Sheriff's office cites "significant positive impact" as it opens Flock plate reader records

The Kent County Sheriff's Office has opened a public website laying out how it uses its license plate reader cameras, what rules govern searches of the data and which outside agencies have been given access, a move that comes as Flock camera programs meet mounting resistance across Michigan.

That resistance has been building for months. Residents of St. Clair Shores in Macomb County are asking their city police department to suspend its use of Flock cameras. Vandals have damaged camera equipment in Livingston County. The Monroe County Board of Commissioners voted to stop the use of the cameras in areas where the equipment was contracted through county funds. And a group of Democratic state lawmakers has called on the Michigan Department of Transportation to end contracts allowing federal agencies to put surveillance technology on state property.

The sheriff's office, which covers the Grand Rapids area, manages 62 cameras, according to its Flock Transparency Portal. More than 1 million vehicles have been scanned in the past 30 days.

Each read records a license plate number, an image of the vehicle and plate, the date and time the vehicle was seen, and the location of the camera. That establishes where a vehicle was and when, but it does not on its own identify the driver or anyone riding along.

Searches must be tied to a criminal complaint on file or a "documented public safety emergency," the sheriff's office said.

The portal also names the agencies on both sides of the county's data. Organizations granted access to Kent County's information include the FBI, Michigan State Police and police departments in Kalamazoo, Dearborn Heights and Brownstown Township. Out-of-state access requests came from Wichita Falls, Texas; Vernon Hills, Illinois; and Radcliff, Kentucky.

Kent County, in turn, has requested database information from Auburn Hills police, Ecorse police and Port Huron police, along with agencies in Carmel, Indiana; Chatham County, Georgia; and Elyria, Ohio.

That reach across state lines has already figured in Michigan cases. Wyandotte police used license plate reader data from two states to track a car to Toledo, Ohio after a 67-year-old woman was shot to death in her home.

The Kent County Sheriff's Office says the technology has made a measurable difference. Since it began using automated license plate readers, the office said, it has seen a "significant positive impact on investigations and overall crime reduction efforts."

Leads generated by the readers have helped stop criminal activity, recover stolen vehicles and property, support investigations into millions of dollars in reported losses, close cases that might otherwise have gone unsolved and locate missing or endangered people in Kent County and across the region, the office said.

Cases cited on the site include the recovery of a stolen U-Haul truck in Clinton Township and the identification of a suspect in a fatal hit-and-run.