Amid the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown, Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis has pulled the plug on a controversial crime-analysis software and placed the 10 license-plate reading cameras being piloted in the city into a data silo.
Depending on the source, anywhere from 57,000 to 140,000 people have been deported since Donald Trump retook the White House in January. Among that number are naturalized and natural-born citizens, and many have been apprehended using data shared between local law enforcement offices and federal agencies, prompting concern about how that data is shared.
Charlottesville city councilors made their worries known to Kochis.
“It was very clear that they were concerned,” Kochis told The Daily Progress in explaining why he canceled plans to implement a software system from San Francisco-based Peregrine Technologies.
Peregrine’s product, which would have aggregated disparate police information systems, moved forward in late May when a divided City Council voted to approve a $150,000 grant under Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’ “Ceasefire Virginia” program.
“Shortly after that vote, there were concerns made about Peregrine and folks, mostly at the federal level, getting access to it somehow,” said Kochis. “I didn’t have the support for it.”
City Councilor Lloyd Snook, voting with the 3-2 majority approving the Peregrine deal on May 19, revealed himself as the later flipped vote.
“I thought about it a lot more,” Snook said at a June 16 Council meeting. “I concluded that despite my earlier expression of some support that I was opposed — which sort of tips the balance I suppose.”
The decision stymied a planned data dump for the Los Angeles-based Center for Policing Equity that would have measured the racial fairness of Charlottesville policing, Kochis told Council. It also leaves the department to continue to analyze crime the old-fashioned way, sorting through crime counts across various platforms.
“It’s not perfect,” Kochis said. “It’s pretty clunky and very time consuming.”
Kochis said that other jurisdictions, such as the University of Virginia, Alexandria, Fairfax, and Loudoun County have embraced Peregrine, which runs on secure Amazon Web Services servers and complies with FBI standards. Asked if the department can repurpose the $150,000 grant toward other technology, Kochis said he has begun investigating.
“I don’t have that answer yet though,” he said.
While the Peregrine reversal showed deference to City Council, the decision to block outside access to Charlottesville’s Flock automated license plate readers emerged from within the police department itself after staff saw what was happening in nearby jurisdictions.
“That’s something we actually did proactively,” said Kochis.
So far, 25 Virginia localities — including the sheriff’s offices in nearby Greene, Buckingham and Bedford counties — have joined the so-called 287(g) program which deputizes local law enforcement officials to partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help enforce immigration law.
None of the participating sheriff’s offices immediately responded to a Daily Progress interview request.
“Once we started to look at it and found that some jurisdictions in Virginia were using Flock data while signed onto the 287(g) program — which lets local police act as immigration agents — we shut our system off,” Kochis said.
The result is that officers in Kochis’ department can no longer see Flock data in other jurisdictions, and no law enforcement agency outside his department can access Charlottesville’s 10 Flock cameras without a court order.
On July 1, a new state law took effect to regulate such cameras and clarify that their data can be used only for state criminal or missing persons investigations. Kochis said his moves go beyond state law.
“No agencies in Virginia, and no federal agencies, actually no agencies anywhere, have access to our system,” said Kochis, adding he has instituted internal audits to ensure that data is accessed only for local investigations.
Civil rights lawyer Rob Poggenklass applauds the impulse but remains skeptical.
“I think we ought to get rid of the Flock cameras altogether,” Poggenklass, executive director of an advocacy organization called Justice Forward Virginia, told The Daily Progress. “I don’t trust the technology itself.”
Citing a recent report of a Texas sheriff’s department using Flock data to track a woman suspected of defying state law by getting an abortion as well as the specter of immigration raids, Poggenklass called the systems from Atlanta-based Flock Safety a threat to individual freedom.
“Their CEO has made perfectly clear that he wants to end crime in the United States, and he sees a system of nationwide surveillance as critical to that effort,” said Poggenklass. “I’m not making up conspiracy theories — this is the product he’s selling.”
Jen Fleisher, who is a Democratic nominee for City Council this year and in deep-blue Charlottesville is almost assured a seat, echoed that sentiment. Fleisher made opposition to Flock a plank in her platform on the campaign trail.
“I am opposed to continuing the use of the Flock cameras,” she said. “It has potential to harm our residents.”
Fleisher said she hopes that City Manager Sam Sanders will shut the system down before the 10-camera pilot phase ends in September.
“We cannot be too careful with protecting the privacy of our residents,” she said.
Kochis, however, maintains that Flock cameras are delivering results.
“The shootings on the Downtown Mall, our January homicide, even locating a missing child,” said Kochis. “We’ve used it in all those cases.”
Kochis added that the city has also seen a dramatic decrease in auto thefts since implementing Flock last September.
“We’ve had a 60% decrease year to date compared to this time last year,” he said.
Already, City Councilor Natalie Oschrin has expressed privacy concerns with Flock. And with a recent investigative report finding that Flock cameras in other localities have been used for immigration enforcement, Charlottesville’s Flock system is likely to receive additional scrutiny by October, when City Council is expected to vote to keep or cancel the pilot program. Kochis said he will abide by the council’s decision but contends that his department has done everything right.
“We have the shortest data retention period in the state, maybe the country — just seven days,” he said. “We identify where all our cameras are; most places don’t. We do it because that’s what our community expects.”
Still, Kochis acknowledged that the fast pace of policing technology can outstrip public support.
“Sometimes we move too fast,” he said. “We have to be very careful that we’re not moving faster than our communities can understand.”
And what of the many private entities already using Flock?
“Go to Lowe’s or Chick-fil-A, they have Flock cameras,” said Kochis. But, he added, “We don’t have access to theirs, and they don’t have access to ours.”
While Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced last week that the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force, the people deputized under the 287(g) program, has surpassed 2,500 arrests, Kochis said his department remains committed to protecting undocumented immigrants and has no interest in enforcing federal immigration law.
“We just graduated our first Hispanic Community Academy,” said Kochis. “The last thing I want is for someone to be a victim of a crime and hesitate to call us.”
With questions lingering about surveillance and privacy, the debate over balancing technology and civil liberties is far from over in Charlottesville.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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