City and County Take Opposite Approaches To Surveillance Camera Adoption

Green Cove Chooses Transparency

Chief John Guzman agreed to talk about new roadside cameras. Sheriff Michelle Cook has been asked to do the same.

“Law enforcement is entrusted with a lot of powers and capabilities, right?…We're the only people in the country who can arrest someone. You trust us or you don’t.”
—Chief John Guzman.

You might be as surprised we were to learn that Green Cove police have installed three license plate reading cameras within city limits, but, unlike the Clay County sheriff, the local deparment has not tried to keep it a secret.

The difference is that with Green Cove no one was listening. In the case of the county, no one is talking, ever after the Clay sheriff installed 95 cameras earlier this year. Surveillance cameras such as these are proliferating across the nation to the consternation of right-to-privacy advocates.

The three Green Cove cameras are positioned at city limits on Highway 16 east and west and along Highway 17 coming from the north. Like the county, Green Cove sourced it’s cameras from a company called Flock Safety, which is fast becoming the go-to firm for roadside police surveillance in the U.S.

A camera records the comings and goings of automobile traffic on the Leonard C. Taylor Parkway, otherwise known as Highway 16. (Photo by Peter Swanson)

Sheriff Michelle Cook has been mum on the subject, but Green Cove Police Chief John Guzman recently sat down for interview and made a reasoned argument for using ALPR cameras or Automated License Plate Readers. Flock ALPR cameras record the license-plate numbers and take a picture of every passing car.

Guzman said that because it flags stolen cars and car owners with outstanding warrants, the Flock system is a force-multiplier for a small department, enabling it to more easily solve and prevent crimes. He said camera technology has come at at time when his department is struggling to recruit qualified candidates.

The chief cited a case earlier this year, when a camera flagged a stolen car out of Jacksonville “There were two boys in a car. They ended up crashing when the officers were trying to pull them over…where they’re building the beltway,” Guzman said. “They had a stolen gun in the car. Both boys survived the crash.”

As far as infringement of civil liberties, Guzman was sanguine. He asked that citizens trust his department with cameras in the same way they trust his officers to use their other enforcement tools within the bounds of Constitutional rights and privacy laws Guzman said:

Law enforcement is entrusted with a lot of powers and capabilities, right? We're the only people in the country who can arrest someone. The president of the United States cannot arrest someone. Only a police officer can. We walk around with guns on our hip and rifles in our cars. And we can drive fast, and we can disobey traffic laws if, if in the course of our duties. So, yeah, there's no doubt about it. We're entrusted with a lot. The issue is does the public trust us, right? You trust us or you don't.

You either trust us giving a 22-year-old a gun and a car and a badge, or you do not. I mean, the camera, it's not any different. We can still have that information. Any officer on the road right now can run every tag he sees…Obviously he has the training that allows him to do that and certifications that allow him to do that. So the camera is just an enhancement of that capability.

Guzman said the Green Cove City Council approved the budget which included the camera program in public session, so it was available for scrutiny, even though councilors made no remarks on the subject. It’s worth noting that at the time of the discussion there was almost no press coverage of city business.

While researching the first story on the subject, Clay News & Views, obtained a copy of the county’s contract with Flock that had been requested by a county resident. The 22-page document had large areas redacted under an exception to Florida Sunshine Laws designed to protect trade secrets.

When CN&V obtained an unredacted copy of the same document, it showed that none of the redacted sections appeared to contain any information that could be regarded as a “trade secret,” and that the seemingly random redactions also included information about pricing and billing for the $1.3 million system.

On Thursday, CN&V asked Cook to sit down for an interview, as Guzman had, to explain her department’s philosophy on surveillance technology. Also, why cameras were adopted without a trace of public notice, which was followed by an attempt to prevent taxpayers from learning what the system had cost by invoking a seemingly inapplicable state law.

CN&V also asked county commissioners whether they were even aware that 95 surveillance cameras were being installed along roadsides across the county. Thus far, only one has answered the question in any meaningful way. Did the sheriff withhold the information from them, too?

Interviewed today, District One Commissioner Mike Cella said he only learned about the cameras after he began to notice them while driving and queried the Sheriff’s Office. Cella is okay with the cameras but said there should be a public conversation before new technology is adopted in the future.

Guzman said that the Green Cove police department ensured that interested citizens were able to learn about the Flock cameras and other new technology by including them in a section of the Police Strategic Plan 2023-2028, accessible from the department’s website.

The section of the Green Cove Police Strategic Plan that discloses the use of license plate readers.

The plan also included another little nugget of news: the gated Magnolia Point neighborhood also was installing a pair of Flock cameras, which would feed license plate information to Green Cove police, in the same way that the Sheriff’s Office and Green Cove police share alerts between themselves and other concerned law enforcement agencies.

“Yes, they have one at their front gate and recently got one at their back gate. I think they were having a connection issue, but once that is fixed, our department will be notified if any FCIC/NCIC-entered vehicle pass the cameras,” Guzman said, referring to the Florida and national crime information centers.

And, Guzman said, anyone from the public can have a look at the city’s contract with Flock Safety; they only need ask. “We are transparent,” he said.