The Huntington, West Virginia city council voted 6-4 to approve resolutions allowing Mayor Patrick Farrell to enter the city into a contract with Flock, the maker of automated license plate reader technology, following a July 13 meeting that stretched past 2 AM. The vote came less than a week after the shooting death of 33-year-old Jackie Harper, a case Farrell said Flock cameras helped crack by locating the suspected killer in another state.
Farrell also credited the technology with helping find a suspect in the earlier killings of a middle school basketball coach and his brother, a city worker, and pointed to the unsolved prom night murders of four teens from more than 20 years ago as reason to adopt the tool. He said conversations with other mayors at a conference, who described Flock as key to reducing crime, inspired him to bring it to Huntington.
Dozens of residents from the city and surrounding areas spoke against the contract over roughly seven hours, raising concerns about privacy, stalking and surveillance, and potential abuse of recordings by Flock or police officers. Some speakers read from George Orwell's 1984 after 2 AM. Several council members warned the contract language was not tight enough to protect the city from lawsuits and questioned whether a vote was necessary given the opposition.
Councilmember Holly Smith Mount, a Marshall University alumna, voted against the contract. Councilmember Rob Archer, who voted in favor, said he meets more Flock supporters in person than he sees online but also regularly encounters constituents who disapprove. After the vote, Farrell characterized opponents as a loud and vocal minority and said a silent majority supported the contract, claiming he had heard from hundreds of supporters.
The Huntington Community Action Group is collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would effectively void the contract and bar the city from replacing it with a competing service. As of mid-September, the group said it had gathered 1,600 signatures in a little over a month of canvassing and aims to collect 4,000, providing a buffer over the roughly 2,700 needed.
More technology news from TechManNews.
