The Bluffton Police Department is taking steps to prevent abuse of its Flock cameras using AI.

Police Chief Joe Babkiewicz told Bluffton’s Law Enforcement Citizens Advisory Committee that his department has implemented an AI monitoring system to prevent misuse of its Flock camera system. The move comes as Bluffton residents express concerns about the cameras, and after six cameras were vandalized in late July.

The Bluffton Police Department, the Beaufort and Port Royal police departments and the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office have invested in Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. Bluffton Police said the cameras are a useful tool for solving crimes, locating missing or endangered people and other investigative purposes, according to a news release from July. The AI monitoring system

Bluffton Police have been using the AI monitoring system for about a month, Babkiewicz said. The system monitors officers’ searches made on the Flock camera system and detects irregular activity. It alerts Babkiewicz and Bluffton Police’s professional standards captain if a license plate is searched for three or more times, he said.

The system has not found any irregular activity since it was implemented, according to the Bluffton Police. If it does, Bluffton Police can investigate the activity quickly, Babkiewicz said.

Alongside the new monitoring system, Bluffton Police have a Flock transparency portal that the public can access. The portal provides data on: * How long license plate data is stored * How many cameras there are * How many unique vehicles have been detected * How many searches have been made in the last 30 days * How many vehicles on state and national lists were detected * Other departments data is shared with

The portal also provides Bluffton Police’s Flock camera policies. Its Flock cameras do not have facial recognition capabilities, data is not sold to third parties, and the system can not be used for “Immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment or intimidation, usage based solely on a protected class (i.e. race, sex, religion), Personal use,” according to the transparency portal. A file containing searches made over the last 30 days can be downloaded from the portal. What does the data show?

The Bluffton Police made 76 searches in its Flock camera system in the last 30 days, and the cameras detected more than 320,000 unique vehicles in the same time period, according to the transparency portal. Flock’s cameras can read license plates and record vehicle details such as make, model and color, according to Flock.

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