Get the Flock out
Columbus only needs to look west at the Gem City for inspiration.
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Back in the halcyon days of 2016, I sold my DNA to a private company in exchange for a deeply flawed genealogy test and a trial subscription to newspapers.com.
The best I can say about that decision is that it hasn’t linked any of my known family members to a grisly murder from before I was born. Apologies to any future who might have had designs on a similar crime spree; our familial DNA now belongs to a shadowy private company that unquestionably yields to police queries.
I look at the expansion of Flock cameras as a similarly rash decision with little longterm upside.
I have no doubt that cops can point to concrete examples of Flock being used in “public safety.”
Coincidentally, the cops’ press shop made sure to paint Flock as a pivotal tool in the apprehension of a rape suspect mere hours after a contentious public hearing on the issue at City Hall.
But the lack of cameras elsewhere isn’t the problem. The problem is circumventing the Fourth Amendment with a private company that has every reason to lie about the safety of its product.
It’s a bad deal in any environment. But especially under Donald Trump’s I.C.E., which could be compounded on the state level if Ohio is dumb enough to elect a billionaire con artist as governor in November (spoiler: we are!).
It would only put our most vulnerable residents further in the crosshairs.
In May, Dayton, led by Mayor Shenise Turner-Sloss, suspended its Flock contract after learning about the company’s “egregious” privacy violations.
Officials even went so far as to cover the cameras with trash bags, which they feared Flock would keep recording despite losing Dayton’s contract.
The Gem City hasn’t descended into chaos because its leaders refused to help take another step on the road to the panopticon.
