As questions mount about whether license plate readers should continue to be used as a public safety tool in Cleveland, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will decide this summer the future of its Flock camera network, which is twice the size of the city’s.
Currently, CMSD has a $603,000 contract with Flock Safety, the company that makes both the plate readers and the software used to store the images from the district’s 201 readers. That contract is set to expire mid-July. Cleveland has a substantially smaller Flock contract that costs the city $250,000 for 100 license plate readers.
The plate readers take pictures of all the cars that cross their paths and store the images in searchable databases for law enforcement to use and share with each other; those images are stored for 30 days before deletion.
Opposition to the city’s use of license plate readers has grown, and city officials are debating renewing Cleveland’s contract with the company. Flock NO CLE, a local advocacy group involved in that push, is now also pushing for the CMSD school board to end the district’s use of the plate readers.
In an open letter to the CMSD board, the group raised a number of concerns about the technology, including its potential use by immigration authorities to track immigrants. They cited other municipalities, like Dayton, where police have suspended their use of Flock after discovering immigration-related searches of their database.
Privacy and cost are also issues Flock NO CLE zeroed in on in their letter since the plate readers take a picture of every license plate regardless of whether someone is suspected of a crime.
“As schools are shut down and educators laid off, it’s baffling that the district would elect to continue spending on surveillance technology, particularly given that there is no independent research supporting this company’s claims around crime reduction,” the letter read.
CMSD Safety and Security Chief Lamont Dodson says the cameras are helpful for security, especially for combatting car thefts and break ins, which are a recurring issue in school parking lots.
What does the CMSD use its license plate readers for?
The district mainly uses its license plate readers when a vehicle has been stolen from school property, according to Dodson. Late last year, teachers and other school staff experienced a rash of cars being broken into and vandalized in school parking lots.
Dodson also told Signal Cleveland that CMSD also uses the license plate readers “in support of the Cleveland police” or when they learn “an unauthorized vehicle has been on our property.”
“We only use them as needed,” Dodson wrote to Signal Cleveland. “I absolutely find them very helpful.”
License plate readers are expensive. How many does CMSD own?
The district has a contract with Flock for 201 license plate readers. They are stationed across 70 of the district’s buildings, with most schools having a reader at both their entrance and exit.
The contract, which includes a subscription to the software needed to use and track the data created by the license plate readers, costs CMSD $603,000 annually. The city’s contract is for $250,000 for 100 readers, meaning the district pays around $500 more per reader per year than the city does.
The school board initially approved the contract in 2023 when it had state money to upgrade its security systems, according to Dodson. Beginning last school year, CMSD began paying for Flock with district funds.
CMSD only shares Flock data with Cleveland Police
Locally and nationally, Flock license plate readers have come under scrutiny for privacy concerns and for their potential use by immigration agents to track immigrants.
Flock Safety, the company that makes CMSD’s readers, contracts with over 5,000 states, cities, towns and counties nationwide. Local law enforcement can and do run searches on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as other federal agencies.
The systems’ software gives police and security departments the ability to control who has access to their database of license plate images.
Some police departments, like Cleveland’s, have opened their database up to law enforcement agencies from across the country. That can include officers who do searches on behalf of immigration agents.
Dodson told Signal Cleveland that CMSD’s Flock database is only available to Cleveland police, which, per policy, does not enforce general immigration laws.
