By DAVE SCHULTZ
Bluffton Police Chief Kyle Randall wasn’t a big fan of the Flock Safety license plate cameras when the company gave him a sales pitch for the system a year ago.
Tuesday afternoon, however, Randall gave what can best be described as an endorsement of the system which has four cameras pointed at the rear of vehicles coming into and heading out of the city.
In a conversation after the meeting, he described the cameras as a “force multiplier” — a way to keep tabs on who’s coming in and out without positioning an officer along main thoroughfares.
He ran through the same statements he made during the early months of 2022 when he proposed the city put the camera system to use and again in April when the cameras were first activated — that it would alert law enforcement if a vehicle was connected to a missing or wanted person; that it gave officers an ability to search for a specific vehicle by license plate, color, or make and model of the vehicle; that it would allow officers to search within a specific time frame; and also, now presented on the Bluffton Police Department’s website, it allows a public safety review of what the camera system has done.
One of the better uses of the system concerned an individual who had let an acquaintance borrow a car and it hadn’t been returned. A camera recorded the car passing one of the cameras at the same time every day, and when the routine was noted, an officer waited near the camera and pulled the vehicle over to return it to its owner.
Randall reiterated that the information was stored for only 30 days — unless a specific vehicle was marked for one reason or another. He noted that BPD officers have conducted 117 searches on the Flock system in the eight months it’s been in use.
In the 30 days between Jan. 9 and Tuesday’s presentation to the Board of Works, the system had looked at 46,000 unique plates and a total of 248,000 vehicles had been read.
As mentioned, Randall was originally a skeptic but he has seen the value in the system. He was asked by Mayor John Whicker to give a review one year after the use of the camera system was proposed and that’s what happened Tuesday.
The Board of Works members heard the review and understood what Randall was saying.
“There’s a lot of different schools of thought” as to the camera’s status and whether it an intrusion into motorists’ privacy, Hunt said. “I’d like to see a little more information as to totals,” he added.
All three members of the Board of Works — Hunt, Whicker, and Scott Mentzer — were present for Tuesday’s meeting.
daves@news-banner.com
