Auburn police Chief Jason Moen defended his department’s use of Flock license plate readers at Monday’s City Council meeting. Some councilors seemed wary of the cameras while others appeared to embrace their use.

Earlier this year residents, including state Rep. Laurel Libby, spoke out against the city’s use of the cameras and lambasted officials for not notifying the public before they were installed last summer. The issue came up when the police department included $24,000 in its funding request for the city’s budget to continue to use the cameras.

Moen presented information to councilors and addressed their concerns about the use of the cameras, placed in areas around Main and Court streets and New Auburn at Mill and South Main streets.

The cameras helped police apprehend suspects in 20 crimes last year, Moen said.

The city has been using license plate readers for roughly a decade. However, the previous readers were mounted on department vehicles and did not utilize artificial intelligence, requiring officers to painstakingly go through every image captured to find a vehicle of interest, he said.

Moen argues that the Flock cameras can do in minutes what would take one of his officers four or more hours, which helps officers more efficiently use their time, he argued.

“These cameras are utilizing AI and as we look to AI to try to maximize our resources … I don’t see other systems out there that are able to do it with the efficiency that this system does,” he said.

The Flock cameras take still photos, not videos, of vehicles going through intersection, collecting license plate numbers, the make and model of a vehicle and notable vehicle characteristics such as body damage, he said. The cameras do not capture photos of drivers.

The AI system then compares that information to vehicles of interest logged in local and national databases, such as the National Crime Information Center, by local or federal law enforcement, vehicles believed to be involved in or related to crimes, such as abductions and thefts, he said.

The cameras are not connected to the state Bureau of Motor Vehicle’s system, so Moen said the Flock system cannot match license plate numbers with identifiable information. Previous license plate readers, used without AI, were connected to the BMV’s system.

If the cameras identify a potential vehicle listed in one of the databases, it alerts officers, who then further analyze the information before determining if a legal traffic stop is appropriate, Moen said.

Officers need a case number and reason to access the camera data for an investigation, he said.

Mayor Jeff Harmon asked Moen if the use of the cameras is different from officers parked in an area observing license plates and looking for a vehicle of interest themselves, to which Moen said there is no difference except the Flock system is more efficient.

Federal law enforcement officers do not have access to the city’s Flock camera data, which is owned by the department, Moen said, though the department can allow that access on a case-by-case basis. To date, the department has not received any requests from federal agencies to access the data.

With local agreements in place, seven other municipalities have access to Auburn’s Flock camera data, he said.

Information gathered by the cameras is stored on protected cloud servers, he said. Maine state law requires police departments to delete camera data after 21 days.

Moen said that if Flock or anyone else were to store the data itself for longer than 21 days or used it for purposes other than the narrow reasons outlined in Maine statute, they would be breaking the law.

Aggregate data can be collected from information captured by the cameras, which can be requested through the state’s Freedom of Access Act, but data about specific vehicles cannot be released, he said.

Harmon pointed out during the meeting that the city uses cameras in numerous other spaces as well, including on school buses. He thinks a larger presentation about where and how the city uses all of its cameras could be helpful.

Councilor Adam Platz said he has done some brief research on the cameras and their vulnerabilities to hacking and found that the insecurities seem to be around phishing attempts, where staff login passwords can be compromised and allow bad actors to access the system.

City officials confirmed that staff are educated about how to identify and prevent phishing attempts.

Councilor Rachel Randall was glad to learn more about the cameras but still had reservations about their use, she said. However she is hesitant to fund the cameras in the city budget this year as budget requests are already high.

Councilor Mathieu Duvall trusts the Auburn Police Department to use the information gathered responsibly but is concerned about putting this type of information in a database that could be obtained by bad actors, he said. Moen said no private information is transmitted by the cameras.

Councilor Timothy Cowan said the city could shorten the amount of time it stores the camera data.

Three people spoke about the city’s Flock camera use during the public comment period. One person supported the department’s use of the cameras, while two others expressed concerns about mass surveillance and information being lost to bad actors through hacking.

Councilors will discuss the cameras’ funding in upcoming budget talks. The next council budget workshop is scheduled for March 23 at 5:30 p.m.