Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Surveillance Technology topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Grand Rapids OPA: FY24 surveillance report finds no disparate civil‑rights impacts; details drone and body‑camera use
Summary
Office of Oversight and Public Accountability presented the FY24 surveillance report to the Public Safety Committee, summarizing drone and body‑worn camera use by the fire and police departments, budget figures and forthcoming policy issues including facial recognition.
The Office of Oversight and Public Accountability presented the City of Grand Rapids’ fiscal year 2024 surveillance report at the Public Safety Committee meeting, summarizing drone and body‑worn camera use by the Grand Rapids Fire Department and Grand Rapids Police Department and reporting no evidence of disparate civil‑rights impacts.
The report, presented by Nick DeRuyck, manager with OPA, said administrative policy 1503 governs the city’s use of surveillance equipment and surveillance services and that the policy excludes cameras intended to record inside city buildings, equipment to protect city infrastructure, and surveillance equipment acquired before March 24, 2015, the date of the original policy. “Surveillance equipment is operated by or at the direction of the city deliberately or inadvertently capable of capturing or recording data related to the activities of individuals on public or private property,” DeRuyck said during the presentation.
The nut graf: the report covers two primary sources of reportable surveillance in FY24 — fire‑department drones and police body cameras and drones — and summarizes counts, deployment purposes, ward locations, court‑authorized uses and departmental budgets to assess civil‑liberties impacts.
OPA reported that the Grand Rapids Fire Department recorded 177 drone flights in FY24, down 184 flights from the inaugural report; about 90% of those flights were training and roughly 10% were operational (reconnaissance, structure fires, water rescues, assisting other agencies, hazmat and missing‑person searches). OPA noted a set of very short “false start” flights (most under 10 seconds, the longest ~32 seconds) that the fire department said immediately preceded longer operational flights. Ward‑level breakdowns showed Ward 1 accounted for roughly 52% of fire‑department deployments; Wards 2 and 3 accounted for smaller shares. The fire department reported no complaints, no deployments subject to warrants for FY24 and $600 spent on drone deployment and maintenance.
On the police side, OPA said Grand Rapids Police Department (GRPD) uses daily body‑worn cameras; OPA tracks only policy violations and reported no body‑camera failures or misuse complaints in 2024. GRPD also added small unmanned aerial systems during the reporting period and logged 383 drone flights. Reported deployment purposes were primarily overwatch and locating persons (about 42–43%), with 14% for evidence collection and 1% for traffic views. Ward‑level counts showed Wards 1 and 3 accounted for approximately 41–40% of GRPD drone activity, Ward 2 about 16%, and outside or assistance flights about 3%. OPA said three GRPD drone deployments required search warrants or other court authorization.
OPA provided department budget figures: OPA paid $777,588.22 for GRPD’s body‑worn cameras; GRPD reported approximately $111,073 for its own drone operations. OPA said it analyzes potential disparate impacts on First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment interests and found no evidence of disparate impacts in the FY24 data. DeRuyck said OPA will continue collection on a quarterly basis and will include further analyses in future surveillance reports. He flagged two internal complaints from the inaugural report (CR 22019 and CR 22038) as still being litigated and said analyses pursuant to the administrative policy will appear in later reports. He also identified facial‑recognition and other artificial‑intelligence tools as a horizon issue for future policy consideration.
Mayor LeGrand and other committee members thanked OPA for the briefing and asked follow‑ups, including whether drone footage is tracked to arrests or prosecutions; GRPD’s chief said the linkage exists anecdotally and via evidence used in court, but the department does not currently report systematic case‑closure linkage in OPA’s format. OPA noted it will continue quarterly collection and analysis.
Looking forward, OPA will continue quarterly monitoring, provide further analysis once litigated complaints are resolved, and consider policy implications of emerging technologies such as facial recognition.
