Oak Park’s Village Board voted 4-3 at its April 4 meeting to approve a scaled-back plan to install eight cameras on streets to capture motorists’ license plate data. The cameras had been proposed after some residents complained about violent crime in the village.
On March 21, the board voted to table a proposal from the village’s police department to spend $112,500 on a two-year contract with Flock Group to install 20 such cameras, which provide license plate information as well as vehicle make, vehicle color and vehicle type. The cameras can process up to 30,000 vehicles a day.
Oak Park Police Chief LaDon Reynolds noted that the village’s police department already uses Flock’s data but until now hadn’t ever agreed to proceed with installing its cameras. He told the board that Flock’s technology since 2019 “has aided in the recovery of 28 carjacked vehicles from Oak Park and the arrest of at least 37 offenders who were responsible for those crimes.”
Trustee Lucia Robinson, who supported using Flock’s technology, told her colleagues that “we don’t have to guess what the impact of Flock will be because we already know.”
“The police chief has already cited crime stats that verify Flock’s proven use in solving and in apprehending, arresting and in recovering stolen vehicles with the use of Flock data,” she said. “He also made it very clear that there have been zero instances of misuse or mishandling of such data. So we actually don’t have to even guess what the impact is going to be on this community — we already know. And one of the greatest indications of future experience is to look at past experience, and the past experience of Flock in this community has been that it has been an incredibly useful tool and investigative measure for our police.”
Several trustees remained staunchly opposed to the cameras. Trustee Susan Buchanan stressed that a misperception in the community is that Flock’s cameras prevent crime, when there is no such evidence. Instead, the cameras solely help solve crimes, and an ongoing board goal is to prevent crime in southwest Oak Park, which has seen a spike in crime.
In addition, Buchanan said that while she appreciates the village’s police force, she stands with the Black community, which remains “generationally harmed by historical policing behavior and not ready to trust that these cameras are in their best interest.”
Trustee Chibuike Enyia, who voted against the technology, characterized the board’s vote as premature, given that trustees have not received a perspective on the cameras from the village’s policing consultant, BerryDunn, or from other village panels. He also said he felt that the engagement with the community continued to be lacking.
Additionally, Enyia said, the cameras are at risk of misuse by biased individuals.
“This still puts people at risk. I don’t think cameras can be made to be racist. You can’t just make a camera racist. It’s going to do its job,” he said. “Biasness comes from the actions and the people behind the systems and how those systems are then utilized to do these traffic stops, to do these pullovers, or human error.
“I’ve had to deal with pullovers in my life, in Oak Park, where I’ve had more than seven cop cars called in a situation for something that never happened. So I was followed around Oak Park for hours until I was actually pulled over at one point, and you know, had countless cop cars show up to a situation which was actually right outside of my job when I worked at the high school as a volunteer wrestling coach.
“To think that anyone could have to go through that type of embarrassment and have to go through those types of situations for something that might be a complete legitimate accident would make me feel horrible, and I would be pretty sure that the person going through this would be traumatized. To also know that there is a percent of misreads (of license plate data)…to just say that that’s a chance that we are OK with letting that happen does not sit well with me.”
Ultimately, the board voted 4-3 against the police department-backed proposal on its agenda for 20 Flock cameras at a cost of $112,500, with Village President Vicki Scaman breaking the tie. Scaman, who also had cast the tie-breaking vote to table the measure two weeks earlier, then proposed an alternate plan for eight cameras, subject to reviews of usage of the data by two village panels, the Civic Information Systems Commission and the Citizens Police Oversight Committee.
That scaled-back proposal passed 4-3, with Scaman again the deciding vote. She made clear that the technology should never be used for traffic violations or for other non-emergency stops.
“My belief (is) that the use (of these cameras) has solved crimes, and that our department would otherwise continue with current access using other…municipalities’ data, and we then lose any ability to track our own use and ability to hold ourselves accountable,” she said.
“The only way we can address and even know if technology is being misused here or elsewhere is to own it. The technology will exist, and will be used with or without our vote tonight. This way, we will have the data we need to either yank it completely, or not. And I for one will have no problem cancelling the money spent on eight cameras if it is not helpful.”
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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