July 17, 2026

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

Good afternoon, everybody. We are here for our Friday afternoon discussion session. The first thing we are going to get an update about is electrical bicycles and scooters in Clayton. Then we will, we have questions.

I think many of you are probably here to just listen to our discussion about FLOC. We are going to have, there is a vendor representative from FLOC that's going to come this afternoon and answer our questions. They're not here yet. They went to the wrong city hall.

They're not a local person. So I would just like to let everybody know, because this is a discussion session and not a regular meeting, there won't be public comment where you could address Flock or address us. We welcome public comments at any of our regular meetings. There's actually a time before our meetings where you can address us to make any comments that you wish.

So I would welcome you to do that. We're also all available to meet if council members are willing to do that, depending on what ward you're in. We're available by email, by phone. So if you have additional questions or comments, you're welcome to reach us that way.

So I just want to make that clear to everybody in case you are planning to talk or ask questions. This just is not the forum to do that. With that, I will ask Captain Thuit to come up and just talk to us about e-bikes. All right.

Well, thank you for the time to come and talk about e-bikes. And I'm not going to lie to you. I've learned a lot about e-bikes in about the last two months. So, one of the reasons we're here is electric bikes are really growing in popularity.

Since the last five years, they've doubled in production, and they're looking at selling over a million e-bikes in the next year. So, we want to talk to you about what we can and can't do with our ordinances with e-bikes, and we'll get right into it here. All right. Missouri does have a revised statute of Missouri on the e-bikes, and it describes it as it has to have fully operational pedals.

It has to have a cedar saddle, and they break it in, and it also has to be equipped with an electric motor less than 750 watts. And that's a big distinction in this because we – I'll talk about our ordinance. We have a motorized bicycle ordinance, which is a little different than electric e-bikes too. So they fall into three categories.

They break it down to, I'm going to explain what pedal assist is versus throttle assist. So pedal assist is when you pedal, the electric will power you as well. But as soon as you stop pedaling, the electric stops too. With a throttle assisted bike, you do not have to be pedaling.

You just either hit a button or turn the knob and it'll propel for itself. So class one is a pedal assist bicycle that maxes out at 20 miles per hour. The class two is a throttle assist bike that maxes out at 20 miles per hour. And the third is a pedal assist only.

And it assists up to 28 miles an hour. So that's the difference of the eight miles an hour. So the difference with that. The revised statute 307.194 talks about you do not have to have a Missouri driver's license.

You do not have to register it. There's no title or insurance required. In that ordinance, our RISMO says also that you have the same rights as a traditional bicyclist and that state law recognizes the three-tier system we just talked about, the tier one, two, and three. And it especially gives local governments like ourselves at the City of Clayton the opportunity to, the authority to enact laws to either restrict or give greater access to.

But we cannot change the top three bullets. We can't make them have a driver's license. We can't make them have registration or a title. Here's a photo of it.

The e-bike's on the left. The battery power goes where it says Volter. That's where the battery snaps in on that one. On the right, that's a mini e-motorcycle, which is a very small little motorcycle, but that can go up to about 60 miles an hour.

So that's a big difference. We are starting to see some kids version of motorcycles without operable pedals, so that would not fall under the e-bike category. So we are starting to see they look like little dirt bikes is what we're seeing right now, too. And what you've just talking about with the e-bikes, is that different than from the e-motorcycles?

Yes, so the e-bikes fall under those three classifications. So this bike, I can't tell you if it's a one, two, or three, but it would max out at 28 miles an hour, 20 or 28 miles an hour. But are the e-motorcycles, are they? They do not fall under the e-bicycles.

They don't fall, do they fall under the category? They would actually yeah they should actually you should have a driver license They should be registered for those type things to use on the street So if we were to see a child riding one of these and really probably the big indicator is that there no pedals Correct, yes. Then they would be under 16, then they could ride. Correct, yes.

Yeah, that's exactly what we've been treating as fulfillers. Next thing is the benefits of e-bikes. There are a lot of benefits to e-bikes. Transportation provides affordable alternative to driving, especially on short trips.

Makes cycling more accessible for riders of all ages. And I can tell you, as I get up in age, the electric assist is appreciated. So recreation encourages outdoor activity, expands access to parks and trails. And we have a lot of great parks in here and bike trails, too.

So environmental, it reduces emissions and traffic congestions. Economic, lowers transportation costs and supports local businesses. And then the community enhancement, it has connectivity to neighborhoods, schools, parks, and commercial areas. The e-bikes, we have started to receive a lot of complaints on e-bikes, especially in probably the last two to three months as it's gotten warmer and the kids are out of school.

So I know the parks department has fielded a lot of complaints about them, especially in Shaw Park. We're getting a lot of e-bikes in there, and we're getting them on the pass. We're getting them in the parks. We've actually had a problem in the last couple weeks with them getting into the playground area and hitting the throttle and kind of doing burnouts in there.

So that's something we're dealing with. We're doing extra patrols, especially in the playground areas to watch for that. So that's Shaw Parks. We haven't had them to too many other parks.

It's really just been Shaw Parks so far. We've actually had kids come down from other jurisdictions who have outlawed electric bikes, and we've encountered them in Shaw Parks. So near collisions with pedestrians, we fielded a couple calls at the police department for people walking on the sidewalks almost getting hit by e-bike riders. And then the other problems we have is we have the e-bike riders not obeying traffic laws.

We have seen a couple accidents where e-bikes have ran stop signs and run into vehicles. So that's another problem. And then the juveniles are operating little high-powered bikes, especially for younger juveniles. So that's the complaints we're mostly seeing.

The school district is making a change this year. They're not going to allow e-bikes at their properties for kids. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Is the microphone on?

Is what? The microphone up there? Yes, it's on. I'll stay a little closer to it.

And maybe it was just, I think, sorry, one of our online city council members just got here. So I just wanted to make sure. Okay, and there we go. Okay, the next screen here.

All right, so our Citi Clayton ordinance is we don't actually address e-bikes at all right now in our ordinances. So we have ordinances that deal with bicycles and motorized bicycles, and motorized bicycles are like moped style bicycles. So they have a little bigger engine And then the bikes have. So right now we treat electric bicycles like any traditional bicycle right now.

So here's our little graph of our bicycle accidents over about the last several years. We had a little drop in 22, but we have had increases the last couple of years. So we're up to I think it's eight last year. So that's a pretty small amount here in Clayton.

And with e-bikes, we average two e-bike accidents a year right now. But we've only been able to track e-bikes for the last two and a half years because our accident reporting that we do, they did not have spots to track that. Now they started that in 2024. So we have had two in 24, two in 25, and then we've had one so far in the first six months of 26.

We've had two of the six accidents have had decent injuries on them. The other ones have been all pretty minor injuries. We actually even had a police car get hit by an e-bike outside our station. A person was coming down the hill.

As our police car was pulling out, our car stopped. And when he slid, he just hit the back tire onto our car. He was not injured. He had a helmet on, so it was all good.

But we measured 29 foot of skid marks before he actually made impact with our car. So he was going really close to the 28 miles an hour on that. So other municipalities. So we've looked at Brentwood, Richmond Heights, Creve Coeur, Olivet and Town and Country are some of the areas we found that have already enacted ordinances with in concerning e-bikes.

The similarities and a lot of the ordinances are they define the electric bicycle like the state does, and they use the three classification designation. M One of them I saw had helmets as part of the requirement which I think is a no It the safety of our children So the differences we saw in the different municipalities on how they do it is there two big differences that I saw as far as how they did their ordinances Some of them just added electric bikes in all the bicycle ordinances, just added the word in there. So we'll say bicycles, electric bicycles, and motorized bicycles. That was a big one.

A couple of them have added additional or an additional ordinance that defines it, talks about where they can and can't ride, especially with sidewalks. The municipalities differed a lot on sidewalks. There were some of them that allowed category one, category two on sidewalks, but not three. Some of them said they all could drive on sidewalks and some said that they can't drive on sidewalks at all.

So that's a difference for municipalities. Same thing with shared use. Some allow them in parks, some don't, and the shared pass in there. And we had one that had an age requirement difference.

For the level or the category three, the one that goes 28 miles an hour, you have to be 16 years or older to operate that bicycle. But one of the municipalities actually enacted part of their ordinance that says a parent can be summonsed for allowing any child under 18 years of age for riding an electric bicycle. Which would prohibit them from riding a bicycle. And that's the jurisdiction that we found their kids coming here to Shaw Park to ride.

So those are the big differences that you see in the different ordinances. And you guys can look at those. And I can provide any of the ordinances you guys need for that too. This is a social media graphic that we're going to put out here.

To kind of explain to parents and children where you can and can't ride currently in Clayton. The motorized bicycle is the only place you could do it is a city street. And you do have to have a driver's license. But right now, we don't differentiate between class.

So it'd be the same if it's category one, two or three. And we don't allow those on highways. And you do not have to have a driver's license for any of them. But you have to be 16 to ride a category or category three.

The last thing I've got is electric bicycles. They're not inherently a public safety problem. They are a growing mode of transportation and recreation. Mayor, City Council, alderman, ordinance, resolution, agenda, motion carried.

You know, we want to regulate for their safety, but then also preserve for the e-bikes, because I can tell you, if I were a child, I would want an e-bike. But if my children were younger and asked for one, I would say absolutely not. So does anyone have any questions? Susan, I know you're online.

Do you have any questions for Captain Thuit? I do have one question. I always understood, anecdotally, that the throttle was really what the difference was as far as safety for the children, because they're not at all involved in the movement of the bike. I mean, yesterday, another anecdotal, I had a child, I was turning off, Mayor, City Council, alderman, ordinance, resolution, agenda, motion carried.

20 miles an hour by 20 miles an hour is still pretty fast to go, especially with, like you said, if they're on a sidewalk and you're turning off a street, it's hard to see. And almost all of our bicycle and pedestrian accidents occur from a vehicle turning from one roadway onto another. And when they're on the sidewalk, that's a frequent thing we get with bicycle accidents. And I know that we have a very small number, so it's hard to take something from four incidents.

But do you know what type of e-bikes those involved? I do They just started the category system a couple years ago And honestly until I started looking into this I didn know that they required to have a category sticker on them now And I know we have an e at Clayton PD and it was before that was a requirement But now it is a requirement that they have a sticker somewhere on the bike telling us which category it is Because that the only way we would know to find out And in the law it does say that if you manipulate the bike in any way you either have to resticker it or it would be it would not be in an electric bike category anymore So, OK, thank you. Councilmember Padel, do you have any questions? Just one question.

The slide that showed the different ordinances, regulations around the different categories. Yeah, I'm guessing because I think you said our ordinances don't specify anything about electric bicycles. So I'm guessing what's there is a combination of our code and state. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's our code and state. It's basically it's the same as we use the same thing as our bicycle ordinances. Yeah. And so, but there is a, there were differences between bikes and electric bikes.

They were minor, but the thing on the bottom, the, no, the slide that's the... The motorized bicycle is different. Can you go, let me see here. Second to last slide.

Oh, I'm going, getting it right now. This, yeah. So, must be 16 or older to operate. Oh, yes.

Is that actually a state thing? That is the state law. Okay, that's what I wanted to say. Yes, that is the difference.

You have to be 16 according to the state law to operate a Category 3. Okay, and so for our consideration, if we don't change our ordinances, this is what's in place. Yes. And if we want anything to be different, there are some things that we could put into ordinance.

Yes, you could, of course, require. Like those sidewalk things. Yes, the sidewalks, the park. Whatever, yeah.

You could do the helmets. You could create another age restriction on there, I believe, too. That's what Olivet did. So those are the type changes you can.

We can't require driver's license or any of that kind of stuff. Thank you very much. I don't really know much detail about what the school district did. My general understanding is they basically told kids don't bring these vehicles on the school property.

And it seems to me, although I didn't hear their rationale, Now it's not because they're worried about damage. That is something that has started to happen nationally. I know in another state, they did the same thing, their school district. And then a resident that lived near school told all the kids they could park their bikes there.

And his yard is filled with e-bikes during the day while the kids are at school. So, I mean, my assumption is that part of that is because the school district thinks if they can keep kids from being on these bikes from eight to four Monday through Friday, that's a step in the right direction. I would assume, but I did not talk to them, but I would assume that's probably what it is. So, you know, my take on it, particularly since you've indicated that this situation has gotten worse in the last four months, I would certainly like to see the city consider what else it could do, given their limitations under state law.

Yes. You know what, from a police department standpoint, what you think we could add that we don't have now and you know I know our general practice and the council is, is to suggest either to staff or to our, our city manager here something we'd like you to take a crack at drafting something. So we can kick it around. And I would really like to see you all come up with something where you think it would be helpful.

Obviously, there are other cities that have done more than we have. And I think particularly where safety is involved and kids are involved, we ought to do what we can. I do understand, you know, First Amendment, the right to ride an electric bike or whatever it might be. But whatever it is, I would think the safety concerns, particularly helmets and other things, those are things that I think we ought to take a hard look at.

So I would hope at least our staff and the police department would think about trying to at least give some concepts that we could work on and see if we could at least put an ordinance in front of the city council to consider changes. I think we could do that. Council member York, do you have any questions or comments? No, I would, other than I would tend to agree with Gary, like, I like the idea of doing some restrictions.

The only thing I would ask, or the only thing I would think about is I want to make sure that A, there are potentially restrictions that are practically enforceable and have some teeth into them. I don't know if it makes sense for restrictions out there that our officers can't really enforce practically and or don't really have any teeth in them. But if we can find sort of like the line of where like the parents can be summoned if kids under age are using them, things like that make more sense to me. So as we're thinking about what we all may want to do, I'm supportive of it, but I want to make sure that we're not putting something on the books that's just on the books that we can't actually enforce easily.

Otherwise, that was all I had. Thank you. Council member Waldman. Yeah, I'm just curious with all these like incidents and injuries, That happened with like the younger demographic?

So of our five accidents, four of our five accidents that the bike riders have between the age of 12 and 14. So we have one that was 80 years old. Okay. And then, you know, like the burnout happening on the turf and stuff.

I'm assuming that's also the younger kids. Yes, that is the younger kids. When we've been notified of that, by the time we're there, they have been gone. And a lot of times those have gone into the parks department.

Then they call us. And by the time we get there, those kids are gone. And we did have an incident a couple of weeks ago where they were in Shaw Park. And every time our cars were showing up, they were taking off and kept coming back.

And it was a little game, I guess, they were playing that evening. Awesome. So the class three bikes, do you know if those can be adjusted to even go faster than that? They're not supposed to be, but I've honestly never seen it.

I'm not a category three bike yet. Okay. So I don't know if you would. I'm sure I could do a couple searches and have an answer for you.

I mean, rumor has it that they can do that. And that's from a bunch of middle schoolers who say, oh, my bike can go however fast. And so it's like they think that's cool. And so it's really scary to think that they can even go faster and not be 16, not have a driver's license or things like that.

And one of the things I have seen in the ordinances for the class three bikes is that a requirement is to have a speedometer on it as well. OK. And then I guess my last question is, is I know right now with the class one and two, like they can go on sidewalks and things like that. Yeah.

And then I guess the class two can go 20 miles per hour. And I'm just thinking like sidewalks aren't designed for that kind of speed. You know, you hit like one bump, you know, you're you're. And when I was looking at the ordinances, we have a couple cities who have outlawed them at all.

No electric bikes can be on sidewalks. And we have one that allows class three to be on there 28 miles an hour, which I don't think is a great idea. But they do have in the ordinance that you have to yield the right of way to pedestrians. But yeah, so maybe we can also just look at maybe not letting them on sidewalks if they're at least a class two or three.

Yeah. And then if you wouldn't mind just kind of looking into the rumor, if you can get these bikes even faster, just so we we know. Thank you. My question sort of aligned with what Jeff was talking about, about any ordinance being enforceable and practical.

And my understanding is that we already have an ordinance or something on the books about wearing a helmet if you're 14 or under. We do have an ordinance writing a helmet, but electric bikes is not listed in that ordinance. It's listed as bicycles and motorized bicycles. So it would be a loophole right now in there.

We'd have to talk to our prosecutor to see how he would handle that. But we also don't necessarily like ticket kids who are riding without a helmet on a regular bike, even though there is. Yeah, I cannot think of us issuing a summons. And depending on what the age of the child is, we might not be able to issue a summons for that.

I've tried to do some citizen arrests in the neighborhood, but where is your helmet? Yeah. So I'm just thinking, like, even if we started to maybe enforce what we already have in, you know, ordinance, that might help to begin to get people to think differently about what they're doing. And along those same lines, I've seen in my neighborhood kids, elementary school age kids riding those little motorized bikes.

And so if they have to have a driver's license to be able to ride that, it seems to me that that is like already something that we could enforce. I think that education, along with some new a new ordinance would be the most beneficial way to do this. And that's why we're putting this out, try to educate some of the parents and do that. I'm sure we could do some other things as well.

And maybe even work with the school district too. Yeah, because those little bikes look so fun, the little motorcycles. And I would not have thought that you have to have a license to be able to ride one of those. So I do think for the sake of this graphic too, I mean, that looks like a motorcycle.

Yes. And I think if there's some way, I mean, this is a really good graphic, but if there's some way to clarify, like, yes, that little baby looking thing that your fourth grader is riding around on is this, you know, would be probably helpful. We'll look into that. And I know Chief has banned me from riding electric bicycles.

Thank you so much Thank you Yeah I mean I think yeah as Betsy said I feel like even if there like comments underneath that say like pedal no pedals means it a motorized bicycle you know because yeah people might think well I don my child has something like that But that can't be what they're talking about. I will. We will get one. And just again, I think it's a good graphic, but park trails and park green spaces.

I'm not sure if I know what a park green space would be. I mean, I know what a park trail is like the ones that go through Shaw Park. The green space in the park, we added that because we've had complaints lately of the kids riding through the grass in Shaw Park instead of on the paths. So that's been a complaint we've started to receive.

And on the new fields. And what did you say? On the fields. And on the new fields.

The new fields, yeah. Like it seems to me, yeah, that maybe they shouldn't be riding on that. They could ride on the trails, but not on the green grass. But yeah, I would be supportive of trying to find it.

Use like exploring what other people have said about an ordinance that tightens things up a little bit. And then this graphic, just because we have the Greenway that comes through Clayton. So would that be separate? Because the Greenway does not allow motorized bicycles.

Yes. So I will have to check and see what our enforcement options are. Right. No, I just think because it's like, you know, people use it in Clayton.

So just so people understand that you can't ride a motorized bike on the Greenway. I mean, I see people do it. I use Greenways all over the county. Yeah.

But just reminding people you can. Yes. So, OK, we can work on those. Well, great.

If there are no. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah.

Go ahead. Sorry. Sorry. Weren't there similar discussions with the electric scooters that there were ages and places where they could be ridden and not ridden?

Were there any regulations on those? We haven't discussed that. I know Brentwood has added that to their graphic. If we want to do something like that, we could add that to our graphic as well.

Yeah, Susan, I think that's a good point that electric scooters would want to maybe consider looking at those. How fast? I don't know that they go as fast. Yes, I'll have to look into that.

But I believe that there are, I thought I saw one ordinance that does break it down a little bit more and include electric scooters. So we'll look into that. And then Jeff, do you have another comment? Yeah, it kind of goes, it piggybacks off what I said earlier and Betsy was talking about.

It's like, as you kind of are looking for different restrictions, I would like to know realistically what you'd enforce, right? You talked about the helmets, and we probably haven't ticketed many kids for helmets. We could get in the whole reason as to why we should and shouldn't do that, but that's on the books already, and we're not apparently enforcing it. So I don't want to look at and have you guys spend wheels on a bunch of new rules that we know we're never going to actually enforce.

So as you're thinking through it, all I would ask is look at the ones that are realistic that the department has time and willingness and has the legal ability to actually enforce them. Sounds good. Yeah, and I get and I agree with you, Jeff. I think I mean, I just have concerns about our class three electrical bikes being allowed on sidewalks.

Like, I just I don't think those should be on sidewalks. So if you have to have a driver's license, you should be able to ride them in the road. Mayor, can I add, it seems to me one of the benefits of making some revisions to the ordinance, and I acknowledge the enforcement issue, is if you want to really make an effort in an enforcement program or an education program, I'm sorry, if you're trying to educate our younger people, I think the fact that we have a new ordinance that adds some restrictions is one way of further indicating the importance of this issue. So I would think there is some benefit, and I understand enforceability may be difficult, but I think simply having it on the books, even if we don't enforce it all the time, would nonetheless get the message across.

I talked to one school board member recently who said one of the frustrations, and I must be, I think I'm one of the few on the council who doesn't have school-age kids, but this person did and said one of the issues is just sometimes when you're teenagers or you're almost teenagers want to do things, it's helpful to say, well, you know, Clayton has an ordinance against that. So I think it's helpful in a way to have something like that. And so, again, I would encourage us taking a hard look at what we can do. Thanks.

And maybe think about too, since I know we're getting ready to release our fall and winter city views, I don't know if, I mean, just to be thinking about maybe adding something in city views about it. Yep. So great. Can I make one comment I just I think I just want to say that as a member of the council I hope that we all keep in mind that if there is something that we want the police department to enforce that they not enforcing I believe that we have a role to like set the priorities and activities and find out if they need more resources in order to do it or what preventing it from happening So just to encourage you all I hear a lot of people maybe wishing for enforcement that not happening And I would remind us that we have a role to direct that.

Typically with pelvic law, if you see it, you can go around reminding kids. Typically, is where are we going to take them off the bike and put the bike in the back of a car and drive across the city? We can talk about it. I'm just I just want to remind the council that like we have a role in that.

And if we want to talk about it seriously. So I don't know that what I was suggesting is that we like go crazy on pulling kids off bikes. But I'm just offering that if we're going to if we're going to add more ordinances, you're right that we do need to figure out what which among them are we planning to actually enforce. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. So yeah, we contacted FLOC and they have a public relations team who they go around the country and they meet with city councils and formats like this. And so today we're fortunate to have Mr. Ian Leslie from FLOC Safety to talk about the company and some of the safeguards they have in place and answer your questions.

So Ian, I'll let you take it over. Good evening, good afternoon, Council, Mayor, City officials. Great to be here in Clayton, Missouri. My name is Ian Leslie.

I'm one of the regional public affairs managers for Flock Safety. And two chief points. My main role is to go around educating elected officials, community leaders, and city officials on the story of Flock and what our technology does and does not do. And so I prepared a presentation that will thoroughly walk through some of our safeguards, some of our privacy constituents that are built into the system, as well as address any questions or comments that you may have.

Am I just right clicking? Okay, scroll. Gotcha. Okay, starting out a little bit about the story of FLOC.

And so FLOC actually started out in 2017, and we're based in Atlanta, Georgia. Flock is unique being a public safety technology company that actually started out selling directly to community and small HOAs that were dealing with an uptick in crime, specifically car break-ins and car thefts. And so typically when a crime is committed, it is linked to a vehicle in some form or fashion. But a lot of those cases go unsolved.

Why? Because there's not vehicle characteristics that you're able to reliably get back to the police department, such as a license plate, such as make model of a vehicle, or that may be a vague description. And so our CEO, Garrett Langley, was actually experiencing these types of crimes in his own neighborhood and working with Atlanta PD. He's an engineer resolved to develop an automated license plate reader to combat this crime.

And so we've grown from selling directly to those small HOAs to now being represented in almost 6,000 customers across the country. From HOAs to businesses to schools to law enforcement at the city, county and state level. And so as of 2025, Flock is actually where Flock is used to solving about 20 percent of crime. And so that's crime from kidnapping, from from murder, from homicide, from stolen vehicles, just the whole the whole nine in terms of what crime is, because it's tied to a vehicle.

It's no secret that agencies across the country are dealing with budget constraints, not only from a personnel standpoint, but from a technological standpoint as well. Typically, legacy systems are used in silos, right? And so when it comes to investigative processes, all of the data is scattered around, which again can take a lot more time when it comes to closing investigations. We rely heavily on collaborative policing technology which Flock ecosystem provides.

Our ecosystem consists of automated license plate readers, live video cameras, drones, audio detection. It a whole ecosystem that allows for your police department to effectively and efficiently respond in real time Jumping into ALPRs the the the the the the Or maybe it has a toolbox on the back of it. No personal identifiable information is being captured by the camera. So what do I mean by personal identifiable information?

Race, gender. It's not tied to your DMV records. We're not checking, scanning cell phone, Bluetooth, any of that. None of that is being that we are simply capturing vehicle objective vehicle information.

Flock cameras do not utilize facial recognition. Right. And so I know that's a big narrative or question or common concern for communities and flockers at the standpoint that we are not going to integrate facial recognitions into any of our ecosystem. Flock cameras operate on a subscriptive model.

So we as flock still own the cameras and then you guys own the data. They are solar powered cameras and they are utilized through AI and machine learning to identify vehicles. The reason that's important, and I'll have a use case for this as well. Think of when a new vehicle such as a Cybertruck comes out or Rivian, which are new vehicles.

We use that AI machine learning to identify that new vehicle or train the model in that instance. In terms of how the product works in real time, say a car that is tied to a crime enters Clayton. Within 20 seconds, your agency has identified that that vehicle has entered the jurisdiction. Those alerts are tied to NCIC, National Crime Information Center, as well as other custom what we call hot lists.

Hot lists include amber alerts, silver alerts, and your agency has the ability to opt into whatever alerts they choose to set for their agency policy. As well as sharing, sharing to be clear on sharing your community. You guys, as the customer, have the ability to pick and choose, if at all, who you guys share your data with. That is different that different communities have different values from city to city to even state to state.

Right. And so we've seen agencies share with just their regional affiliates within a 10, 20 mile radius. We have seen agencies that like to start to share statewide as a vendor. We'd like to offer the opportunity for the customer to make that decision at the local level should they choose to do so.

That just goes over the real time alerts. Our standard feature, which pretty much differentiates us from other LPRs out there, is our feature called vehicle signature. Again, in addition to capturing that make model and any other objective identifiers, I'm able to search, hey, does this have a roof rack? Does this have damage to the right side of the car?

That just aids in the accuracy to make sure that we are capturing the correct vehicle in that investigative process. Say if the license plate isn't captured properly or a license plate is switched or the car is stolen, what other objective identifiers can I make sure to ensure that that investigative lead is accurate? This right here is a prime example of night vision, right? So crime does not just happen during the day.

And so we want to make sure that our products are just as efficient capturing at night as they are during the day. And so I'm going to point out right here in this right side here, this is actually a good example of what is captured in the license plate or by the ALPR. I cannot tell who is driving the vehicle. I'm only capturing those non-person identifiable information.

Holistically, what we want to allow our tools to do is to stay consistent with your community values. We never want community safety to be at the expense of your community values. And so that's why we allow these different features that I'm speaking to and will continue to speak to for you guys to make that decision at the local level. When it comes to bipartisan bipartisan support, a lot of misinformation or questions are around, hey, does the use of ALPRs violate the Fourth Amendment rights?

And so there is almost about 60 unanimous case laws going around from across the country. I have those stated here in a later slide that unanimously state that the use of ALPRs do not violate the Fourth Amendment rights. The differences in a lot of those cases is again, an ALPR is taking a point in image time at that exact location is not continuously tracking you as you go about as you go about your day. So it's much different than geo tracking or even cell phone tracking, which, which a lot of those cases.

Which a lot of those cases entail in terms of tracking and violating fourth amendment rights. And so these are just two examples. From two organizations, one being the Center for Individual Freedom and one for the Center for American Progress, kind of reemphasizing the use of ALPR and the legality of it. Finding common ground.

Again, we never want your community values to be at the expense of community safety. We believe that they can coincide in the same in the same realm. Right. And that's why outside of responsible technology or development, we believe in responsible technology adoption.

Again, what does the community want? What are the community's values? What do elected officials want? I'm from San Antonio, Texas.

My community values in San Antonio may not be the same for Clayton, Missouri. And so we should allow you guys to make those decisions on the local level. Some key points here of how our system is built with privacy in mind. The data that you got, the data that is collected by flock cameras is 100 percent owned by you guys, the customer, and will never be sold by flock.

You again reiterate that you guys have 100 percent ownership of the data. You guys also have the ability to make the decision on what hot list you guys, you guys as agencies opt into. And the data is automatically deleted and sanitized after 30 days. By default, we do have some communities such as states as Virginia.

They've adopted statewide that their deletion retention period will be 21 days. I've seen I've seen agencies or communities do less than that more than that. Again, it's your decision at the local level. Again, LPRs only take publicly available information such as a government issued ID as their license plate and objective vehicle information.

Your agency has the ability to decide who or if all that you guys share with, whether that's local agencies surrounding Clayton, whether that's statewide, whether you guys don't want to share at all. You guys have the ability to do so. And FLOC will never make that decision for you. And FLOC cameras do not utilize facial recognition, facial recognition.

All in all, we want a public safety system that you can stand behind. So the system is also built, has built in trust and compliance features for your agency to transparent, transparently communicate how they are utilizing the system and as well to prevent and flag any misuse, abuse or unusual activity. So we have a feature called our transparency portal, which your agency will have. It will be an external facing portal where they'll be able to publish their policy, their usage rates, what the technology does and does not do.

For example, ALPRs are not utilized for immigration enforcement. It's not used for traffic control. It's not used for anything regarding reproductive care, people fleeing reproductive right care. All of that will be listed on that facing portal.

In addition to that, they can list what agencies, if at all, that they share with. It can list their retention period. Again, they can customize it down. I've seen some customers even add in additional customer success stories of when Flock helped them solve a crime so that way their community can stay in the know of how effective the system is being, particularly to them.

And so that's a great feature there. Also, to utilize the system, when you think of flock LPRs or flock cameras in general, you may think of surveillance. You may think of this wide network or system that doesn't have any guardrails in place. Any utilization of the system by by your police department has to come with an offense type.

Why are you searching the system? I am looking for a red Honda Chevy Cruze with license plate X, Y, Z, because it's tied to a homicide, because it's tied to a kidnapping. That is all audible in the system. So there's no backdoor access.

There's no deletion and it's all audible in the system. And so you have to type in an offensive offense type and a case number to utilize the system. We also have recently rolled out what we call our audit assistance tool to help our administrators who are reviewing activity. And so your audit assistant tool will automatically surface any atypical activity that is done by any administrator or user of the system.

Great example I can use for that. If I, within an unusual period of time, am looking up the same vehicle, that will automatically be flagged to the administrator that, hey, this needs to be looked at and reviewed. And that's what we call our audit assist tool. And then, like I said, your data retention by default is 30 days.

Data security. So we take data security at the utmost here at FLOC. And so I have a list here of our industry leading certifications. Here we are CJIS compliant, NDAA compliant, SOC 2 type 2 compliant, and the list goes on.

These various certifications have different periods in which our system will have to be penetrated or audited to verify these certifications. Some are on a quarterly basis. Some are on an annual basis. And so again even though we not capturing you know identifiable information we want to make sure that that data is being stored and secured at the highest priority And data is housed in the AWS gov cloud which is the highest level of of of data security When you think of government records some may have heard of AWS corporate cloud that a lot of corporate entities or enterprise businesses use We go a step above and use a AWS gov cloud This right here is an example of the transparency portal that I was going over earlier.

So in the top right, I know it's relatively small in this screen here. But for example, here you can see what's detected by an ALPR camera, what's not detected, again, their retention period, how many cameras they have, what agencies they share with, and what hot lists they are particularly opted into. So. Audit assistance, again, that just surfaces any atypical patterns here.

I don't know if it's going to show this video that I have here. I don't think it is. OK, again, but yeah, so our audit assistance will just surface any atypical search patterns. Again, a lot of a lot of communities get to pick when they want to do audits based on what their community values are.

Again, is that quarterly? Is that biannually? Is that annually on the back end of that? In theory, audits sound good, but then there's also a lot of legwork that goes into that.

And so this is how we are additionally assisting our customers so that way they can be more proactive and effective when it comes to auditing their system and providing that information back to you, the QDM&E. This video here that I'm going to showcase, actually, I don't know if it's going to show because of how it is. OK, I'm going to skip that. Or, Myron, do videos show in here or do they not?

Okay, no problem at all. Perfect. Okay, moving forward with some myths versus fact when it comes to ALPRs. Myth out there is that LPRs can track people and show police everywhere they go.

That is a myth. LPRs, again, take a point-in-time image of the back of the vehicle once it passes that camera. If you were to pass that camera and go left or right, that is not identified. So just compare that to your cell phone, which is on you much 24-7 and you use Google Maps, Apple Maps, you know, whatever that's tracking you currently throughout your day.

It is not tracking you past the point of that camera. And our cameras are put on public roadways, not private entities. And that's not looking in your house. Another myth, LPRs violate the Fourth Amendment.

Again, there's been over 60 unanimous case laws going from from state courts to federal courts that overwhelmingly support the use of LPRs and the legality of LPRs. Myth, FLOX sells customer data, compiling it all into one database. That is a myth. You guys own and control 100 percent of your data and that data is deleted and sanitized after 30 days by default.

Another myth is that flocks private customers can access law enforcement data. What do I mean by private customers? In addition to selling to law enforcement? Like I said, we also sell to H.O.A.

schools, small businesses, Lowe's, Home Depot, CVS. Those are also big private entities that also just from us. They do not have a one to one sharing ability to access law enforcement data or see just compliant data. Lowe's and H.O.A.

businesses that may have a flock camera can allow the law or the law enforcement agency to have access to their data. And their cameras, but it does not work going both ways. It's not a one to one sharing relationship. Like how it is with agency to agency.

Another myth, flock LPR cameras use facial recognition. Flock cameras do not use facial recognition and you cannot use a flock camera to search for a human characteristic. It has to be objective characteristics and LPRs collect private information. Again, no, but LPR is collecting objective information.

So private, we're not collecting in race, gender, private information, social security, phone, phone information. None of that is being collected in the image on an LPR. Last two minutes, LPRs can negatively impact communities of color and LPRs don't have an impact on crime. That is not that is a myth, not a fact.

And we actually work with a plethora of different civic and civil rights organizations across the country to not only provide education on what we call it as voice of community into how we are developing products and adopting products. But because LPRs actually reduce bias in policing by only capturing objective information versus subjective information, we've seen overwhelming support and activism for LPRs when proper education is there. Some additional trusted community partners that we have is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Mothers Against Drunk Driving who both organizations utilize our technology very heavily M Again one to find missing and exploited children Most recently I was working with an agency in East Texas able to bring home a three month old baby who was kidnapped and taken to Louisiana And so you can't put a price on having a three month old. Unfortunately, we live in a in a city where in a society where that happens.

But at the end of the day, that mother was was overly happy to have her three month old baby back and it wouldn't have been solved if it wasn't for a plot camera. And as well as mothers against drunk driving, utilizing our technology to combat hit and runs, drunk driving incidents, which a lot of times go unsolved. This year, speaking to a quote, the statement I made about protecting vulnerable communities. This is just a quote that we have from the renowned NAACP chapter of Oakland, who just who's just again is advocating for the use of public safety technology responsibly in their community.

Here and these next couple of sides will just be some examples of some recent court cases challenging the use of OPR. Most notably, Norfolk, Virginia. Again, that's stated because it is capturing a point in time image and is deleted over a 21 day basis that it is not tracking your movements as a whole of a person. Customer data.

Again, I always like to include this one in here because electeds always, always want to know about this right when it comes to your contract in Section 4.1 is where it is very specific that we do not own or sell your data and have a perpetual license. What I mean by perpetual license goes a little bit more into depth on this next slide here is we have a limited amount of access to your data as a vendor to provide maintenance and to ensure that we're being a good vendor. Again, if anything happens in your system, we have CJIS compliant, so Criminal Justice Institute systems compliant engineers that are only ones that have access to the system, again, to provide that service to the customer. But we do not own the data and we do not sell the data.

And that is in that 4.1 section. This here right here just clarifies what I just said when it comes to provincial license, which a lot of other technological vendors utilize a point. I would like to clarify as well. We actually just changed our terms as of February to actually make it more industry standard to remove the ambiguity.

Again, some council interpreted the language one way, another council interpreted the other way. So as of February, we actually changed our language, our contractual language to make it more standard with other technological vendors in the industry that outlines this perpetual license and what that means. Lastly, I'll end here in here with a with a case study. This is actually another child abduction that happened.

So an Amber Alert was issued for a child. This is in Chambly, Georgia, at 1233. A search was conducted at one on one on that flock camera by 230. The suspect vehicle was located by 5.03.

That person was arrested and by 6 p.m. that baby was reunited with her mother. And so when every second matter matters, when every minute matters, when every hour matters, when it comes to investigation, investigating and solving crime. This is why Fox platform is not only critical, but imperative to to not only eliminate, but deter crime as well.

Here is just articulating some additional case law. Case law here in terms of privacy, in terms of civil rights. Again, this has been a very litigated topic in terms of how this technology has been utilized in various communities. And so I just love to have that as a resource for folks to have write down, see for themselves.

Skip through this. And then I will end with we're not shying away from the conversations that are happening on a national and local scale. Right. Not only is it a conversation of how technology such as LPRs, whether it's drones, whether it's body worn cameras or how they're being responsibly developed, also how they're responsibly being adopted.

And so this QR code here is a link to what we call our trust hub, which has a lot of language resources on what we do to protect privacy. The guard bells that I mentioned here today and answers community questions directly based off of what we're overwhelmingly seeing in terms of communities having questions. And so you can freely visit that as well. And so with that, I will open it up to questions.

Thank you, Ian. Appreciate the presentation. I think we'll just go around and see if members of the city council have any questions. And I remember our council members might just want clarifying answers from our our chief of police Mark Smith Absolutely Council member Buse do you have any questions or comments for Mr Leslie I do but can I defer and hear what some other people say first Oh, sure.

Okay, thanks. Councilmember Patel, would you like to start us out, or really anybody can jump in? I wanted to clarify a couple things because I did take, I tried to read the contract a little bit. Thank you.

Okay. But so I saw that section 4.1 that you pointed out, and then there's also a 4.2 and a 4.3 that talk about different types of data. So you've got customer data, customer generated data, and anonymized data. Can you say a little bit more about what the difference is between those and like language that we would all understand?

Absolutely. Then I'll throw another term in there, which is metadata and raw data. So the differences between the two and what we have access or what we will be able to utilize, say you guys wanted factual information into the clearance rates that the system is actively solving when it comes to the state of Missouri, we would be able to pull that data and give you that data point specifically from agencies using FLOC in Missouri, but not specific to your agency. And so that customer specific data would be redacted in our systems, but we would still be able to pull, like I said, that metadata that we would need to be able to effectively portray to you guys how the system is working from a local, regional or state level.

But I'm not going to be able to look at searches directly from Clayton, Missouri and track it back to you guys is a plain layman terms. That confuses me because we've seen the system and you can see searches. Like you can tell who searched what. So there is.

So was that a organizational audit or a network audit? Yeah, it was. Yeah. On the yeah.

On the network audit, you can see the departments outside of outside of Clayton Police Department searching and what they're searching for. Yeah. So to clarify for that, the reason you saw that is because that is your data. That is your specific data that you were able to pull within your system.

I'm saying the difference in what we're able to pull and have access to and what you guys are able to access to. So what is actually the difference between customer data and customer generated data? Honestly, I honestly don't know. So I don't want to sit here and bullcrap you on there.

You actually claim different rights to those different types of data. And the anonymized data is the one that has like the perpetual. Absolutely. What I can do is I can get with legal to definitely get a clarifying question on that.

Great. Thank you. And I would just Point out that like one of the things that I've learned since I started using social media and other free technology products is that if you're not paying for something, you're actually the product that's being sold. And so I obviously we actually do pay you.

But when you say you don't sell our data, in fact, what I believe you're doing is selling access to our data, right? Like the system has value because so many of us use it and share access to the data. So I just like I think that's just an important thing to keep in mind when we think through this. And then I want to talk about like specific searches versus downloads of data.

And so we've seen examples of the searches. What I want to understand is how like how data downloads are controlled and tracked in order to be able to be audited. Absolutely. So at that point in time, we.

At that point in time, that would be an agency policy question. So within our system, we allow for that data to be within the system for 30 days. And then, like I said, it's deleted and sanitized. If an agency, for whatever reason, deemed they needed this particular data set and they wanted to download it on a file.

You know, however, that would then I would then defer that to whatever that policy looks like for that for that auditing process or from there. But it's not going to no longer be in the flock system. But what's our ability to control other agencies downloading our data? So that's a great question.

Great question. So let me clarify. So they will be able to access that system in the flock system. There's no there's no ability to download it because it's not that it's not their system.

Does that make sense? So they're able to access their system based off of a search. So say if I'm looking for license plate one, two, three, I'm able to search and utilize this system for that specific use case. But I still don't have access to your guys' whole system.

Because they're not owners of the system. They just have access to search that specific use case. And so that's why we say you own 100% of that data. When you talk about like the we decide how things are used or how our data is used and accessed.

I'm just kind of wrestling with that and the idea that folks can access it. And you mentioned that they have to enter like an offense and a case. But we saw examples of searches where that wasn't true. Like the system is not requiring that.

We require it of our officers and we audit and validate that. And our police chief has shown us like the behaviors of our officers that are consistent with that policy. But we can see searches that other people have made of our data that do not list any offense or case number or reference to such. Yeah.

So to speak to that, I will say the offensive type and I can work with you and our CSN to get that. The offensive type definitely should be in there. It may not be searchable to you guys because that's a pending investigation. So there's certain information that we're not going to release or share with another agency because that will be seen in an audit.

And so if you so say you guys do an audit on an opening investigation and another agency used your used to search your system and that you guys release that information publicly, that then puts the off the undercover officer, the investigator at route or at. In trouble. Right. And so there's certain information you can go down to the nitty gritty of it.

But every use of the system has to come with an offense type and has to come with a case number. And that was in a feature because of the situation that we implemented as of November 2025 where that's mandatory. We definitely, we require in our searches of case number. And if they don't have a case, it's an evolving incident.

They can put a description where we can tie it back for audit purposes. We did see in departments outside of Clayton searching, they did have an offense type, but they didn't have a report number often. That was one thing we noticed on the search. I do also want to add, when we talk about sharing, back in the springtime, we discussed it.

I let you know that we limited the network sharing out of state. So we said out-of-state departments could no longer just have broad searches of our network. And that still allowed for specific license plate searches. So if there was a robbery that occurred in Texas and they had a license plate, they can search that license plate.

And if it hit a Clayton camera, it would let them know that license plate's in Clayton. If it didn't, they'd get nothing from us. But since that time, because some of the concerns that are brought up, we actually limit, now out-of-state agencies can no longer access our system at all. They can no longer do that plate lookup.

So now we have only agencies in the state of Missouri can do that. And we can continue to limit that. If we see an agency in Missouri that, you know, their values don't align with ours, if they're doing, they have practices that we think are questionable, we can certainly take their access away as well. So when they talk about owning the data, we have the ability to control that.

And so we did that with other state agencies because of the concerns we've heard. So it is an evolving thing. I will talk about the audit as well. And you guys got to see a part of the the audit assist.

I think it's a very valuable tool. I think I think Flock's doing a really good job with the audit because they make it so easy for us to go back and look at who's searching internally, who's who's searching it, what they're searching for. And then that audit assist is like pointing it, hey, these are potentially problematic searches. Look into it.

So I've done a really good job with that part of the system. Thanks. I appreciate your responsiveness to our concerns, Chief. And then the last thing I want to bring up for this moment is your assertion that FLOC is not tracking people.

And I know there was a recent situation in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where a mayor and city council asked the FLOC representative if FLOC had heat map tracking. And FLOC said, no, we don't. And they approved the contract. And then the very next day, the actual police chief went to the council or the mayor and said, actually, I've seen this heat map technology.

They shown it to me So you can see like patterns and behaviors And so they like that very day they called an emergency meeting and canceled the contract And so I'm really trying to reconcile that with what you just told us. And I'm curious what your response is. Yeah, absolutely. So to to be frank, the representative and we've also responded to this via blog as well.

The representative was not clear on what he was being asked and stated something that was not factually true because he didn't understand the question. There is a feature in there that does allow you to quantify what we call a heat map based off of identifying, hey, this zone specifically is where you're getting a lot of, you know, it turns to a flock camera as well. And so I can definitely send you our response via our chief comms officer on that specific case that you just mentioned. Thanks.

Yep. Can I ask a clarifying question about that? What does heat map mean in your understanding of that situation? I looked it up.

Do we have that technology in Clayton? I mean, I know that you provide a lot of technology. You know, there's drones and stuff, and we only have LPR cameras. So are there other pieces of technology that you provide to cities that we do not have?

To answer your question, yes. So it's a whole ecosystem that works together. So it's in addition to ALPRs, like I said, it's drones, it's audio detection. What I mean by audio detection, gun detection, if there's a car crash, those type of products as well.

I'll let Chief speak to exactly what your products are. To my knowledge, as I know, it's just PTZ cameras. Remember, we received the Blue Shield grant last year, and we used that to buy video cameras from Flock. So we have video cameras in six – four intersections right now in downtown Clayton.

It's going to be six. They're behind on delivery on two of them because of issues with infrastructure pulls. So we have video cameras that, you know, we brought in front of the council last year to discuss with the Blue Shield grant. And we have LPRs.

We don't have we don't have any other software upgrades or the drone, obviously. Any other questions? Mr. Pater, do you have any questions or comments?

Yes. So I appreciate your being here today. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about a document that I think is very helpful. As far as I'm concerned, it is the most helpful document I've seen because it was produced by our police department, whose opinion I value the most of all the opinions that I've heard.

Whose opinion I value the most of all the opinions that are out there on websites and other places. We have a link that City of Clayton flock safety cameras, which includes a narrative, an introduction by the chief of police. I think generally the document certainly recognizes that there are two very important issues here. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman. I'm going to turn it over to the public safety, the safety of our community in Clayton, but at the same time certainly gives a lot of weight to potential concerns about how data is used. So I think it's a very fair document and certainly a very comprehensive document. To show how comprehensive it is, the headings are why Clayton uses ALPR technology, public safety impact, vehicle theft trends in Clayton, how the technology works, what flock cameras capture and what they do not.

An example of flock camera images similar to what you showed, daytime, nighttime. A detailed section on privacy and civil liberties protections. A section on data access and accountability. A section on transparency.

Please join me in welcoming the panel of the board of directors. The panel of directors will be in the same position as we are today. I'm going to start with the first panel. I'm going to start with the first panel.

The first panel will be a panel of directors, and we will have a discussion on the case summaries of the policy, case summaries from 22 through 2026 of the way in which these license plate readers have played a role in dealing with crimes. Thank you. Customs enforcement ICE and border protections CBP or sell them our data The answer is no Is there anything in the Q that is different from your perspective as a flock representative No, sir. And I would say those four, I believe four are the most asked questions in these types of forums.

So I'm glad that Chief Thurley was able to address those. So the only other comment I would add, I respect the concerns about the privacy issues. I respect them on a national level. Much of what happens on a national level on immigration and other issues concerns me a lot.

To the extent it affects abortion rights, it affects me a lot. But my perspective still is what is right for the city of Clayton. And when it comes to the City of Clayton on this issue, I would defer to the Clayton Police Department, particularly not because they're our police department, but because I think they have made a very hard effort to address all of these issues. Announcements.

I hope we will continue to make sure we have a reasonable balance between protecting our citizens and also dealing with these data issues. It is a serious issue and I hope the chief would continue to update us. At the end of the day, I'm satisfied our police department believes it's a very important tool, is aware of these information. We will continue to update us.

At the end of the day, I am satisfied that our police department believes this is a very important tool, is aware of these informational issues and the potential improper use of them, and will do everything to safeguard them. So I am comfortable with where we are. Thank you. I appreciate that, Gary.

Thank you. As you can see, we've had these things for nearly five years now. And when we started, it was in collaboration with the neighbor, with the Hillcrest neighborhood, and they wanted it, right? And we actually went in front of the Hillcrest neighborhood.

The trustees took a vote, and they approved it. And before we started seeing, it was in response to a carjacking on a rundle in 2020. And then this was a solution, so they didn't have to close the gates. They wanted to keep their community open, so they didn't close the gates.

And we saw the rise in car thefts in 2022. We moved flock cameras. We added a couple down at Daman. Before we did that, we went to the High Point neighborhood and had a meeting.

It was during COVID. We said, here's what we want to do. Here's why we're doing it. And we had no objections.

So we've been, and then we had a meeting when we had the peeping Tom in the Morelands, who was repeatedly looking in the windows of women. We put a flock hammer on Westwood trying to help with that. And we had a meet, we had two meetings with the Morelands. They have kind of a loose association down there.

We had one in our police station, one in Glen Ridge School, and we discussed why we put the camera there as well. So we've always been transparent when we put in these. Those are only neighborhoods where they're actually inside the neighborhood. Otherwise, they're more on thoroughfares.

But we've been very transparent along the way. And as you can see, as these issues evolve, we're changing with them, too, and we're willing to keep looking at ways we can keep the trust, right, with using this technology. The other thing is, I think what comes into play, strong hiring standards, making sure we hire people who are not going to abuse a system like this, our written policy. We have training for the officers, the supervisory oversight, documenting the searches, having an offense reason, having the report number.

We did that like a year and a half ago before other departments got ahead of that. We saw that as an emerging issue. We got to be able to track this. The reason is we want to make the audit easy for our guys, for Captain Siegel, whoever does the audit.

He sees the report number, sees the license plate search. He can go and verify that was appropriate use. So we have that. We have the audit assistance and assistance from FLOC.

And like I said, they're doing a really good job. And, you know, with these, I think we have the safeguards and accountability in place to make sure the system doesn't get abused. I've seen the reports of officers abusing in other jurisdictions. Any system can be abused by a human being, whether it's in the public sector, the private sector, law enforcement.

We see it all the time. We see it. We've seen it with our Regis database, people abusing that. And and when they're charged with a crime, when they're demoted, when they're fired, they're being held accountable.

And so we have the means to hold people accountable if it's abuse. Councilman York, do you have any questions or comments? Yeah, I've got two. So the first one, and this is for either of you, if I go in and put license plate ABC in, is it going to show me every place that that license plate hit in the period of time I'm searching, no matter what state, location?

Or is it just or do I need to go in and say I want to see if ABC license plate hit in Clayton? So so great. So great question. So your nuance here.

So your agency will only be able to access their cameras or potentially any other agency cameras that they share with. And so to answer your question head on No I can type in license plate X one two three and look at a flock camera in Montana That not that unrestricted access to the system And that why I saying you guys 100 percent own your data and control who you share with And so if you type that in, you're looking in Clayton's cameras of Clayton PD would need to search. You know, I don't know what maybe your jurisdiction is not familiar, but they want to look at a neighboring agency that would have to already be an approved sharing parameter. And then specifically you can look for that license plate and that will be automatically audited in the system and traced back to you that, you know, councilman, your search plate, whatever at this time and use this offense type.

But so if enough agencies are sharing, you could, in theory, track a car from one location across states. If as long as you're going through various jurisdictions that all have this. Yes, if they pass a block camera, yes. Okay, and that would be something because they're sharing it.

I'm not saying Chief and our PD would necessarily do that, but they could go in and put ABC in and it would show basically the path that this car is taking through whatever states we may be going through. Sure. Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't be practical to, I guess if you're looking for somebody you think is a fugitive on the run. We had a case with a suicidal person, a couple years ago, and we were able to track them down to Nebraska because that's where their plate hit on a jurisdiction in Nebraska.

So for cases like that, that would make sense. A lot of times we're just searching our cameras and all of our neighbors have them. There's at least 40 customers in St. Louis County, but Richmond Heights, Brentwood, Ladue, New City.

If we're looking for a specific car, a lot of cars sometimes come in and out of Clayton. We get a good description of a suspect vehicle. It may not pass through one of our cameras. There's still ways to get into Clayton without hitting one of these cameras, but we can broaden the search for a specific make and model.

And maybe see that it hit the license plate camera in Richmond Heights or Maplewood. So it just depends on the type of investigation, how broad of a search they're going to do. But yeah, if they have a sharing agreement with us, then we could search it across the country. The reason why I ask is there are some concerns people have expressed about being able to track women across state lines, track other people across state lines.

And while it sounds like that can be done, ultimately we control whether or not somebody can track somebody rolling through Clayton as long as we just turn off access to our system to other folks. And in theory, yes, you guys have you guys have sharing controllability of who you share with if you if you decide to do so at all. OK. And the thing I just want to reemphasize in the grants, because I know when you're talking about it in the grand scheme of things, it may seem scary.

That's why we have these safeguards in place. Again, every search, you need to have an offensive offense type in there. It's going to show up in the audit. You know, we have MFA authentication to where only administrators have access to it.

And in the audit log, I can show who searched when and for what purpose. So that way, any abuse or flagged or unusual activity will be flagged. And so to the cases that he stated before, again, every any human can abuse technology. I can abuse my cell phone.

I can abuse my computer at work or at home. But we have these safeguards and principles in place to catch this activity and flag this activity. That's the important piece. And that I understand.

What it seems to come down to, though, is we can control what we can control on this. So if we don't want to participate in, if we don't want to be complicit or participate in other jurisdictions doing the kind of stuff I laid out, we would just opt out of sharing that data with whatever jurisdictions. Yes, sir. Okay, so second question.

Oh, sorry, Chief, you had something to say? I was just going to reiterate, we revoked all out-of-state sharing. So now, we had a meeting with the FLOC customer service rep to make sure, because we went through the settings to make sure we did it right. And we did a network audit for out-of-state jurisdictions, and none of them are hitting our camera.

None of them are searching our camera now because we turned off – revoked out-of-state sharing. So now the question is if we have agencies within the state of Missouri that we want to limit, that's the next step. And then just to clarify, we also – just for every – we don't share with the federal government at all or any federal agencies at all. No, so there is a toggle in the settings that say, you know, do you want to share with federal agencies and we put no.

Okay, so go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to clarify on the sharing versus statewide versus nationwide sharing. So to his point, you can toggle on.

Opting in or out to explain that in layman terms, if you guys opt out of state sharing or federal sharing, you're not you're not even going to be seen by a federal agency or a state agency in the system. Right. So I just want to clarify that again. It's not unrestricted open access.

You guys want have to opt in if someone wants to share with you guys. Again, you have to be seen in the system. They have to send you a request. You have to accept the request.

And so those are the guardrails are in place and parameters in place around sharing. So just want to provide a little bit more color there. So my second question, and Mayor, you kind of bled into it, is it was talked about earlier about data downloads and that sort of thing and feeding into federal government, states, and everyone to share this. If we're sharing with somebody else in Missouri, can they download that data?

Like they can search it. They can see somebody's role through Clayton. But what can they do with that search? Can that then be shared with somebody else?

Because part of the concern I think that's been expressed to the council is, yeah, we may not want to share with the federal government, but somebody we're sharing with may be okay with that. And it can somehow go from our system to their system to the federal government. Can you kind of walk through again what Flock's argument is about how that can't happen? Absolutely.

So to clarify on the downline, if another neighboring agency wanted to access your system within that 30-day period because you opted into sharing with that agency, they could then search your parameters on that 30-day period. I don't want to misspeak to my knowledge, they are not able to download that information within that 30 day period and keep it because that is your guys' data. If there are any neighboring agencies that do not mimic your community values, then you have the ability to not share with that agency to where that would not even happen. And then again in the audit, if you were to see any unusual activity of anything, that's how you can say, okay, hey, my system is being used or searched for these unusual activities or these reasons.

I'm going to cut off sharing, and they're not even going to be able to opt in to share it with you or see any of your data. So that's where the local control and the parameters come in. So to be clear, as far as you're aware, a jurisdiction that may be more willing to share with the federal government than we are can't get the stuff out of our system to the federal government in a roundabout sort of way. I mean, they could tell them they searched something, but to the best of your knowledge, they can't.

They can't download that data because it's your guys' data that's secured in that AWS GovCloud channel. Okay. And then also, I know this came up earlier. So in terms of contracts with federal entities, I think it was this gentleman that brought it up in one of the FAQs.

We do not have active contracts with ICE, DHS, or any sub-agency of DHS. Okay. So they don't even have access to our systems. Okay.

Mayor, that was all I had. Thank you. All right. So I have a whole list of questions, but just to piggyback off that one, like, for example, like Ellisville, which is in St.

Louis or in the county, they have just had a contract with ICE. They just did one recently. And so right now we are sharing data with them just because they are a part of the state of Missouri. So how could they not download our information and then give it to them?

Like what would prevent that from happening? The auditability in the system. They can search your system, but they still don't have access to your actual data. They can just search.

So I think there's a differentiation between who owns the data and where the data sits in your guys' system versus being able to search it. Right. So they search it. They find what they're looking for.

How does that not give them information then? So it's giving them information. I'm saying the guardrails around them downloading the system because that data is not in their system. They're just searching your system.

So you get what I'm trying to clarify? Yeah. Right, but I'm just saying like you could screenshot it. I could write down that Clayton had it happen like right here, and I'm an officer of the law.

I'm now giving that information to ICE. And that will be auditable somewhere in the system that will be flagged, and so they will be arrested and filed. And so there's certain guardrails and toggles in there. You can't just – okay, so for instance, if something happened, a criminal investigation happened and it went to court, You have to verify these investigative measures, right?

I mean, they're doing the right thing. Like per their own police department, they're like, oh, we want to check Clayton's information. We had whatever information they went there they checked it they saw it They allowed to do that right Per this agreement that we have with Clayton Right However then because they have a contract with ICE again a legal contract how are they not able to just go and give it to them Because they wouldn't be able to download the data from your system. So if we want to illegally, for instance, UK, take a screenshot and then share that, yes, again, any human can abuse the system.

But they're not able to download from your guys' system, from your guys' data, and then transfer and share it. So it can happen is what I'm hearing. Absolutely. I will not sit here and say that abuse cannot happen.

No, that's okay. Can I just follow up, though? There's, I mean, when I was listening, there was a presentation of the U City City Council a month and a half ago, and they talked a lot about an immigration filter. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, so within the system, such as I mentioned earlier, immigration, you can't search the system for searches from somebody for abortion or reproductive care. Those are the toggle and safeguards to where that are implemented within the system that you can't you can't even do it. I mean, that that administrator will automatically be flagged. Well, actually, you can't even type it in there.

But if you were to try and type that in there, that administrator would be flagged. Hey, here's abuse of the system, whatever protocol needs to be put in place. Yeah, so I guess what I'm, I'm just trying to understand how this would work, like, illegally or wrongfully. So, again, because Kami was talking about Ellisville, which just, you know, signed the agreement with ICE.

So you would have to have an officer who is improperly searching because you're not allowed under your system. They would, they would basically be putting, like, they're searching a license plate. Maybe you have an officer out there who understands that there is an immigration concern for an individual who drives a particular car. So they would be putting in potentially the license plate that's tied to somebody with questionable immigration status into the system.

But that would be improper. That would be improper. So in that instance, an Ellisville officer could be terminated or the Ellisville Police Department would have to deal with that. Like that's kind of how that would work.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that's that's what I mean about the offense. That's what what type of unusual activity are they?

Because they at that point in time would start to filter unusual activity with searching that system because it's not within legal. Well, you'd like to think that the Ellisville police chief would be doing audits or I guess our chief would be doing that. I mean, so then at that point, you potentially would have Chief Smith to contact the police chief out in Ellisville and say, hey, we had a search happen here. It was strange.

I mean, I don't I don't know. Maybe they would be disguising the search that it wouldn't be immigration. I don't know. But you would like to think that the audit would catch that particular bad actor in Ellison?

It would. Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. I just wanted to get some clarification.

So my other question is, is when, you know, you're getting like you keep saying like a point in time. Is there not video like within a minute of either way? Nope. It's a point in time snapshot.

It's not live video. How does that help with like hit and run? So it's taking the snapshot to capture that license plate. M.A.C.A.

said, hey, so say if I have four cameras at the ingress and egress of the city, right? I will know, hey, did that hit and run? Did they leave the city? Did they not leave the city?

Kind of dependent upon your cameras there. Is that capturing? It's like it happened within the view of a flat camera, like within, yeah. You're relying on witness statements.

If a witness says, yeah, I drive a black Durango, right? If it was a black Durango, then you would search and say it happened near Walgreens. And we have a camera right there at Big Bend and Clayton Road. The officer would search that camera within like a five-minute time span, and you can type in Black Durango and give you every Black Durango that showed up.

Now you've got to figure out which one actually did it. With our homicide back in 2023, we knew based off of surveillance video on Y-Down that the suspects were driving a white Chrysler 300. So we searched the flock system for a white Chrysler 300 at 530 in the morning. There's only one rolling around Clayton at 530 in the morning.

We got it coming into Clayton, leaving Clayton. We're able to follow it up with the network sharing other agencies up north, and that's where we identified the suspect when he got out of his car and we saw him on video. So you're relying, it's not just the flock data, you're relying on witness statements to help you narrow down. So like if someone was walking like within the view of these cameras and they were attacked by another person walking, that would never be captured?

I'm sorry, repeat the question again. I'm saying like if it wasn't a car accident, but it was something like a person on person attack, but within the view of a flat camera, would that be captured? I'll tell you, we've captured like dog walkers when they're near a car crossing the street, but it probably wouldn't capture. I'm saying like for like a crime purpose, like if you're like walking and you get mugged and you just happen to be like within.

No, it's probably not going to do that. If a car is driving by when it happens, you might see, it's going to see a stolen image. But like, if I were to ask you, like, I know I got attacked at 3.59 in the morning. Could you look at that camera and see that?

See the attack? No. If the suspects got away in a vehicle, we could try to find the vehicle But no it not going to pick up a video of the attack It going to like I said if the attack happened near a moving car you might get I don know something a body part Like I said sometimes you pick up somebody walking around a Thank you I want to add a little bit more to that because I love that you asked that question because that speaks to what I said. There are various different technologies and sometimes conversations allows you to loop it in.

So an ALPR camera is different than a live video camera, which I think was brought up earlier. And so that's why it's taking that point in time. Additionally, an ALPR is placed on a roadway with only a 90 degree angle. So you're intentionally pointed lower at the ground to pick up that license plate.

Think of how quickly cars go to and from. So even in that frame, I'm specifically in the AI model is trained to specifically look for one thing, ideally that license plate. That makes sense. So no videos are happening.

No, ma'am. Okay. So then you mentioned like there are a bunch of features that we as a community have control over. Can you just quickly kind of list those?

I know that we can like turn off our sharing and things like that. But like aside from that, what? Yes, ma'am. AuditAssist will automatically flag any atypical activity.

And then by default, your data is deleted after 30 days. And is there a way to shorten that, like the 30 day? Yes. Yeah.

So that's what I've seen. That's something that we have. Yep. So for instance, the state of Virginia, all agencies have a 21 day retention limit.

That's state law. So you have the ability. Yep. But we're able to customize it in our system alone.

I know a lot of states have regulated it differently, but Missouri has. Missouri does not have any state regulations on that. Every local, anybody who has this, you could choose to have it be one day. You could choose to have it be 28 days.

That would be. Okay, so yes, you could choose to lower it. What I will say, and transparently, right, is that if you lower it to say 10 days, right, that is going to limit your ability to facilitate investigations on the system. So that's, you know, I think 21 is what I've seen has been the longest.

I think some days it's been 45. But you have control over what that retention period looks like. And then as far as like cameras like on private property, because I know that we do have some like within Clayton, how does that work with their sharing data with you? And is it still just license plate readers or is there more in depth?

So there's, we had, there's, there's several organizations and neighborhoods in town that, you know, they did this themselves. And I don't think we approached any of them. They came to us. One, one happened in a neighborhood where the trustee actually had a gun pointed at them and that was their solution.

I know Council Member Buse was, was with me in those conversations with that, with that neighborhood. They choose who they share it with. And they only share it with the Clayton Police Department. They choose to share it with us.

And I guess, any other questions? So that means like if a car goes through their area, it signifies you guys at that whatever license plate. Is that how that would work? Sure.

If there was a, yeah, if a car was on the hot list, right? If it was a car that was stolen, it would alert the officers that a stolen car just entered this specific neighborhood, and it would direct our officers to respond and try to react to that. Okay, great. Thank you.

I think I'll add to that if I can. So the difference in the use cases between the private customers and the police department, say your police department wanted 10 cameras, placed it in whatever jurisdictions around the city, but a particular HOA or neighborhood or business is experiencing retail crime, for instance. There's no camera in that jurisdiction. Well, that allows for that network to be expanded and for them to directly.

These aren't surveillance. These are just license plate readers. You're not like watching a crime happen. No, you're taking a point in time image of that.

And all that's captured is in the picture there. And so, Chief, in your opinion, is that do you I know it's like helping us solve a lot of crimes. Are you seeing that it's helping prevent them as well? Sure.

Now, we've had over the last couple of years, we've had a reduction in stolen cars. But back in 2022, that's when all the Kias and Hyundais were stolen. And I tell you these flock hammers were real popular with our neighborhoods when we had that happen People are asking what are you doing about the car thefts Our car theft rate jumped over 100 in one year And so that was nationwide because of the Kia and Hyundai phenomenon But during that time period, we were getting notifications, a lot of notifications for stolen cars coming up, especially in our east end of town off Skinker. And so, you know, we have very strict pursuit policies.

So a lot of times it just involved our officers intercepting the car, trying to pull it over. M.A.C.T.A.R.E. M.A.C.T.E.R. So a lot of that had to do with education.

Then a lot of the Kias and Hyundais got stolen, and then once they got fixed, because when they would steal these things, they'd have to strip the steering column, cost thousands of dollars of damage. When they fixed them, they put the safeguard in place so it wouldn't happen again. So they no longer had that weakness in those models. So that kind of helped.

But I also think the LPR data, the LPR cameras have helped because we were able to either, you know, intercept these vehicles as they came in. I think it's one important piece of it. Yeah, so I think it's solving crimes and preventing it. Again, I can think of numerous examples and, you know, we've listed them on our website.

I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm just thinking your overall feeling of it. Do you feel like it really is like? Oh, I think it's the most important tool we have right now.

Thank you. I just want to understand a little bit better the sharing process. So you said, well, there are two things. Because when, if we decide that we're only sharing with Missouri based agencies, is it like on, I mean, this is going to sound silly, but is it like on Instagram where you're like, I want to follow you and then they have an option to follow back?

Or is it an automatic, we're following you and so you're following me? Yep. So that's just the first thing you mentioned. So it's the request.

They have to then, one, you have to be visible in the system to even be seen and on the FLOC network. I'll add that too. Second, they would have to send you a request. Third, you would have to accept the request.

So actually identical to Instagram. So like when we started with the flock system, I'm assuming we got like a full list of follow or suggestions, right? That was like, okay, you can say I want to follow everybody in Missouri. And so we just blasted out that and then they chose whether they wanted to follow us back.

Yeah, that was, that's essentially it. We used to have, when we first got these cameras in 2021, we had, I think the default setting was any agency in Missouri that comes online, we'll share with you. And then we'd have agencies outside the state reach out to us. We want access to your cameras.

And we'd say, yes, we get access to their cameras. Okay. That's how it started and evolved since then. Okay.

So does it get petty like it does on Instagram where like you say, Ellisville, you have a contract with ICE. So we don't want you to be able to see what we're doing anymore. And then Ellisville gets an alert. Clayton has unfollowed you.

And so then Ellisville is like, I'm going to unfollow. I don't know that they get an alert saying you've been removed from Clayton's list. Okay. I don't know that.

What I'm getting at is like when we start to limit who can access our information, does that then limit the effectiveness of the system for us by limiting folks that are sharing with us? Sure. I think as you get further away from Clayton, it becomes – it's more important to have agencies nearby. Any other questions?

We'll let the phone go so we can see. The meeting is just beginning to run. So it's a little too early to get started. So as we go further away, it becomes less effective.

I think I used the example already. If a car didn't hit one of our plates, we knew what we're looking for, the make and model. It didn't hit one of our cameras in Clayton. It's probably going to hit a camera somewhere nearby.

And so it's important to have sharing with our neighbors. And I think a lot of our neighboring agencies and it's close proximity that none of them are going to be doing 287 agreements. And so we continue to share with them. Yeah.

Okay, so then I guess along the same lines, like what does it take to be able to, like if we are not in a sharing agreement with another community, like say this, the suicide risk that we talked about, that person wound up in a different date. So do we, would we, if we knew like a crime was committed here, we could look up the license plate data. So then I'm assuming from a procedural standpoint, like if, if a crime is committed here, we have a license plate. We know that it's Mike Jones from Connecticut.

And we suspect that Mike Jones has returned to Connecticut. Do we then like say, hey, Connecticut, we want to have access to your flock so we can see if that's what I think, you know, just like old, maybe old police work, we'd probably contact the jurisdiction where he's at. And I'm guessing most jurisdiction has some type of LPR, whether it's a flock, a vigil on, genetech, axon. There's so many companies out there.

We can contact them directly and say, hey, this is a guy we want or this is somebody we're concerned about. Can you help us? A lot of times it is when they go out of state and we know where they're going, we can contact that jurisdiction and just talk on the phone and figure it out. Okay.

Okay. And then my final question just about this general idea is that Ian, at one point in your presentation, you said that there is the ability to search for a license plate, but not like identifying characteristics. Those two things. So like I couldn't, so you may not be able to say like white Ford Fusion, but you could, if you have a specific license plate number, you could, could that then access If we didn't want that agency who was looking for that vehicle, we are not sharing.

Can they still see with a specific license plate? Does that override that sharing? I want to make sure I'm understanding the full question. So say you didn't have the license plate or the license plate was switched.

You can enter in the system other objective vehicle information. Sure, if we're sharing. I'm talking about just within your system in general. How you can utilize the system is you can type in...

Just for the sake of this conversation, let me say it. I do not believe that our Clayton police officers are abusing the system. I'm trying to figure out how people can access our information. Okay.

So if we... Because I... So you're saying limiting the parameters and the offensive types and what they could search your system. Right.

It sounded to me like you said, if this license plate committed a crime in this place and I searched for it, that I would be able to access the whole system with that specific license plate. Sharing or not sharing. No, no, no. That was opted into sharing with you.

Okay. Yeah. You can't just, yeah. Okay.

Great clarifying question though. Okay. I have two, I think I have just two other questions. One is how often, Chief, you said like if there's a hot car that'll alert our officers, how often would you say that happens or do we have data on?

You know, I could give that to you. Are they getting alerts every day? Yeah, probably every day. Okay.

Yeah. And but some things are and they're set for like felonies and stolen cars. So, yeah, maybe one a day. Like I said, the rate of stolen cars have slowed down.

Maybe we're a victim of our success here that, you know, these, you know, some of these tactics have been very effective, like the flock camera. So we have, you know, we're less aware of the, you know, concerned about those type of crimes. So we're not getting the alerts that we had in the past for stolen cars. But I can tell you in the height of 2022, we're getting several times a day.

It was nonstop. And, but now, yeah, I don't want to, it happens. Like I said, we had one earlier this week that ended on Big Bend. I know our officers were looking for a missing person that was going west on Y-Down a couple days ago.

We didn't find the person, the car. But, yeah, I probably, it's fair to say every day. If not every day, then the next day, you know, five out of seven days. And then how often do those I mean you said that this was sort of an anomaly that the person pulled over but like how I mean and I know that when we spoken before that the it a good thing to have them leave our the borders of our community So how often do those result in some sort of police action?

Well, I can tell you what happens typically on a stolen car. They may flee and we don't get them that night. They're eventually going to dump that car because the car is hot. What happens is they'll dump it in a certain neighborhood that tends to have stolen cars there.

The police in that jurisdiction will see it, notice that's an out-of-place car, or recognize it from the hot list. There is something called the hot list in Regis where you can print out. It's old-fashioned police work. You can print it out and put it on a piece of paper and say, here's all the stolen cars in the metro area right now.

If I see this make and model, I want to zero in on it. And because the license plate, sometimes they get changed often. And you'll get out of the car and look at the VIN. So eventually, it'll get recovered.

The flock does play a role in it. I can give you some anecdotes where cars have driven into dead ends, and they got out and fleed, and we were able to capture them after that. But yeah, every once in a while, they do stop. But a lot of times, they're taking off on us.

OK. Yeah. The last question I think I have is, you know, our police department and our community, we've talked a lot about values and aligning values. Who determines, do we as a council, does the police force, and what is the process for determining other communities that do or do not align with our values?

And do we need to create a process to further refine the sharing? Because I think that the real concern for me, at least, is not the effectiveness from a policing standpoint when used appropriately of this system. It's the, you know, I think increasingly there, you know, there are always bad actors, right? But I think increasingly we're understanding more about how this data is manipulated and used in ways that we did not foresee.

And so I think that that's why, I mean, obviously that's why we're having these conversations. So I guess I want to understand what our process would be for figuring out how to either expand because we understand that there are communities or areas that it would be helpful to be sharing with that do align with our values or, you know, sort of rein it in a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, I think I did talk to Chief about this briefly a little bit earlier. I mean, I think that, you know, a policy decision on whether or not we continue or discontinue our relationship with FLOC is something that I think any of us could bring up at a regular meeting.

It's kind of like a legislative decision. I mean, we pass an ordinance in order for every contract. Meryl, City Council, alderman, ordinance, resolution, agenda, motion carried. So I guess I don't have a clear question on that.

I think it's something we need to talk about and figure out moving forward. I just want to thank you both for the conversation. It's been really helpful. Yep.

Susan, do you have a question or comment? Yeah, I appreciate hearing what everyone has said, and I'm much clearer in the presentation. Some things are clear, and there's maybe more confusion, too. One of this may not to come back to this, but now I am confused.

If we are sharing with someone and they put in a license plate, do they get any information before they put in their case number and their reason and all that? Do they know that the car went through or the vehicle went through here or they don't see anything until they put in that search criteria? So when you utilizing the system there going to be two use cases from it Either it already a vehicle that has been identified for crime through an NCIC alert Amber Alert Silver Alert or the crime just happened and I need to go back and look the past 28 days and type in the license plate So if it is a car that is already linked to a vehicle you typing in in that off Well you you always stopping and typing in your offense type Sorry Let me clarify that That what is the what is the reason I utilizing the system If there hasn't been a case created such as the crime just happened, the your agency is going to report that both to NCIC and in their internal systems and attach a case number. So there's different use cases that I wanted to clarify.

OK, so there'll be no information given unless they fit the. Unless they don't. Yes, your criteria as well as our department criteria. They won't even know that the car ever came into Clayton, even if they are participating or someone with whom we share.

I just want a little bit of clarity. You said your police department criteria. I just wanted a little bit more clarifying clarity on what you meant by that. Like the parameters that they've selected within the system.

Yes. Yes, ma'am. So I just want clarity before I responded. OK, so no information is OK.

I was confused when you said, I think earlier you said in theory, yes, they can't track. Yeah, okay. And I was confused as well that, you know, no video yet. I know that we approved four videos and you're talking about the license plate readers and also being aware that even though there's no facial recognition, my understanding after today is that that's because it really is a photo of the license plate of the car.

But if a person happens to be standing in view of that camera taking that picture, you would have image. I would not be able to I would not be able to search for that person. You would not search for that person, but they would be in this in that camera. OK.

Yes, ma'am. The other clarification I want to make is we do share, even though we're not sharing with the federal government, We do share, I think, with state agencies, including the Highway Patrol, which we just have to stay aware of that, too. And the other question I had is having raised children and lectured them on the Internet that once something is collected, that data is never really gone. Is that I am certainly not an I.T.

person or anything else. When we talk about the data being wiped in 30 days, is there still that trace, that ability for somebody to get in and get that data? No, ma'am. So that's why I specifically said it's not only is it deleted, it's sanitized as well.

So that's a whole thorough process that happens with AWS to delete and desanitize that data. Once it's gone, it's gone. Okay, great. And the issue really here is the abuse of the system.

I'm very impressed with our department once again and the responsiveness and transparency and willing to keep working on this. But when we're sharing data, it goes well beyond our system. There are a lot of people involved. And there have been, I mean, the PBS NewsHour had it on this week, the concerns.

And I think I've heard there's been over 50 cities who have terminated their contracts because that That certain car, that white Cadillac was stopped, but it wasn't the right one. And it's really disrupted somebody's life quite significantly. And, you know, cities from L.A. to Coralville, Iowa have terminated it because of these things.

It's really easy to do a quick Google and see where the problems have happened. They do happen. And it sounds like you all are responding to those and trying to make the system ever better. Maree Rose, alderman, ordinance, resolution, agenda, motion carried.

And I do appreciate the continued growth in this area. But a lot of it is reacting out of fear. We give up privacy every time we pick up our cell phones and without even thinking. Just as I said, I think to the mayor, you know, we give up privacy to save 10 percent on something and without thinking about it.

But when it comes to these issues of personal safety and wrong or targeted accusations, it's something that we have to keep watching. So I appreciate the conversation. It's a conversation that we really do need to continue. I'm trying to think of any other questions.

Most were answered as we went through today. Yeah, it really is the fear of abuse and mistakes and targeting. So. Yeah.

Thanks very much. Thank you. Are there any other, we're kind of approaching the five o'clock hour, but are there any other council member comments or questions? The only other comment I would make is that I know there was reference to the city of Ellisville and the post ran an article yesterday about the 287G agreements Ellisville with ICE and a large number of cities have become members of that arrangement I do think it's important to note that in an earlier retreat, that type of action could only happen in Clayton with the approval of the city council since it's contractual.

And when we talked about it, we certainly advised the chief that we had unanimously no interest in seeing the city be part of such an arrangement. And I did ask the chief before the meeting whether he's been approached at all and shown any interest. And I think not surprisingly, he indicated he had not. So to the extent that's not exactly a flock issue, but I think it's important that it relates to it.

And, you know, I think we will all continue to be committed to not being part of that kind of arrangement. Are we just doing kind of like final thoughts or what we might do next? I think it's up to you. I'm just trying to be mindful of everybody's time.

I want to point out that I don't, I think it is naive or just wrong to think that if we are sharing with people in active 287G agreements, like they are explicitly, like there might be people who don't have 287G agreements who are cooperating with ICE. This is actually true. But if they have a 287 G agreement, they are actively doing it and they have been like told like this is a thing we want you to do. And so, I think I have no doubt that we won't sign a 287 G agreement but I think if we make the data of our residents and community members and people who visit our city available to people in 287 G agreements, That data is available to ICE and other agencies.

Like, not directly, but when these agencies form these agreements, they often, like, sit together. Like, someone will come into the office sometimes or go, like, they'll, I mean, a lot of agencies work together in this way. And often it's for our benefit and it's a very positive thing. But like in this case, like, you don't even have to write it down or take a screenshot they could be sitting right next to you, you know, so, um, I mean I think it's like a no brainer we should not be sharing with agencies that do that and something I'd really like to suggest that we consider is further discussion that potentially brings in the perspectives of other communities.

Thank you. I think that could be a really good. To just to that in here, if I may, in addition to that, and definitely open to that, I can also provide in addition to the 50 that have canceled, because again, you type that in Google and see that. But I would also love to give you information of the 14 cities that canceled their contract and then also turned their contract, made their contract active again after more open dialogue and forums like this as well.

I have connections to some of the people that have canceled the contracts through other organizations. I think it's just understanding that the discussion's not over, that it doesn't end tonight. So I think for people in the audience to understand that this is clearly an issue that's very important to all of us. It's important to all of you.

So I do, if there's really nothing else, I do want to thank Ian. We appreciate your time. Thank you for coming. Chief, thank you so much.

I know that you've worked hard at trying to make this as transparent for us, for transparent for our residents. So thank you again for all your time and efforts with all this. We sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Council. Great. Like you sound. All right, well thank you.

If there's nothing else, we will adjourn the meeting. Happy. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Thank you.