Piedmont, CA, June 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Piedmont Police Department in Alameda County, California, will become the first-ever law enforcement agency to launch a public ALPR Transparency Portal, a tool to encourage open communication and oversight between police and citizens around Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology. The Transparency Portal is a new offering of Flock Safety, a public safety operating system and the provider of Piedmont Police’s ALPR camera system.
The Transparency Portal serves as a hub for Piedmont Police Department’s ALPR usage, data retention, and access policies. It provides a landmark approach to transparency and accountability by providing the public with anonymized audit logs of all police usage of the technology. It also displays usage statistics, including the number of cameras the agency owns, other law enforcement agencies they share data with, and specific statistics on number of vehicles captured, Hot List alerts, and searches performed over the past 30 days.
“The Piedmont Police Department strives to provide transparency on all police activities, policies, and practices, and Flock Safety’s Transparency Portal is another positive step in that direction,” said Piedmont Police Chief Jeremy Bowers. “We recognize that the public has a right and responsibility to understand how the officers who are sworn to protect and serve them do their jobs. The opportunity to be the launching agency partner on this first-of-its-kind program underscores our deep commitment to openness, accountability, and integrity.”
Flock Safety provides hardware and software solutions for neighborhoods, business owners, and law enforcement to solve and reduce crime. Flock’s flagship product is the Flock Safety FalconTM camera, a license plate reading camera that provides law enforcement with the objective leads they need to solve crime. Statistically, 7 in 10 crimes are committed with a vehicle.
Flock Safety currently operates in 40 states and 1000+ cities, and works with over 600 local law enforcement agencies. Flock Safety does not employ facial recognition, adheres to the strictest security and encryption standards, and does not share or sell customer data to third parties.
“Flock Safety was founded four years ago based on the principle that it is possible to improve safety while protecting the critical right of citizen privacy,” said Matt Feury, Flock Safety Co-Founder and CTO. “We place privacy, transparency, and bias mitigation at the forefront of our product development, and are constantly engineering new features that encourage and align with our ethical principles. We’re excited for the Transparency Portal to serve as another tool that our law enforcement partners can use to strengthen ties with their communities.”
The Transparency Portal will soon become available to all Flock Safety law enforcement partners around the country. It can be viewed by the public here.
For more information on Flock Safety and its safety-as-a-service technology for private citizens, business owners, and law enforcement, visit www.flocksafety.com.
ABOUT FLOCK SAFETY
Flock Safety is a public safety operating system that helps communities and law enforcement in 1000+ cities work together to eliminate crime, protect privacy, and mitigate bias. We build devices that capture objective evidence and use machine learning to create and deliver unbiased investigative leads to law enforcement. Our proprietary devices and cloud-based software reduce crime by over 70 percent. Flock Safety serves 1000 cities in 40+ states and is helping solve hundreds of crimes every day.