The Drive 🤝 your inbox. Every weekday
The Daily Brief wraps up the biggest stories and our exclusive reporting on the auto industry and car culture.
Three months ago today, four police officers in their squad cars wrongfully ambushed me and my wife after tracking us with Flock cameras for days week. On Tuesday, our city council voted to cancel its Flock contract.
Tuesday, I was on vacation, headed to Canada to fish on Lake of the Woods. Local news stations were asking me for comment regarding the upcoming council meeting with Flock on the docket. I woke up Wednesday morning to a text from a friend with a photo from KARE11 News, the local NBC affiliate, reporting that the Plymouth City Council had almost unanimously voted to cancel the Flock contract. The lone holdout on the seven-person council was Plymouth’s Mayor, Jeff Wosje.
“I know people have concern, but I’m weighing this against what we all talked about—the ability to keep our residents safe and catch the bad guys—versus basically the bad PR that Flock has,” Wosje said, according to MPR News.
“And I’m going to come down and on the side of our public safety, our police department, to say if they need a tool in their toolbox. I’m going to be OK if there’s a little heat to take for that,” Wosje reportedly added.
Wosje is up for re-election in November and is facing off with Deputy Mayor Clark Gregor, who voted with the rest of the council to cancel the Flock contract.
Plymouth Police Department Slide Doug Maltby
The Drive reader Doug Maltby was at the three-hour council meeting, which took place after a two-hour Flock study session. Maltby said Chief Fadden presented a case during the study session of how Flock is used by the Plymouth Police Department, how it helps solve crimes, and why it’s important for keeping the public safe. Maltby noted that Chief Fadden came prepared with a slide addressing my wrongful stop on June 28, knowing it would come up, though it wasn’t set to be part of the presentation if it wasn’t brought up during questioning. It was brought up.
Chief Fadden’s presentation noted that Plymouth was no longer sharing its Flock data with other west metro police departments. It previously shared data with about 36 other departments. Maltby noted that Fadden’s reasoning for the change was that counties up north had been searched for immigration purposes, and that caused the city of Plymouth to take pause.
It’s unclear how long it will take for the cameras to be removed from Plymouth or whether another automatic license plate reader system, such as Axon or Leonardo, will take its place.
Less than two months after my interaction with the police, Flock’s CEO Garrett Langley admitted the company’s failures that put innocent people like me at risk and announced changes.
Now, three months after the fact, the city I live in—the one put on the national stage—is ditching Flock.
Got a story? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com
Add The Drive as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting.
As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
