Last Thursday, the Riverside Board of Trustees did right by Riverside residents. They voted to turn off the Riverside Flock cameras and to stop participating in the construction of the new American surveillance state. Unfortunately, they did not vote to stop the Riverside police from using that same surveillance state to spy on our neighbors.
The board understood that ALPRs like Flock, which track innocent civilians who are not suspected of any crimes, are a threat to our privacy and got them out of Riverside. At the same time, they decided to allow the Riverside police to keep using the search features of Flock to track our neighbors. They decided we do not want to be tracked in Riverside, but we want to track everyone else.
Additionally, the Riverside Police Department used the board’s directive to find a replacement for the two Flock cameras to buy three new ALPR cameras from Verkada, a company with many of the same issues as Flock. We had 738 trick-or-treaters on Halloween — not a single kid asked for three pieces of candy after I told them they could have two.
When I first attended a board meeting to talk about Flock, I saw the Williams Architects’ presentation on the design of the new Public Safety building. I was impressed by how thoughtful their design was. How clever the layout was to fit so much in such a small footprint. After seeing that, I really wanted to support the new building. Now that I know the Riverside Police Department will use their new $29.9 million clubhouse to spy on us, I cannot.