JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Sheriff T.K. Waters is addressing JSO\u2019s use of Flock cameras, amid growing concern about the license plate reading cameras that are springing up across the nation.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Waters said he stands behind his agency\u2019s use of the cameras, but understands the public\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we did a good enough job, maybe explaining to people what it was,\u201d said Waters.<\/p>\n
He said over the past two years they\u2019ve proven incredibly effective, helping to solve 15 murders, 17 kidnappings, six forcible sex offenses, nearly 100 shootings and 172 missing persons cases just since 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make it extremely difficult to allow you to get away with crime in Jacksonville, and we\u2019ve been able to do that so far, and we\u2019re seeing massive improvements,\u201d said Waters.<\/p>\n
But Riley Willis, who is organizing opposition to the use of Flock technology in neighboring St. Johns County, argued use of the technology has exploded in recent years with little to no public input or transparency.<\/p>\n
\u201cTen years ago in 2016, there were zero ALPR\u2019s across the United States, and now there\u2019s I think we\u2019re talking there\u2019s 120,000,\u201d said Willis.<\/p>\n
Waters declined to specify how many license plate reading cameras JSO employs, but according to FlockHopper.com<\/a> there are more than 130 in Duval County.<\/p>\n Willis noted other concerns surround the potential for the cameras to be used by officers to stalk romantic interests or track the movements of citizens for reasons not related to official investigations.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever you\u2019ve got this widespread of a surveillance network, the ability, the capacity for human misbehavior is going to be exponentially multiplied specifically because it is so easy,\u201d said Willis.<\/p>\n Waters explained that JSO officers have to connect their search to a case number when accessing Flock data.<\/p>\n He said JSO has not seen any misuse of the cameras yet, and noted the agency audits their use to ensure they are not being accessed for improper reasons.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re always gonna use it the right way, and I think people have seen enough that we don\u2019t have a problem disciplining our own when they don\u2019t do the things they\u2019re supposed to do,\u201d said Waters.<\/p>\n Sheriff Waters also noted, unlike other surveillance technologies like red light cameras, school bus cameras and toll cameras, Flock cameras cannot be used to automatically ticket drivers for traffic infractions.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Sheriff T.K. Waters is addressing JSO\u2019s use of Flock cameras, amid growing concern about the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1008007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[12189,13030,5229,403495,3188,403494,723,202023,7310,3005,403492,77156,8423,425,403493,119915,92584,12498,38099,67,586,8789,132,5230,68,2969,57517,33784],"class_list":["post-1008006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-action_news_jacks","tag-america","tag-duval-_county","tag-fl","tag-flockhopper-com","tag-florida","tag-jack_state","tag-jacksonville","tag-jake","tag-jake_soan","tag-jake_stan","tag-jso","tag-local","tag-riley_willis","tag-saint_johns_county","tag-saint_johns_county_sheriffs_office","tag-sheriff","tag-tk_waters","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-united_states","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-waters","tag-willis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}