What in Flock is Going On
The PATRIOT Act was passed 45 days after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Over 150 security provisions were codified.
Almost all are still in effect.
The failures in intelligence are attributed to have been a gulf between the FBI and the CIA. The prevailing sentiment is ‘never again’. An entire branch of government was created called ‘Department of Homeland Security’ which coalesced numerous surveillance and enforcement agencies.
Patrick Smith has been City of Lakewood Chief of Police for two-and-a-half years and is saddled with the unenviable task of delicately tiptoeing through a minefield of cutting-edge intel-gathering technology. Like any brand new tech, questions and concerns arise. And the Chief says there are more technologies coming.
Lakewood Police Department relies upon a palette of technology to hold crime stats down. Lakewood Police does NOT draw upon cell-site simulators, like Stingrays, or facial recognition.
Both officers and patrol cars are equipped with cameras. Chief Smith says “Essentially, anybody getting into a squad car”.
Drones serve their purpose.
Smith; “When we have a barricaded suspect, when we have a perimeter set up for someone who is fleeing police, we don't send the drones just arbitrarily out. Usually we have a specific mission that we're working on to deploy our drones.”
LPD hopes to have a drone available for each squad shift. But each drone has to have a certified drone operator. Drone training was happening in police headquarters during this interview by an FAA-licensed LPD officer.
But the shiny object of people’s interest is Flock cameras, also known as ALPR (Automatic License Plate Readers). Lakewood has 46, implemented just over two years ago.
“There's a balancing act as it relates to our Flock cameras, we place them in areas that we feel would benefit us as it relates to stolen vehicles. Stolen vehicles impact almost every area of crime; your homicides, your aggravated assaults, your robberies, your burglaries, and even your thefts. Because... most people who are committing a crime, they do need a getaway vehicle, and often time... what's used most, most often, is a stolen vehicle.”
“The Pierce County Police Chiefs Association, all the chiefs in Pierce County, those cities that have Flock, we want to meet to make sure that we're following the same protocol as Flock deployment standards, etc. And so if we can't control what everyone else does anywhere else but we can make sure that we in Pierce County are doing what we can to follow the law and also to share information on the effectiveness of the tools we're using.
“The most important thing is that people know what's at stake for us right now, this department was able to save a 15-year-old girl from being trafficked, sex trafficked by using the Flock system. It was 2024 we had a homicide in our city where we had no leads whatsoever, and what solved the case was going back and using the Flock technology to put the suspects at the scene and so we're kind of at a crossroads. Let's say we didn't have it back then. You'd have a 15-year-old girl in Mexico being sex trafficked right now, or we'd have a homicide. There are more affluent cities that have had homicides this year, and Lakewood still remains at zero.”
This data is accessible at every level of government to include city, county, state, and federal, but is also accessible to private data aggregators and private companies like insurance.
“Lakewood will continue to use Flock. The success (of) the system and the overall crime reduction has been tremendous. We are about the safety, security and protection of our residences.” And “Flock is like having another platoon of officers on patrol”.
Cities that have discontinued use of Flock cameras include Redmond, Lynnwood, Sedro-Woolley, Stanwood, and Skamania Co. Olympia just recently backed out from a functioning Flock system already in place.
Cities that have preemptively forbidden ALPRs altogether include Gig Harbor and Enumclaw.
A request to the City of Lakewood for Flock data for ONE specific day cannot be filled for ten weeks, three months after the request. One wonders if Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the national level has to endure such a delay.
No question, Flock cameras have helped Chief Smith see a historic reduction in crimes, like “crimes in progress, stolen vehicles, wanted suspects, missing persons, sex trafficking”.
Chief Smith is very happy to direct to the Report which shows drastic drops in almost all categories. In fact year-to-date, overall crime is down at least 25%.