CHIPPEWA FALLS — The Chippewa Falls Public Safety Committee will hold a public hearing on Monday to hear from residents on whether the city should purchase Flock safety cameras.
The meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 30 W. Central St.
This will mark the third meeting where the committee has discussed whether to purchase the surveillance equipment, which would be placed along busy traffic corridors in the city. Flock cameras capture images of license plates, not people inside vehicles. They are not used to issue traffic citations, like speeding. Rice Lake, Menomonie and Eau Claire all have these cameras.
The council members who serve on the committee are Heather Martell, Jody Marr and Scott Sullivan. The committee has been weighing the stated benefits — that cameras help solve crimes like locating stolen vehicles or tracking down kidnapped people — against their concerns, such as if cameras are too intrusive and if they could open up the city to potential lawsuits.
At the last discussion on the topic, the committee agreed they wanted a public hearing that would take place in the evening so more residents could weigh in on if they think the cameras are a positive or a negative.
After the public hearing concludes, the committee is expected to make a recommendation to the City Council.
Trevor Chandler, a San Francisco-based Flock lobbyist, told the committee in June they now have 1,300 employees and have cameras in 42 states and in more than 5,000 municipalities. The cameras capture images of license plates and enter them into a national database.
Chandler said that courts have consistently ruled that recording images of the exterior of the car, and particularly a license plate, is legal and doesn’t violate Fourth Amendment rights to privacy.
If the city opts to purchase the cameras, the Chippewa Falls Police Department would have access to the footage, with Flock storing the data. The only people who would have access to the data from Chippewa Falls is the city; it would not be shared with any other municipality. Typically, municipalities opt to save footage for 30 days. An officer can download a video and image at any point in that 30-day period and retain it for investigative purposes.
The police department first requested purchasing the cameras a few years ago. A proposed offer in 2023 called for the city to purchase seven new Flock traffic cameras, plus installation and a two-year contract, at a cost of $49,450.
Even though Chippewa Falls hasn’t had Flock cameras, Chief Ryan Douglas said they are familiar with the technology and have seen how they work and how they have helped resolve issues.
Douglas said he is hopeful of getting six to 10 of the cameras that would be placed along major transportation corridors in city limits. He said he has a tentative list of where 10 cameras could be placed on busier streets in city limits.
Flock cameras have been credited with the arrest of Jose E. Dominguez-Garcia, who killed his pregnant ex-girlfriend and left her body in a suitcase in the Town of Wheaton in July 2020. Dominguez-Garcia was arrested in a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., in November 2023 after a Flock camera recognized he was driving a stolen vehicle. Dominguez-Garcia was sentenced last month to serve 25 years in prison.