Joplin Police Department's Flock license reader problem is worse than you think

While the Joplin Police Department news release Saturday about the apparent dismissal of an officer over a policy violation involving use of the Flock Safety license plate reader and assured the community the Missouri State Highway Patrol is conducting an investigation, the situation seems to be far worse than the release would indicate.

The news release offered a vague assertion that the department "became aware" of this possible misuse and began an investigation.

It appears the department became aware due to a series of blog posts by Deflock Joplin Today, a blog that has investigated the use of Flock in Joplin for the past few months.

That investigation, which included public information requests to both the city and other government organizations, indicates the scope of the problems that face the City of Joplin and the Police Department.

These include a possible major lawsuit from at least one person who appears to have been stalked by the officer in question, with an apparent 395 license plate checks over a 14-month period that were labeled as "investigation."  (This is not an old fashioned license check where an officer called and found out who a car belonged to and if it was stolen. This check traces where a vehicle has been through cameras placed throughout the city taking still photos 24 hours a day.)

The officer who is no longer with the JPD apparently conducted nearly a quarter of the department's searches and no one noticed over the 14 months, indicating the searches were never audited, despite the possibilities of privacy and civil rights violations that could conceivably occur through misuse of the system. 

The amount of time that the apparent misuse of the system went unnoticed also concerns Deflock Joplin, which pointed it out in a news release issued shortly after the JPD statement.

We are concerned about the duration of the breach of this system. The city failed to disclose this went on for 14 months based on our records. CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Services) standards mandate regular audits of systems like this. We are also concerned about the Police Department's CJIS status as a result of this breach.

Deflock Joplin's Sunshine Law requests of the city and a search of city records have not been able to find any place where the City Council officially approved the purchase of the Flock system, which it paid $154,200 for a five-year contract, a copy of which was sent to Deflock Joplin in response to its Sunshine Law request. The contract appears to date back to December 2023.

Normally, the purchase of any system that is as valuable to law enforcement as the news release claims Flock is, would be accompanied by a public relations blitz.

It doesn't appear city residents were informed. 

Deflock Joplin addressed that concern in the news release.

We are concerned about how this product came to be in our city. We have been unable to find council adoption of the Flock contract and The City has been unable to produce it to us. We have inquired about the purchase processes in the city, but have not received clarification.

The need to keep a close eye on the use of Flock has been demonstrated in other venues. The police chief in Sedgwick, Kansas, used Flock to track the movements of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend 228 times over a four-month period and used his police vehicle to follow them out of town, according to a Wichita Eagle report.

The basic principles of how Flock works are described by the Institute of Justice, an organization that works to protect individual rights:

The cameras snap photos of every car as they drive by and upload them into a database. Officials can then use this database to go back in time and create maps of where people have been, where they tend to drive, and even who they tend to meet up with. All of this happens without a warrant or even probable cause.

But the Fourth Amendment doesn’t allow the government to set up a surveillance state. If the city wants to track suspicious people, it can do what the police have always done: get a warrant. What the city can’t do, though, is watch ordinary people everywhere they go and create a record of their lives without any judicial oversight.

Though the personal liberty concerns are obvious, the technology's value to law enforcement is is undeniable.

In Saturday's news release, the Joplin Police Department offered four examples of how Flock has improved community safety:

- Located a suspect in the rape of a juvenile. Probable cause was submitted for several felony charges.

- Located a juvenile who ran away from home and was found in California.

- Two juveniles who ran away from home were located in Florida and were able to be deemed safe.

- Located a suspect just 14 minutes after the suspect was reported, following an incident, to which the suspect later admitted to the commission of a crime. Probable cause was submitted for an aggravated felony sex offense.

Websites that detail Frock's advantages note that it reduces case resolution time, increases the recovery of stolen vehicles and makes it easier to identify suspects.

It also helps law enforcement officers to work more efficiently with officers from other jurisdictions.