COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — More and more Ohioans are voicing their concerns about law enforcement use and misuse of Flock automated license plate reading cameras.
In central Ohio, controversy has erupted over officers in Reynoldsburg and Columbus having improperly used Flock data for personal reasons, and revelations that federal agencies appear to have searched through Columbus police Flock data more than 15,000 times in three years.
As some Ohio cities step away from Flock, on Monday, Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) defended law enforcement use of the system, calling Flock “a tool that’s used by law enforcement every single day and people are picked up and brought in who we never would have caught any other way.”
Map: See where Flock cameras are located in Columbus area
“There can be abuses,” he said. “When there are abuses, we need to take action. It’s the same way with running a record check. Every once in a while, when I was attorney general, we would see somebody who was in law enforcement who was running a record check for non-good reasons. They were running it because of personal interest and that’s illegal, so just because a tool is abused does not mean that the tool is not an effective tool.”…