Red Bay City Council’s police committee reviewing policies from other municipalities before voting on its own
RED BAY | Flock Safety cameras on Golden Road and Hwy. 19 in Red Bay will be deactivated pending the city’s decision on a policy regarding their use.
The Red Bay City Council, prompted by a request from councilman Brad Bolton and after a discussion during the meeting with Red Bay Police Chief Janna Jackson, agreed during last week’s meeting to deactivate the cameras until such time a firm policy regarding their use has been established.
Jackson said her department would make sure they were deactivated, and expressed again that no images or data from the cameras had been viewed since just after they were installed. She said the department had looked at information from one of the cameras initially but had not shared information and, once they knew a policy needed to be established, had not viewed any of the data captured by the cameras.
During the meeting and prior to that vote, the council heard from Red Bay Police Captain Kyle Gober. He said he had not spoken during the public hearing held two days prior but wished to issue a statement regarding the department’s use of the cameras.
“As Captain and Investigator of this department, I have an obligation to protect this community, investigate crimes, and identify offenders,” Gober told the council. “I have an equally serious obligation to ensure that we accomplish that mission within the Constitution and with respect for the people we serve. We do not have to choose between effective policing and constitutional policing. Our responsibility is to do both.”
Gober said the Flock cameras were another tool the department could use to help in the solving of crimes that occur in the community.
“When a crime occurs and the information available to investigators is that a particular vehicle was involved, we may spend valuable time searching surveillance footage, interviewing witnesses, contacting businesses, and attempting to determine where that vehicle went,” Gober said. “Flock Safety’s license-plate-reader technology can help investigators obtain that information in minutes-information that might otherwise take hours or days to develop, if it can be developed at all.”
Gober said one case cited to the council during Monday’s hearing, Chatrie v. United States, was actually not directly related to the use of Flock Safety cameras, but another case was more appropriate to consider.
“In Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court explained that what a person knowingly exposes to the public does not receive the same Fourth Amendment protection as information that person seeks to preserve as private,” Gober said. “When someone drives down a public roadway, their vehicle is visible. Their government-issued license plate is publicly displayed and visible. The Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in United States v. Kendrick further reinforces the importance of whether what law enforcement observes was already exposed to ordinary public view.
“Now, you may also hear Chatrie v. United States discussed. That case involved law enforcement obtaining highly precise cell-phone location information maintained by Google. The Supreme Court held that accessing that Location History constituted a Fourth Amendment search. Highly precise cell-phone location information is fundamentally different from a stationary camera recording a vehicle when it passes a particular location on a public roadway,” Gober said.
Council members discussed the need for the city’s Police Committee, which includes members councilmen Jarod Massey and Jason Vinson, to review policies already established in other cities such as Russellville, where the cameras have been installed and have been in use for a while.
It is not known when the council will vote on the policy, but Mayor Mike Shewbart and other council members hoped to be able to discuss it at the next council meeting. That meeting has been moved to Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 3:30 p.m. The decision was made Tuesday to move the meeting due to the expected lack of a quorum on September 2, when the meeting would normally have taken place.
Other action
Also during the August 19 meeting, the council:
• Approved sponsoring 12 classrooms at Red Bay High School and Red Bay Elementary for The Red Bay News’ Newspapers in Education program. The program provides newspapers to students, with those papers being used in various classroom studies and activities and also to promote civic and community involvement.
• Agreed to bid up to $35,000 for a track hoe being sold by the Colbert County Solid Waste Department.
• Agreed to pursue the purchase of two lawnmowers for the Street Department after the city had two mowers go down the same day. Shewbart advised the council the mowers were examined by service technicians at Scruggs in Tupelo and were advised they both needed new engines. Rather than spend the money for new engines on old units, Shewbart asked the council to consider putting that money toward new mowers, which the council agreed – with a preference that the mowers be purchased from one of the implement dealers in town if possible, according the state bid laws.
