Is There A Legislative Fix to the Pause on FLOCK Camera Use in Wenatchee?

The Wenatchee and East Wenatchee Police Departments are among many agencies in Washington state that have suspended some or all use of Flock cameras, an automated license-plate-reading system.

The Wenatchee Police Department shut off the cameras on advice of legal counsel after questions over privacy concerns and public access, including federal immigration enforcement.  East Wenatchee and the Douglas County Sheriff's Department disabled the national access to the system available to ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol.

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A WA state senator is proposing legislation that could address some of the concerns of Wenatchee Mayor Mike Poirier, who spoke on KPQ's Agenda program about unreasonable requests for the camera system data, which is considered a public record.

"A lot of it came down to a money situation.  I'm not going to let our taxpayer money  pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars for somebody trying to abuse the system."

Poirier says cities face potential financial damages if public records requests are not responded to in a timely fashion.

Poirer and Police Chief Edgar Reinfeld agree the camera systems are a valuable tool.

"When something bad happens, we can't use our Flock camera systems, and we've used them quite a few times; I believe on over 100 times it helped us on cases."                       --Mike Poirier

The camera systems were vital to solving the recent Brown University campus murders and were used in the initial search for Travis Decker, the Wenatchee man accused of killing his three daughters last year.

The proposed bill aims to balance public safety with civil rights and require law enforcement agencies to delete footage within 72 hours, except for violent crime investigations, and outsiders would need a warrant to access data.