Police chief outlines need for license-plate cameras, vehicle replacements and cloud migration

Police Chief Jamie Mills presented the department’s capital requests Feb. 4, urging council to approve a package of equipment intended to improve investigations and modernize technology.

Chief Mills said the department seeks nine license-plate–capture cameras from Flock Group Inc., two replacement Chevrolet Tahoes, vehicle upfitting and replacement mobile data computers (MDCs), and replacement body and in-car cameras with cloud storage. He told council those purchases address an aging in-house server and provide quicker access to license-plate data during time-sensitive incidents such as missing-person searches.

“The hit list alerts are only given to us if it's something that's in NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or AMBER Alerts,” Chief Mills said. “In the past two years, we've had 22 missing-person reports. Fortunately, we found all of them, but when a resident with dementia leaves at 3 a.m., every minute counts.”

Nut graf: The police purchases combine equipment replacement and new capabilities. Council and the chief focused discussion on the operational benefits, vendor transparency and audit controls for license-plate data; one council member voted against the Flock camera ordinance.

Key details and rationale

- Flock cameras: Mills said Flock provides a 30-day lookback of license plates and vehicle detections and that the vendor’s public transparency materials state the system does not perform facial recognition or track gender, race or other protected characteristics. He noted audit trails and administrative controls are part of the vendor agreement.

- Vehicles and upfitting: The department requested two Chevy Tahoes via the state cooperative bid (Tim Lally Chevrolet) at a not-to-exceed cost of $104,056 and authorized professional installation of emergency equipment by PAR Public Safety Equipment for up to $44,867. Mills said the actual combined cost is below earlier estimates and budgeted amounts.

- Cameras and cloud migration: The current body/dash-camera platform is at end-of-life and no longer supported by the vendor, Mills said; the Motorola Solutions contract for $36,723.15 moves storage to the cloud and eliminates a local server purchased in 2017.

Council response and next steps

Council asked for details about interagency data sharing and how often neighboring agencies provided Flock data in prior cases. Chief Mills said he estimated three or four requests in the last year anecdotally and described cases where partner response times varied; he said direct access would improve timeliness. The council authorized the purchases during the ordinance roll calls (Flock passed 4–1; other police-related ordinances passed unanimously).

Ending: The police department will coordinate procurement, upfitting and vendor setup; council action authorizes the city manager to execute the contracts and the department to implement the technology.