Buffalo, NY (WBEN) Cheektowaga's supervisor says despite the suspension of three public safety dispatchers for misusing Flock camera systems, he's not prepared to do away with that system.
"I'm still talking with town board members about where they are on the flock system and and what they want done with it. I'm not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater," says Nowak. "I think there's a benefit that comes from these cameras in terms of helping the detectives in our department put the bad guys away, prove without a shadow of a doubt that the people that are committing crimes and causing issues could be taken off the street, but we need to have stronger guardrails on the system, and we've already made some progress in that regard. I think there's more to do, and I need to know from my full board where they want to go. It is a possibility that in the near future will no longer have them. More likely than not, we'll retain the system with some changes to how it's regulated."
As far as the dispatchers are concerned, Nowak says his understanding is while they're nearing the the end of the investigation and the disciplinary process, it's not totally closed out yet, so he doesn't have much to say. "That I'm looking to learn more of the timeline and the details of exactly what went down or how it went down, and that I have no additional comment," says Nowak.
What if Cheektowaga flies away from the Flock? He says one route is Axon. "There's still other alternatives, and I think this is something important for the public to understand: is that if a community says we're done with Flock and goes to a company like Axon, they still have automatic license plate readers, and that doesn't necessarily address the concerns of the critics. Cheektowaga's considered other options, and I'll leave it at that for the moment," notes Nowak.
He says the town has been making adjustments with Flock in the meantime to avoid a repeat. "We've changed the way the system's accessed. We do have an auditing system internally for how those are used by individuals. If a community goes to a different system, whether it's to Axon or to a different company, one of the big questions that town boards, city council should be asking themselves is how transparent are these systems? How can we verify the monitoring? How can we know the oversight is working in such a way that we can actually tell what the users are doing, and I would argue, based on the knowledge I have of these systems, is that you get more of that transparency and flock relative to some of the alternatives," notes Nowak.
