Colleyville’s Flock transparency page says their spy cameras were searched 44 times in the last 30 days. The audit logs the city handed over under open records show an average of over 700,000 searches a month. It’s truly a cartoonish situation, and we’ve been monitoring it for three months now and the city’s story has not survived a single records response.
Current Revolt has learned that many of the searches sweeping the city’s helpful “pattern-of-life” warrantless spy system were not authorized by the city. Emails obtained by Current Revolt show the Police Chief stated he “thought” national sharing was off, despite getting monthly emails explicitly stating nationwide sharing was on.
(Colleyville priced the release of those emails at nearly $12,000 before an overcharge complaint was filed with the Attorney General, after which the emails were released at no charge.)
Here’s Police Chief Michael Miller on the night of August 20, after he found a Georgia sheriff’s office in his own audit log:
That was odd to me because I thought we were not sharing our data with anyone outside of Texas.
He told the council the same thing on September 1. When describing the “guardrails” in their warrantless spy system, Chief Miller said that the city only shares “with credentialed law enforcement agencies in the state of Texas.” So by the chief’s own definition, 1.76 million searches of Colleyville’s cameras were unauthorized. He did not mention that the in-state sharing settings had only been active a few days.
Chief Miller told the council “officers must document why they are searching in the system.”
Current Revolt glanced at over 100,000 searches that say otherwise.
Chief Miller also stated:
There are three fields that document an officer’s purpose and justification for searches. All three fields are required: case number, purpose, and reason.
He told council on Sept. 1 that all three fields “are required” without mentioning he’d made them required via a settings change twelve days earlier. But are they actually required?
There are over 2 million searches with no case number, yet the police chief is telling the City that it is required. How would a reasonable person characterize such a statement? To imply the number is 0, when the real number is 2,277,935 for 6 months.
No case number is required for outside agencies to search the movement of people driving through Colleyville at this very moment. Yes, right now as you read this, no case number is actually required to search Colleyville’s cameras. In fact, THE MAJORITY OF SEARCHES OF COLLEYVILLE’S FLOCK CAMERAS HAVE NO CASE NUMBER.
You can watch the Chief mislead City officials in this clip (3 clips cut together):
Later in the video, Chief Miller is asked about websites publishing data on Flock records released by Police Departments. He says he doesn’t know how citizens are getting the data, attempts to discredit the sites publishing the data, and says data posted online about Colleyville’s searches “are not ours.” He says the data obtained by open records requests on Flock audit logs are not reliable.
So to recap, 4.4 million searches from over 3,800 agencies. 2,277,935 of them have no case number at all, but case numbers are also required. And the transparency portal says 44 searches, but the running average is 700k according to the data released by the city, but also Flock audit logs are not reliable, but also there are guardrails in place to prevent abuse, which includes audit logs.
Expired tags
Slide 7 of the same deck lists what the cameras are allegedly NOT used for:
I know our readers are thinking, “Oh thank heavens they aren’t searching up people for expired tags.”
Here are a few searches Colleyville officers ran through the city’s own cameras, reason typed in by the officer:
“BUT TOMMY, THE CHIEF SAID ALL SEARCHES MUST HAVE A CASE NUMBER.”
*taps gaslighting definition*
“OPERATE UNREGISTERED.” In some circles we call that expired tags. Again, no case number on any of the four, but also case numbers are required ;)
Anyways, besides the unexplained (or mis-explained) sanctuary city policy Colleyville was running by blocking immigration searches from outside agencies (while allowing totally blank ones) the Chief's defense of the cameras are now (on record) as essentially:
Trust me bro
The audit logs are unreliable/inaccurate
I investigated it myself
Of course there’s more on Colleyville. But we have more cities to cover. After all, it’s a private, nationwide surveillance grid tracking people who have done nothing wrong. So Colleyville is only one small piece of the dystopian puzzle.
The Fourth Amendment does not ban toilet cameras. Imagine how many crimes we could prevent?
The Log One City Actually Sent
The city of Forney quoted a reader $33,453 to answer the nine questions on their Flock cameras. The reader sent the Attorney General a one-sentence overcharge complaint and, like magic, the $33,453 became $0.
Here is a look at one month of a Texas city’s cameras, August 4 to September 3:
Even the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is searching Forney’s cameras for some reason.
The file the city sent is named “1-26 thru 9-26,” January through September. It holds 31 days.
Exhausting.
Grapevine Is In The Thick Of It
The city of Grapevine told us last week it has no audit logs. “No such records maintained by our agency.”
Grapevine PD ran 891 searches through Forney’s cameras in just 31 days, according to Forney.
Grapevine did answer us Monday. No logs, but a bill for $1,080 for eleven weeks of emails on five subject words.
How many emails is this for? They didn’t say.
We sent the Attorney General an overcharge complaint Wednesday night, the same neat trick that took Forney’s bill from $33,453 to $0. Their ten business days on the logs run out October 28.
Somervell County
A reader in Glen Rose couldn’t find Somervell County on our spreadsheet. It’s there, under the sheriff, row 632. The state (Abbott’s board) gave the Somervell County Sheriff’s Office $40,833 this fiscal year for seven Flock cameras and a trailer. As of July, none were on any public map. To our dear readers in Somervell, if they’re up, tell us where. The county’s records page is here.
Forney was the most expensive city on our scoreboard a month ago. Now it’s the cheapest. One reader, one sentence to the Attorney General.
Keep filing. tips@currentrevolt.com
