Dayton council hears Flock Safety presentation on license-plate readers as residents press for clarity on federal access and audits

Dayton — City staff and a representative from Flock Safety briefed the Dayton City Council on the city’s automated license-plate reader (LPR) network on March 10, answering questions from councilors and residents about data ownership, federal access and auditing.

Police staff said the council approved purchasing seven cameras in the 2025 budget and that all seven were fully deployed only in late November. Chief Inga told the council the department has already used alerts to locate stolen vehicles and to assist in welfare checks. “We were able to locate that vehicle, make sure the driver was okay,” Chief Inga said, describing a case in which an LPR hit produced a welfare response.

Christian, a Flock Safety representative, walked the council through how the system works and the safeguards in place. He said the system captures still images of the rear of vehicles on public roadways, retains images for 30 days by default and does not use facial-recognition technology. “The data is 100% owned by the city of Dayton,” the Flock representative said. He added that searches and queries are logged, encrypted and auditable.

Residents and some council members pressed for clarity about prior pilots and federal access. One councilor told the company, “Your company has lied a lot about things, particularly about whether Border Patrol or ICE has access,” and said she did not trust the vendor. The Flock representative acknowledged failures in communication around a prior pilot and said that pilot has ended and that, currently, Dayton is not sharing its camera feeds with federal agencies. Chief Inga reiterated the city’s position: “There is no federal authority that has access to our system at this time, and we don’t plan on allowing them.”

Residents asked whether federal agencies have ever accessed Dayton’s data and whether the city’s contract and policy are publicly available. Staff said the LPR policy and the related state statutes were included in the meeting packet and on the city’s transparency portal, but several residents said the materials were difficult to find and urged clearer, more prominent public posting.

Councilors sought details about access controls and auditing. The vendor described features such as user IDs attached to each query, mandatory search reasons and forthcoming anomaly-detection audits to flag repeated or unusual searches. The city budget officer said the annual maintenance cost is approximately $3,000 per camera (about $21,000 a year total), funded by taxpayer dollars; staff said homeowner associations are not contributing to the city’s camera budget.

No ordinance or contract change was before the council. Staff said they will follow up with written clarifications on data-sharing settings and contract terms and will make the city’s LPR policy and transparency page easier to find. Council members asked staff to report back if any external agency requests access and to provide the results of the department’s auditing schedule once regular audits begin.