $2,000 annual usage fee.
The sheriff’s office declined to comment on this story or provide information on the number of cameras purchased and where they are located.
According to its website, Flock Safety works with more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies around the nation.
“When they put it up, I was kind of happy because there’s a lot of strange people in strange cars and you never know who’s passing by,” said Padilla.
Janice Niederhofer is a retired law enforcement official and founder of Humankind Alliance, which provides training to build trust between law enforcement and civilians.
She said the public should support law enforcement finding tools to investigate crimes.
“I can understand how people might get concerned that it has to do with their privacy. My philosophy is, I’m not doing anything wrong. I want to contribute to helping others,” said Niederhofer.
To the ACLU, there is a difference between police in the field using tag readers to look for stolen or wanted vehicles and a device reading tags and recording images of every vehicle that drives by.
“If you get enough of those cameras, it starts to amount to putting a GPS tracker on everybody’s car,” said Stanley.
Stanley said the ACLU urges agencies not to use the Flock cameras, adding with new artificial intelligence and data tracking technology, people need to proceed with caution and ask hard questions.
“Is this the country that we want to live in? Is this the America we have always known? This is a technology that’s brand new in the human experience,” he said.
A spokesperson for Flock Safety told News Channel 8 nobody was available for an interview Tuesday.