While Henry County officials praise Flock Safety cameras as one of the most effective investigative tools available, the Sheriff’s Office expects to discontinue the system when its grant funding expires. Martinsville also plans to significantly reduce its camera network because of cost, while Patrick County has no plans to install the technology.
Henry County
Henry County Sheriff Wayne Davis said Flock cameras have proven invaluable in criminal investigations.
“In fact, we can cite numerous instances right there in Henry County alone where they’ve been used for benefit. They’ve identified suspect vehicles in countless crimes,” Davis said.
Among those cases, Davis said the cameras helped deputies locate a woman wanted in another state in connection with the killing of her husband.
“We captured her in the Bassett community, and were able to safely take custody of her small children after she had murdered and dismembered a man. Had it not been for Flock cameras, who knows what would have happened to those children,”he said.
Davis said the cameras have also helped locate about three missing people.
The sheriff’s office currently operates 10 fixed Flock cameras and four mobile units.
“A great example of those mobile units is we use them at the Martinsville Speedway and other large-scale events where we’re able to set them up and capture the license plates and data,” Davis said. “For example, an event the size of the (race at) Martinsville Speedway, which is broadcast on the worldwide stage, is known to be a potential terrorist target. So the information that we’re able to get from the Flock cameras can notify us of any potential targets to that large-scale sporting environment.”
Davis said the sheriff’s office follows state guidelines governing the system’s use.
“In fact, that policy falls 100 percent in compliance with state guidelines. Everything that’s done on those Flock cameras is logged into a system where we can conduct a complete audit trail to look for any misuse,” he said.
The cameras were obtained through a grant at no cost to county taxpayers. When that funding expires in August 2028, Davis said the county does not expect to continue the program.
“At the expiration of the grant period, there is no plan to renew the contract with Flock. If we decided to renew the contract with Flock it would be at the expense of the Henry County taxpayers, and it’s cost prohibitive. I would not ask the county for any additional money to fund that,” he said.
Davis said public opinion is not driving that decision.
“I’m not considering the public pressure because at the end of the day as the chief law enforcement officer I have to make a decision that balances public safety with privacy rights. But ultimately it’s my responsibility to keep the community safe,” he said.
He added that the department has not researched potential replacement technologies.
Martinsville
Martinsville Police Chief Chad Rhoads said the city currently has 41 Flock cameras, but that number is expected to decline dramatically by the end of the year as grant funding runs out.
“After Dec. 31, we’re going to be down to somewhere around 12 to 16, maybe fewer,” Rhoads said.
The city cannot afford to maintain the current system without outside funding, he said.
“When we put these things in, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars to get all of this stuff in, and that was all grant funded. Those grants have gone away, so we’ve negotiated and stretched it out as far as we can go.”
Rhoads said the city’s current budget includes about $10,000 for the cameras.
“That’s going to bring us down to about three cameras. We’re going to try and fund some additional cameras through grant funding, and that’s through the HEAT grant we’ve got some additional funds for,” he said.
After discontinuing its gunshot detection system last year, Rhoads believes Flock cameras could eventually disappear in the city as well.
“That’s a shame because they’re a great tool. They’re an absolutely fantastic tool for law enforcement, and they’re very well controlled with the restrictions that the legislature’s put on us for the use of these things. I don’t see how they could possibly be abused,” he said.
Rhoads said state regulations strictly limit access to the system.
For example, Rhoads said the police department held a media day earlier this year. He wanted to bring media into an office and show how to search and work with the Flock system.
“But we can’t even do that. I can’t even search my own tag on here as a demonstration. It’s so tightly controlled because each search has to be assigned to a case number, an active case based on at least reasonable suspicion. So it’s hard to even demonstrate how to use this thing with the controls that it’s under,” he said.
According to the city’s Flock Transparency Portal, data is retained for 21 days. The system captures license plates and vehicle information but does not use facial recognition or identify people, gender or race. The city says the data is used only for law enforcement purposes and is never sold to third parties.
As of July 9, the system had detected 111,194 unique vehicles, generated 3,281 hot-list alerts and recorded 65 user searches during the previous 30 days.
Rhoads said the number of alerts can be misleading because stolen license plates often generate repeated notifications.
“The number of hotlist hits, those are any jurisdiction in Virginia who has entered one. Be it a stolen tag, a missing tag, a missing person, warrants, any of those that has passed through any of our cameras will pop up and ping. So those are the alerts that go out to our officers,” Rhoads said.
One reason the hotlist hits number is so high, Rhoads said, is because vehicles are required to have a front and a back tag.
“We’ve had several cars who’ve had one tag stolen, but they’re still driving around with the same tag on the back. Every time their car goes through one of these Flock cameras it pops up as a stolen tag just because the front tag was stolen off of it, but the back tag’s still on there,” he said.
The department frequently uses the system to investigate property crimes such as shoplifting.
If we get a shoplifting, say at the Family Dollar or the Dollar General down on Clearview Drive, and the clerk doesn’t get a tag but they can get us a description of the vehicle, once we do the report, we assign a case number to that. We can do a search for a vehicle of that description at that time in that area, and it’ll give us a picture of the cars matching that description and a picture of the tags, so we can follow up and see which one of those might have been our suspect’s vehicle,” Rhoads said.
The city’s transparency portal is available at martinsville-va.gov.
Patrick County
Patrick County Sheriff Dan Smith said the county has neither stationary nor mobile Flock cameras and does not plan to acquire them.
“We’re not looking to get any. It’s just other things are higher on the priority list,” Smith said.
Instead, investigators often rely on surveillance footage from private businesses.
“We encourage all citizens and businesses just for their own personal security to purchase cameras,” Smith said.
