CITY OF SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — People in the City of South Fulton will get to voice their concerns in the coming hours about the use of Flock cameras in their community.
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This comes as a state lawmaker is proposing statewide legislation to regulate the use of Flock.
Channel 2’s Candace McCowan reports that people can ask questions of law enforcement and a representative from Flock Safety at a Monday town hall focused on the use of automatic license plate readers in the City of South Fulton.
The town hall in South Fulton Monday is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Southwest Arts Center.
Flock technology was able to stop a rapist in Cobb County just a month ago.
State Sen. Jaha Howard says Flock cameras have proven useful for law enforcement, while at the same time, there have been dozens of reports of officers misusing the technology.
“We need to own the fact that we are responding way too late when it comes to automatic license plate readers,” Howard said.
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South Fulton is one of several cities that have hosted community meetings on the automatic license plate readers.
Howard says there is a need for statewide regulation of the cameras and how they are used on public and private property.
“There should be an actual crime,” he said. “You should be doing a real investigation if you’re gonna access automatic license plate reader data. So we wanna limit the access and have a mechanism for that.”
“We have to make sure that the people who are using this data are being held accountable and there’s some transparency with it,” Howard said. “There’s a mechanism in place.”
“Our communities need effective tools to solve crime. And to recover stolen vehicles and missing persons,” said City of South Fulton Mayor Carmalitha Gumbs. “However, residents also deserve protection from anyone who would use these tools unlawfully.”
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