Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin took three days off last week to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary. He came back to a barrage of calls, emails and letters from police officers, detectives, judges, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley and other supporters of license plate readers.
While he was away, council’s Safety Committee had voted against the Public Safety Department’s request to extend the city’s contract with Flock Safety for its license plate readers. The current contract ends on June 29.
“I am getting bombarded with Flock,” Griffin told Signal Cleveland. “Quite frankly, the [Public Safety Department] should have done a better job at the presentation last week. So I am now trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together.”
Griffin said that safety committee members told him the city officials didn’t provide any data to show “how these things are working to solve crimes in their neighborhoods.”
But Griffin and Council Member Mike Polensek, chair of the safety committee, are granting city officials another chance to make their case at a second committee hearing, date to be determined.
They are also considering an amendment that would allow council members to keep license plate readers out of their wards.
A ‘disconnect’ between council and city officials
License plate readers are cameras that capture images of every passing vehicle. Those images are transmitted via cellular networks to a database and stored for 30 days. Law enforcement agencies can share access to their databases with each other.
Dozens of cities, including Dayton, have cancelled or declined to renew contracts with Flock amid citizen backlash over immigration-related searches and other abuses of the technology.
Other law enforcement agencies access Cleveland’s database far more often than its own officers. Officials say that’s because Cleveland participates in Flock’s national network, not because police in other states are tracking residents.
At last week’s hearing, a deputy chief of police told safety committee members that losing access to license plate readers would be “crippling” to Cleveland police’s efforts to solve violent crimes, recover stolen vehicles and locate missing people. But when Council Member Kevin Conwell asked for data to back up that claim, city officials said they would get back to him.
On Tuesday, Conwell told Signal Cleveland that he had not yet received any data.
That was part of a larger “disconnect,” as Polensek put it, between the Public Safety officials and the safety committee members.
“We need to utilize technology, no one is disputing that,” Polensek said, adding that council has approved every tool the city has asked for. But he and his colleagues hear constantly from constituents who are fed up with slow city responses to nuisance bars, illegal dumping and other criminal activity despite access to thousands of video surveillance cameras.
A city spokesperson did not answer Signal Cleveland’s questions about whether the city would present data at the next hearing or how the potential a council member opt-out option would affect the system’s effectiveness.
‘A call for a pause’
Bishop Tony Minor of Community of Faith Assembly was surprised by the scene when he walked into council’s committee meeting room last Wednesday.
A consultant (who he declined to name) had asked him to speak in support of license plate readers, Minor told Signal Cleveland in an interview on Wednesday. He didn’t know that a dozen or so other clergy members would also be there for the same reason, he said. Nor did he expect to see friends and fellow immigrant advocates sitting on the other side of the room, waiting their turn to voice their opposition.
In his testimony, Minor was open about his ambivalence. He expressed concern over reports that license plate readers have been used in some places to help federal agents chase down immigrants. But he said he also understood the need to do everything possible to fight crime in neighborhoods where children can’t walk freely down the street. After he addressed council members, he approached the area where opponents were sitting and spoke to a few of them.
The consulting firm was annoyed with his half-hearted support.
“They asked, ‘How could somebody tell that you were for it?’” Minor said. “And I said, That’s an important question. Maybe instinctively I’m not.” He told Signal Cleveland that he has “moved from guarded optimism [about the technology] to a call for a pause.”
Minor said he plans to speak at the next hearing.
