The Landmark’s recent story on Riverside’s use of Flock cameras left me with the same question I’ve had since learning about them: Why does a low-crime community like Riverside need to participate in an interconnected system that records the movements of ordinary citizens? 

I don’t doubt that license plate readers can help police. But anecdotes about their successes aren’t enough to determine whether routinely recording the movements of thousands of innocent people is a reasonable tradeoff. 

I recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request about Riverside’s Flock data-sharing arrangements. The records show that Riverside’s two cameras are part of a much larger law enforcement network. According to Riverside’s own records, it shares its Flock network with 450+ other organizations. 

That context matters when Riverside is described as using “only two” cameras. The question isn’t how many cameras we own, it’s how broadly the information they collect is shared, who can use it, and for what purposes. 

Riverside has safeguards around how its Flock data can be used and shared. Those protections are important, but they don’t answer the fundamental policy issue: Should Riverside be collecting this information at all? 

The question is especially timely. Communities across the country are reconsidering their relationships with Flock, while Riverside’s contract is up for renewal as part of the upcoming budget process. 

Before spending more tax dollars on a surveillance network, Riverside residents deserve evidence of its value. How many Riverside crimes have these cameras helped solve? How many arrests or stolen vehicle recoveries resulted? How many plates were scanned to produce those results? 

Riverside is fortunate to be a safe community, thanks to the efforts of its public safety staff. Public safety matters, but so does maintaining a community where residents aren’t routinely entered into a searchable law-enforcement database simply because they drove down Longcommon Road. 

The burden shouldn’t be on residents to demonstrate that surveillance technology has been abused. Government should demonstrate that surveillance is necessary and sufficiently valuable to justify collecting the information. 

Based on what Riverside has disclosed so far, I don’t believe that case has been made.