[0:00] All right. I'm going to call to order the council work session for Tuesday, September 8th. Moving on to

[0:12] having two topics of discussion, starting out with you know, the county sheriff's office,

[0:16] drone assistant response, and automated license plate reader, pilot, project, chief expert.

[0:23] Tonight we have a special guest with us. Everyone knows, shared, bread wise. Happy to have

[0:28] I'm here to do this presentation for all of you

[0:31] and so we can have a good discussion

[0:32] and talk about it that way.

[0:34] Also, before I turn it over to him,

[0:36] I just wanted to acknowledge that

[0:37] Sheriff Wise has been a mentor to me,

[0:40] new in my role as chief

[0:41] and when I call his cell phone the answers

[0:45] he has helped me through a lot of things

[0:47] that I haven't experienced before,

[0:48] so I'm really grateful for that

[0:49] and really the whole group of

[0:52] Anoka County chiefs treated me that way when I was new

[0:54] to do it, you know, at least I've heard of it.

[0:57] So, informer, please shape with the interhabits.

[1:00] Yeah, I did.

[1:01] Disappointed county.

[1:02] Yeah, 27 and a half years there, including 11

[1:05] and simply shape with the interhabits.

[1:07] Awesome.

[1:07] So I'll do it.

[1:08] Work sessions with us.

[1:09] I have another team.

[1:10] Obviously, we did some introductions, and it's nice

[1:14] to get a chance to talk about you.

[1:16] I'll try to keep this relatively tight.

[1:19] I don't know what your habit is, but I'm assuming

[1:21] in a work session like this to be a little bit

[1:22] conversational.

[1:23] as it relates to this. But I thought I'd give you sort of an overview of the topic really and

[1:32] have more of a philosophical conversation because I think in many ways people get the technology

[1:37] while simultaneously it gets mischaracterized for sure in other places. But if you don't mind,

[1:44] I don't want to talk about a couple things that we all wrestle with. But especially as elected

[1:50] that officials is putting all of this technology

[1:53] into context when it comes to people's opinions.

[1:57] We've all talked about keyboard warriors and so on,

[2:00] is that obviously I'm not immune to that myself,

[2:03] I get a fair amount of it.

[2:05] But I've changed, I shouldn't say a giant,

[2:08] I've learned some things along the way.

[2:10] And in that, so I left Cooner Rapids in 2022

[2:13] and when we did social media posting

[2:16] when I worked for the city of Cooner Rapids,

[2:18] If you put something on social media, you expect it to have a positive response, just a

[2:22] universally positive response.

[2:24] We're law enforcement, we're for the public, we're against some of the people having good

[2:27] things to say.

[2:29] Flash forward to 2026 and the world has turned upside down.

[2:33] And I had a bit of an epiphany as I was following some political races, not least the which the

[2:39] Senate race, and I specifically mentioned Michelle's play in Peggy Planning and mostly because

[2:44] because they have pretty big social media presences as you might imagine on Facebook.

[2:49] Almost all of the comments are negative for both of them.

[2:53] That's just rather than me supporting my team, I, in turn, I'll make it my mission to talk

[2:59] or smack, if you will, or whoever has a view that's different than mine.

[3:04] And the only reason I bring that up is that it was a eureka moment, you know, do your own

[3:09] research on this stuff and, you know, again, I don't know what you all personally

[3:13] experience, but I struggle with trying to put into context people saying

[3:18] things about this technology or law enforcement technology and what to do

[3:21] about it in terms of decision making because it affects a lot of people. We're

[3:25] 380,000 people here in the Noca County and at least we all have responsibility to

[3:32] represent the people that we serve. So that said it's a tricky conversation and I

[3:37] I talk about this broad topic, public safety use technology, and actually I'm glad you're

[3:42] talking about data centers because it's an interesting conundrum from cities or for cities.

[3:49] In that you hear a lot of the negative, whatever is in the media is generally negative about

[3:54] data centers.

[3:55] Meanwhile, you know intuitively if every community says no to data centers, they're going

[3:59] to be in China.

[4:00] And we're going to have a whole different data privacy conversation of every data center

[4:05] is in China or some other country and that it just travels at the speed of light there and back.

[4:10] We got important issues to discuss, so in all of that makes it super hard for you all, for me,

[4:16] as it relates to this kind of technology, but I thought it would be helpful to talk a little bit about how we got here

[4:23] and one thing that I say a lot, so I started in law enforcement in 1995.

[4:29] And when I started in Koon Rapids at that time, a squad car had a radio and a shotgun and an ink pen, and that was it.

[4:41] And if I had a time machine, I could go back to 1933 when the first radios, two radios, got into squad cars.

[4:46] I could transport that person to 1995, except for a few laws that could immediately go to work and serve the citizens pretty well.

[4:58] Conversely, if I took me from 1995 and transported me into 2026, I couldn't start the car.

[5:05] All along the way is technology has changed, and you as elected officials, you have a

[5:11] police chief here that I highly regarded, known Chief Wemble here for a long time.

[5:15] I think you're lucky to have them.

[5:16] I know I said that before.

[5:18] But somewhere you have to pick a point, right, between no technology and every imaginable

[5:24] technology and you've got to find a spot that slips in right there and you're not going

[5:28] to please everybody for sure in that this technology for sure kind of slips into that space.

[5:34] Especially it's interesting in that ALPR's first came on the scene in 2009 license plate

[5:41] readers in 2009 where it was strictly a hot file item and we'll talk about what a hot file

[5:46] item means it wasn't really an investigative tool and then drones which will be part of this

[5:52] conversation to first started being used in 2015. So 17 and 11 years, I respect a

[6:00] week for those two items. And yet here we are now rustling with, you know, like

[6:07] data privacy and how much of me is public. You know, meanwhile, you all have

[6:12] conversations with a lot of people about cell phones, you know, the how much

[6:16] access to information has about you. And I hear it all the time, somebody will say to

[6:20] But yeah, I consented to that up to my cell phone.

[6:24] I chose to own it, knowing full of what it does, which in part is true in that Apple commits

[6:30] to not selling your data, but none of those apps do.

[6:34] And you know from your own shopping or whatever it is that you do on your cell phone that you'll

[6:40] be doing one thing on your home computer and then something pops up in your social media

[6:43] that is totally related and completely out of left field and you're like, man, somebody's

[6:47] watching me.

[6:47] But you can't figure it out, nor are you ever going to figure it out.

[6:52] Meanwhile, and it's kind of related to all of this, is that you have Supreme Court wrestling

[6:57] with privacy as it relates to all of this, and there was a Supreme Court decision that

[7:00] also pops up in this conversation as it relates to AOPRs about how much tracking can law enforcement

[7:07] do of a cell phone.

[7:09] And the Supreme Court puts some barriers around that in that it required the use of a search

[7:14] aren't to be able to to find particulars on an individual. That same mindset actually applies

[7:20] to ALPRs and again we'll kind of circle back to that topic too but the of courts that are

[7:26] wrestling with some of this stuff too you know and when I'm in public on a road how much privacy

[7:31] might entitle to what is an ALPR do and so on it's all very tricky. Meanwhile in the context of

[7:38] people voluntarily giving up their privacy they're sort of these government personal data

[7:43] points that cross which you all notice we go to the airport now. Yeah they take

[7:50] your ID and they have you look at a machine right you have no idea what that

[7:54] machine does I don't as I know is when I look in the machine person gives me a

[7:59] thumbs up without ever handing them a boarding pass anymore remember you step to

[8:03] show a passport don't have to do that anymore and you walk you walk through it and

[8:08] oh thank god if that went faster than I expected and you have people voluntarily

[8:12] giving a personal data for convenience or personal data for a free french fry or a small coffee

[8:20] that comes around a little more regularly than my otherwise gift. So how do we wrestle with all of that?

[8:28] Is that, meanwhile, another thing that comes up too is ring cameras.

[8:34] I think you're like these comparisons of a ring. I'm out of curiosity. I'm going to do you have a ring or something similar on your house.

[8:41] I do. Not giving up that personal battle. Yeah.

[8:46] Well, it's interesting. Again, it falls in the category of in a here for people to is that yeah, I volunteer to have that

[8:53] I read camera and I do it to protect myself from stuff being stolen or my family or whatever it is.

[9:00] But meanwhile nobody asked for the consent of their neighbors to record them as they drive by your house or they walk by your house.

[9:07] In fact, the way my house is oriented, I'm kind of on a corner.

[9:12] My ring camera looks at probably the front doors of three, several houses all in a row.

[9:16] I can see you would come out, I can't see them, I actually go into the door.

[9:20] But I'm not asking for their consent, this time it works out for you.

[9:25] So, I wanted to show you this company, it's called Imaginario.

[9:29] So, imagine an area is a software company that takes any visual data and can interpret

[9:39] the data that it sees in your video.

[9:42] It's marketed as you can take, like let's say you have VHS tapes, I'm guessing all of

[9:49] you do of your childhood or whatever, the VHS tapes, if you convert them to digital and

[9:54] uploaded them to a imaginary of this software company will as according to their marketing

[10:01] automatically index every scene, face, action, object, and spoken word find any moment

[10:07] is what it said.

[10:08] So this is what the public has access to.

[10:11] Its intent is if you have 50 hours with a VHS tapes or DVD, you can find every time birthday

[10:20] party was on their use birthday party and a pub's birthday or grandma speaking any

[10:25] dev grandma speaking things that are precious to you.

[10:28] Which all again makes it very interesting in that we have people that are saying gosh

[10:35] I just don't want law enforcement to have access to this private data while simultaneously

[10:41] public has access to the private they can take their ring camera footage put it into a software

[10:47] system it can do all the sort of data mining. For whatever purpose that's completely unregulated

[10:55] which we will get to here in a minute. So for our safe county project it's drone assistive

[11:01] response and license plate reader expansion and I'm going to talk about drones but super briefly

[11:07] I'm guessing none of you have heard any critical word of a drone if you did has probably been

[11:12] been in pass and crap where you know somebody will say I don't want to drone

[11:16] certainly in my house well that's not how they're designed to work and

[11:23] I don't actually I guess I reordered my slides but that that's not how the drones

[11:28] themselves work that the drones that we're talking about are the exact same drones

[11:32] that we've had since 2015 they might do little upgrades than a technology

[11:37] but where drones today are launched from a trunk

[11:42] instead a drone will be launched at the time of college dispatch and actually your

[11:47] fire from this spring is the incident that I use more often than not to talk

[11:51] about how important a drone assistive response it is in that you had a

[11:56] opposite of garage fire that spread to a wet land that then threatened the whole

[11:59] entire neighborhood that your fire chief would have loved or your police

[12:04] friend would have loved to have that kind of intel a scene size up which is their

[12:08] term that a drone would have offered before they every been arrived at the scene.

[12:13] So, truthfully, drones, primarily the benefit for drone is going to be mostly on the

[12:18] fire side of things, but on the loss of things when we need a drone, we really do need a drone

[12:22] for sure. But I also need to keep in mind for this profession. For our profession, as we

[12:28] talk about this stuff, it is that by necessity, the law enforcement has always needed access

[12:35] us to private data, intensely personal data.

[12:39] We all make sure, in fact, we have two cops here,

[12:43] so that it's an axon camera right here,

[12:46] two that are wearing an axon cameras.

[12:49] They go into homes to see whatever incident happens

[12:53] within a home, and they wear the cameras

[12:55] because they're expected to wear the cameras.

[12:57] And in fact, the public demanded that they wear a camera.

[12:59] I mean, that was the genesis of them.

[13:03] But here you have the juxtaposition now in 2026 where people worry about the privacy

[13:09] and like, wait a minute, you know, what do I trust my law enforcement to know?

[13:13] And I'm sure you're sensing, I'm not meaning for this to be some sort of set up to either

[13:20] unreasonably defend license plate readers, but it feels important to me just to put that

[13:25] kind of data into context of what you're asking your law enforcement to do.

[13:31] because universally with every law enforcement leader that I know of, they'll say they'll tell you that it's a valuable tool.

[13:37] In fact, somebody who works in law enforcement saying that the invasion of privacy is too great for the benefit.

[13:47] There are a random couple of law enforcement people that say that, but invariably they're like patrol officers or former patrol officer who I watched.

[13:56] Tucker Carlson did a show on ALPRs and they had some kid that was bad

[14:01] male like I've shocked at how much data an ALPR collected and it's outrageous

[14:05] invasion of privacy and it was a 27-year-old former patrol officer that worked

[14:10] somewhere in Rhode Island and in my head I'm like man that's the best you

[14:13] couldn't find a police chief anywhere in the truth of the matter so you can have a

[14:17] hard time finding any law enforcement leader when they talk about waiting the

[14:21] value of the tool being used and in what it's capable of doing as opposed to the privacy,

[14:30] because truthfully when I'll show you what an AOPR actually gathers in terms of data

[14:35] is really benign data that, well, you'll just see for yourself.

[14:44] So, point being is that we need access to private data, and we've always respected private data, and there's, yes, there will be road cops, there will always be road cops.

[15:00] That's just my attention is two things. One, what do agencies do when cops do go rogue? And I don't know if any road cop in Minnesota, that keeps their job. And especially as it relates to abuse in this ALPR system, if there's become something that gets abused by somebody. I'll bet a paycheck. It's going to be over some sort of love gone bad. That would be the same. In fact, if you read any of them nationwide, almost always. It's an X of some variety.

[15:29] that they quote unquote stock, which we'll talk about some, too.

[15:34] But you find about it in these agencies provide that information, they take affirmative steps

[15:43] to deal with it in terms of either terminating somebody and or convicting them of crimes,

[15:50] which for sure would be the thing that would happen in Minnesota, too.

[15:54] We don't, except for this one particular tool, ALPR, though,

[15:58] So we don't talk about throwing the tool in the garbage because it's abused, right?

[16:02] And it's, you know, a handgun gets abused somewhere.

[16:05] Nobody says, oh, cops can't have handguns anymore, or, you know, it was, uh, driver's license

[16:10] data years ago was abused by some cops, and it just was dealt with for forcefully, and then

[16:16] that has gone away.

[16:17] And, and truthfully, the driver's license data, DBS, as they call it, that problem went away

[16:24] because of audits.

[16:25] it's routine audits, much the same way that DLPRs have a built-in hot and that's a part of it.

[16:32] I want you to know about the controlling statutes. There's a Minnesota statute related to

[16:38] license plate readers and there's a statute related to my management or drones. If you do any research

[16:47] on your own those would be the two places that I would recommend. You do research because Minnesota

[16:52] sort of wrote some really tight laws in that for both of those things, Minnesota says,

[16:59] here's what you can use these devices for and nothing else.

[17:03] They didn't write it in a way that sort of was going to be one thing at a time where something

[17:09] went rogue or bad or wrong and then suddenly the law needs to get amended.

[17:13] We got to eliminate that use of it or that abuse of it.

[17:16] It was written in that only certain things are allowed to be done with use of the license plate readers and with the drones.

[17:26] And it answers a lot of questions for the public when they have them.

[17:31] And you can't, if I get, if I bristle at any time, it's somebody saying, you know, that's just a law, as if implying that somehow me or anybody that's in a law enforcement position

[17:43] with just disregard the law because I felt it was just my personal opinion was

[17:49] too important so I was going to ignore it a lot. That's not how it works. That's not how it's

[17:53] ever worked whether it's related to supports or the footage that's on these cameras that go into

[18:00] people's homes. I mean theoretically somewhere down the road all the images that are caught on an

[18:05] axon body camera could be downloaded into that imaginary software and say, you'll find

[18:13] me a legal pill spoon and then suddenly you know what we would call a plain view search

[18:19] like a bio in your house and I see some contraband. I can see that under plain view doctrine.

[18:26] But the law doesn't cover for instance what if the body camera you know just does a sweep

[18:32] your house where the cop was lawfully at and then goes back to the office and then downloads it

[18:37] and find me anything illegal seen in this image and again it's if that were the case and I'm sure

[18:45] a software could eventually get to that space that would be capable of doing it is the answer then

[18:49] to get rid of body cameras which has whole other consequences or is the answer to say we need better

[18:55] regulations that are tied around that.

[18:58] And I hope, and I would say to you all, is that I'm a

[19:02] citizen, I ask you a tough question, this is that.

[19:04] We're not, we're kidding ourselves if we're thinking

[19:07] that technology isn't going to keep moving forward.

[19:11] Like I told you before, I was, I was a radio, a two-way

[19:15] radio, a shotgun, and pencil and paper 31 years ago.

[19:20] It would be ridiculous to think that 31 years from now

[19:22] the technology we're talking about today will be quaint and anticipated by comparison.

[19:29] So this wrestling match for any elected official is just going to be ongoing for the foreseeable

[19:35] future.

[19:35] But let's just talk about drones just for a quick thing so that you can have this too.

[19:42] Just the way that drone response works is exactly like you would hope it would work.

[19:47] Dispatch receives a 911 call.

[19:48] If it's authorized in a Minnesota statute, and there's 11 specific reasons that it launches authorized again, it isn't the case that you can just launch and then guess later, you can only launch under these 11 circumstances, and if you launch outside of those 11 circumstances, you're violating the law.

[20:11] So once the launch is authorized, the drone takes off.

[20:15] It flies directly towards going using GPS coordinates,

[20:18] because it's the difference of this drone's sister response

[20:22] and a trunk-launched response is that the drone doesn't need

[20:28] a pilot to keep an eyesight on the drone itself.

[20:32] The drone can operate with some autonomy,

[20:35] which can, I don't see a lot of people,

[20:39] Everybody can a large feeling, oh my God,

[20:40] or Joan can do whatever it is on its own,

[20:43] but it's a good thing.

[20:44] Joan takes off, flies to where it's going,

[20:47] and looks down and provides a scene assessment

[20:49] of a 911 call or the circumstance

[20:51] that's authorized under law.

[20:53] And it's the benefit to, on the fireside of things

[20:56] is straight up obvious.

[20:57] You all know that over responding

[21:01] to fire incidents is a occupational hazard

[21:03] for firefighters because they're afraid of under responding.

[21:08] So, too many assets get really expensive for cities, there's zero doubt in my mind that

[21:13] a city can turn that into a math problem and say how much did this drone actually save

[21:18] us in staff time, especially if you have pay-and-a-call volunteers that are being called in for certain

[21:23] kinds of incidents.

[21:25] You know where you had that wetland fire, you would have want every resource possible very

[21:29] immediately, but the converse is true too when somebody calls and say, oh, there's smoke

[21:34] at my neighbor's house and then you know ten firefighters showed with three trucks and find out

[21:39] that it's a campfire that had some green leaves on it and those sorts of things wouldn't happen

[21:43] anymore. So I think I think it speaks for itself in many ways for the on the law enforcement side

[21:48] of things it's these you know the tactical advantage of it is second to the line for some really bad

[21:53] what could be really bad incidents it's I guess it's always worthwhile to tell one story. So why

[22:00] It was line of lakes earlier this summer before the school year got out.

[22:06] There was a domestic, a domestic that was called out, and then when the officers got there,

[22:14] or just before the officers got there, there was a gunshot that was heard from within the

[22:18] house, that was on part of the 911 call.

[22:21] When the first officers got there, when they did a sort of survey around the building,

[22:25] I saw a back window was open to this house and as far as I knew the person who had shot

[22:32] and hopped up the window and took off on his broad daylight during his life or something

[22:36] like that.

[22:37] And there were two small schools or two schools of young people, I guess, that were nearby

[22:41] both of those schools who were notified of the incident and placed on a lot down, invariably

[22:48] scaring the crap out of the staff and who were probably working very hard and trying not

[22:51] to scare the children that were in these schools.

[22:55] Meanwhile, they later found out that it was, yes,

[22:58] there wasn't a mistake, but the person ultimately died

[23:00] by suicide and had hanged on suicide.

[23:03] And that had drawn been over ahead.

[23:05] The John would have seen nobody ran out of window

[23:06] and that whole thing could have been prevented.

[23:09] Again, it's just an example, yes, that I like to use.

[23:12] But here's the money one.

[23:14] Here's the ALPRs, though, the thing that has people.

[23:20] So concern.

[23:21] So what data is actually captured?

[23:25] These are a flat camera.

[23:27] I don't know how many of you have here.

[23:28] You have eight.

[23:30] They have eight in Ramsey.

[23:32] They're mounted on poles.

[23:33] They look at the road.

[23:35] And they take a snapshot.

[23:36] And that's exactly what you see in those photos is exactly

[23:40] what happens other than the orange thing covering up the license plate.

[23:44] It would be the full plate.

[23:46] So it gives the date, time, the wear.

[23:49] and then it's an image of the car, and that's the sum, totally love it. The photo is under the way,

[23:57] I think most of them guessing Ramsey hasn't set this way. It's the photo is automatically deleted after 30 days.

[24:04] It's just to which to seven, all right. So, because Fox-A-D,

[24:08] Fox-A-D's recommendation or default setting now is seven days.

[24:14] And actually, why am I not keeping mine there?

[24:17] I don't know if it eats major companies that do sell AOPRs.

[24:21] Flock has become sort of the Linux of the AOPR universe.

[24:25] Because it makes for pretty cool bumper sticker, D-Flock, and all that stuff.

[24:30] I bet it might say Flock would have picked a tougher name.

[24:31] It's hard to come up with a cool one.

[24:33] That bad mouse, Axon.

[24:36] But Axon has AOPRs also.

[24:39] But you never hear Axon's name getting mentioned.

[24:42] or the one called Blue Line, another one called Leonardo,

[24:46] you've never even heard of these companies before.

[24:49] But it's the exact same tool that does the exact same thing.

[24:53] So it takes a photo of cars going by,

[24:58] and that is the data that it's capturing.

[25:02] All right, cop files.

[25:04] So this falls in the category of an opinion.

[25:07] And in my opinion, the ability to compare that image

[25:13] to a hotfile is 90% of what's good about a license plate

[25:17] reader camera.

[25:20] And what is a hotfile?

[25:23] Hotfile is stolen cars, cars that

[25:27] are wanted that are involved in crimes, cars that

[25:30] are involved in missing persons, kidnappings, runaways.

[25:34] any time police are looking for a vehicle, so a police officer takes a police

[25:38] support and he goes, my gosh, I really need to find that vehicle because of one

[25:43] of these factors. Officers make a police support, they create what's a hot

[25:48] file and that hot file gets uploaded into the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal

[25:54] Ampereensions database. They operate the driver and vehicle services database, so

[26:00] like in the in the old days where a police officer would run a license plate

[26:08] so would pull them behind your car and see your plate and they would type in

[26:12] your plate and enter it would compare it to the hot file and boom if something

[26:16] showed up on a hot file that's a car that we're looking for and then you know

[26:22] the officers are expected to do verification and they have the right car in that

[26:27] they'll initiate a traffic software radio the partners or whatever they'll

[26:30] somehow figure out how to get that car stopped. But it was used in a crime or

[26:35] used in a significant incident. And finding those cars is a lot like finding a

[26:41] needle in a haystack. When I first started in law enforcement in 1995, we still

[26:44] had hot files, but a hot file was typed on the sheet of paper. It was given to us

[26:49] that roll call and the only cars that were on the hot file were the ones that

[26:52] that was stolen in your jurisdiction, or it was involved in a crime, it was just your

[27:00] own jurisdiction as all you have.

[27:02] You can imagine that with this network of cameras, wherever it is, it can see any Minnesota

[27:09] hot file entry, and when the camera does,

[27:15] the way the data flows is that the camera takes

[27:18] the photo, the license plate is interpreted via the software and it's compared to the

[27:26] hot list. It doesn't know anything about what the hot list is, but the camera can say

[27:31] the car on your hot list exists, and then that information then goes to the cops who then

[27:35] the data pops up on the screen, right? It's the camera itself isn't where the brains are,

[27:41] the camera just takes that photo, it compares it to the data, but it's on the data and it's

[27:47] the BCA end of things, the data that the cops are used to have in that private data

[27:52] they're used to working with, that's where that comparison takes place, and those hot

[27:57] files are used in awful lot and are a big deal, and it used to be like when I first started

[28:04] if your car was stolen, you're not getting it back until it's on smashed up against a tree

[28:09] or it gets reported as abandoned in a parking lot, whoever owns a parking lot says hey, this

[28:14] cars been here for two months and then you would find the car and then that's how

[28:18] you recovered it. So the speed and turning these things over is incredible and just

[28:26] the the capacity for it to do that is significant and again it's the human

[28:32] does the work. The hotfile is created by human being, the hotfile was not created

[28:38] by FLOx safety or FLOx safety camera. The other part is as an investigative tool and there

[28:47] was just, if you caught in the news, was such a busy news weekend, but there was just a shooting in

[28:53] Columbia Heights for young people involved in a shooting, some 80 rounds including automatic

[28:58] weapons fire that happened. I'm not necessarily picking on Columbia Heights, but I guess it'll sound

[29:06] like I am, but they covered all their flat cameras.

[29:09] There was a thing, we support Columbia Heights

[29:13] and an investigation like that,

[29:14] and they can't handle an investigation like that

[29:16] on their own.

[29:17] But where we're at right now is three people,

[29:20] one of which had an automatic gun,

[29:23] hopped into a car with a big description and took off.

[29:26] If an ALPR had been there, as an investigative tool,

[29:32] you could know the time that the shooting happened,

[29:35] and you could know the time the car took off

[29:37] and then you could look at the ALPR data and see

[29:40] if there was a car that matches the description,

[29:42] but it wasn't the scene.

[29:44] And if it was, that ALPR has a good enough camera

[29:48] to be able to discern the license plate

[29:50] that was screwed onto it.

[29:52] Now mind you, the criminals are eating smarter

[29:54] and they're taking plates off of cars now,

[29:56] but they're not generally speaking rocket scientists.

[30:00] And we rely on their dumbness and their slaviness to make arrests. But there are many, many stories of successful arrests for kidnappings, for shootings, for murders, for all kinds of things because of that investigative capability of the tool. Now that said, having a camera in the right place, at the right time looking at the right public road requires a little bit of luck. But,

[30:30] and we'll call it an occupational hazard of my own.

[30:32] I have such a bias for just if the tool is anywhere,

[30:37] at least it gives me a shot, it's all in your crime.

[30:40] And I wind up, I get over-invested in some of this stuff

[30:43] because of real-world incidents.

[30:46] The Manny Collins trial coming up this fall,

[30:48] the kid who was bombing the landfill,

[30:49] of Worver Landfill, 16-year-old boy,

[30:52] allegedly murdered by his father,

[30:56] allegedly murdered by his father,

[30:58] and who was dumped in a garbage dumpster, and it happened to be fortunately placed surveillance

[31:10] camera is why his mother, many calls mother, wasn't the new patty wetterland.

[31:18] It was dumb luck of a camera.

[31:20] For the record, don't throw car batteries in your garbage because they record garbage going

[31:24] into their trucks.

[31:26] If you didn't know that already, I'm telling you, throw a tighter new garbage.

[31:30] Don't do it because they can bell-trace all that stuff back and see where that happened,

[31:35] but it was a key piece of evidence, no grant that it wasn't an AOPR.

[31:41] But it was, I mean, you could say that your garbage gives up a lot of private data about

[31:46] you, too.

[31:47] You discard it and it was your, but you have ordinances that require people to give it to their garbage

[31:54] an avid, picked up and so on, and that they had a camera that was looking at the right

[32:00] pilot garbage was why that kid was recovered and why somebody's going to be able to

[32:05] account and why the mother wasn't paddy wetterling for like 30 years praying to God that he just

[32:10] disappeared and would come home meanwhile he was deceased.

[32:13] So I just acknowledge that I know that affects me and it's hard for me to have a heavy man

[32:18] approach to some of these privacy issues that pop up, which is different than you all

[32:25] But it's all part of what I want to talk about here.

[32:29] So as an investigative tool, it is vitally important.

[32:34] Koon Rapids, about a month ago, had a shooting, much like the one in Columbia Heights, at

[32:40] a crookedly beach park, where that is in that city, on the north part of the city.

[32:46] And they had a flat camera, actually it was the park's department's flat camera was in

[32:53] in the park because parks tend to be managed for the other park.

[32:57] The end of your parks have a full-fled camera.

[32:59] No, we're getting some PTZ cameras, but just cameras.

[33:04] And again, it's frustrating for me to hear somebody say,

[33:07] I don't trust local law enforcement with a camera.

[33:10] Me, I don't trust you to have a camera.

[33:13] Meanwhile, something bad happens at a community

[33:14] about the first thing that people ask for is cameras.

[33:17] Whether it's your fourth of July or carnival

[33:20] or you praise, or whatever people on cameras.

[33:23] In fact, we're almost to the stage now,

[33:26] where I think there's some question

[33:28] when people were questioning whether a crime was committed

[33:30] if it wasn't captured on a camera,

[33:32] which is, you know, again, it used to be,

[33:34] when I first started, if I went to court and testified

[33:36] and somebody's speed, you could judge my word for it

[33:39] and that was just all it was.

[33:41] Now, I think if traffic stopped,

[33:44] where the violation isn't caught on camera,

[33:47] I think, so I just won't even accept it

[33:49] it as a crime actually happening.

[33:51] It's just how much things have changed over time.

[33:55] All right, so under Minnesota law,

[33:58] as it's related to license plate readers, again,

[34:00] the law is very restrictive, right?

[34:04] And these two are important.

[34:06] Cannot be used to monitor or track an individual

[34:08] as a subject of investigation unless there is a surge warrant

[34:12] or an exigent circumstance.

[34:13] And that really means an emergency.

[34:17] And again, I hear it all the time, people go,

[34:19] Oh, exigencer, you can make up anything to be an exigen circumstance.

[34:22] No, you can't.

[34:23] Exigen circumstance would be like, if any of you are dealing with elderly parents that

[34:29] have Alzheimer's or something, and my dad got in his car and took off because Alzheimer's

[34:35] is the only one where he is, routine call happened lots.

[34:40] Law enforcement had no shot at helping that all 20 years ago.

[34:44] It was, oh, well, your dad turns up somewhere.

[34:47] and these people turned up in either bad places or deceased or whatever.

[34:54] Those in exigent circumstance would be, so if dad took off in his car, you could then create a hot file in that license plate.

[35:03] Then at the NAOPR side, that hot file license plate boom.

[35:07] His car was last seen at this time at this location which then provides clues to start tracking somebody down.

[35:13] So that's what it means. That's what emergency circumstance means.

[35:17] And then to track an individual, this is that cops can stop me if they want to.

[35:24] No, you can't. It requires a search warrant.

[35:27] And it's the exact same criteria that is that for your cell phone.

[35:32] I can get a search warrant for your cell phone.

[35:34] If I know that you were involved in a crime,

[35:36] if I have a probable cause to believe you were involved in a crime,

[35:39] any one of you. And I know what your cell phone number is. I can get a search warrant written

[35:44] by a judge that would authorize me to find out where your cell phone pinged off certain

[35:48] towers, which is far more invasive because your cell phone is always in your pocket. You never

[35:55] loan your cell phone out to anybody just to take for the day unlike your car. And it's an important

[36:01] consideration when people talk about privacy is just to remember you're talking about a car and

[36:06] And like in our universe, just because a car was involved in an incident doesn't mean the owner of the car was involved and that's always a big deal.

[36:15] Even the routine incident that pops up is like a traffic collision where the driver took off or off the nut because they're drunk.

[36:25] But just because you're the registered owner doesn't mean that you're the one behind the wheel. We have to prove that you're the one behind the wheel, DNA swabs and all kinds of stuff.

[36:33] Also, I'm trying to do is to say that there is still a warrant of requirement and there

[36:39] isn't just random checking people out.

[36:44] The other piece of that, under Minnesota law, is that other information other than a

[36:52] vehicle picture with the plate number, date, time, and location is prohibited.

[36:55] No other data is allowed to be collected under Minnesota statute.

[36:59] Now that's not true in other states and sometimes you'll hear people say and like I can use

[37:07] flocking for instances that flocks safety does some traffic management like speed of reading

[37:15] the word public worst people like average speed data you know when you guys put the tubes out

[37:22] on the roads to out to test out traffic speed and do these speed studies is 35 the right speeds

[37:28] of women or whatever it is, I'm sure you've been involved in this thing.

[37:32] That FOX safety apparently has a tool that does that, but it's not authorized in Minnesota.

[37:38] We can't even collect that data.

[37:41] So it's just important.

[37:43] So people will say, oh, it's going to check your speed and merely your speed and take

[37:47] it.

[37:47] You're like, I don't know what happens on other states, but not in Minnesota.

[37:54] All right.

[37:54] So AOPRs do gather and store data, however they not do it, or they do it mindlessly.

[38:00] You know, they just take a photo of the back of the car.

[38:02] It's no different.

[38:03] I could stand out there with my cell phone

[38:04] and just snap the photo of every single car as a cop.

[38:08] And it's the way I phrase it, it's, um,

[38:12] they help here, it's our good cameras,

[38:14] but they aren't magic cameras to hear some people talk.

[38:16] It's where the camera flies out,

[38:17] the pole will follow them all the way to their home address,

[38:20] or, you know, to their, to a church service,

[38:23] or to an abortion clinic, and then to them voting,

[38:26] and somehow the camera can piece this all together.

[38:30] But in reality, when the camera's just on a pole,

[38:33] all of the camera does is see that a car on by you

[38:38] was at that place at that time.

[38:42] And even for the people who do this,

[38:44] I'm stocking my ex-wife and I'm stocking her.

[38:47] I'm confounded as to how that could possibly

[38:50] be useful beyond catching that person and why.

[38:54] Did you go to blank? No, I didn't. Why saw you were on the road or something like that.

[39:00] But, like I said, they're good cameras, they're not magic cameras. The data moves only one

[39:06] way, meaning from the camera to law enforcement. So the power is within the software that the

[39:11] PD has in order to decipher the data. And it doesn't. And again, to me, it makes no sense

[39:19] that you would say the private sector can have all sorts of software to decipher data like

[39:24] I can imagine, but well, we don't want our law enforcement agency to have the ability

[39:27] to cite for data.

[39:30] That's an opinion, actually, the way I phrase that this is that, you know, how nice

[39:36] it must be for somebody to be so confident in you or somebody you love is never going

[39:40] to be victim of a violent crime to not have that in your concern, because I guarantee you

[39:44] anybody who's a victim of a violent crime or is a loved one that's a victim of a violent

[39:49] crime moves heaven and earth. If the world would demand every every avenue would be taken to solve

[39:57] crimes. There's a lot of pressure placed on these guys here to solve crimes for your citizens

[40:02] and sometimes even most benign crimes but when it's you know like from our perspective but when

[40:07] you're personally violated it's a big deal to you like even getting egged if your house gets egged

[40:12] and man you can get really mad about something like that. It stains your pain or whatever and you're like

[40:15] Oh, it just shatters your sense of safety where you live.

[40:18] And you'll call the cops, and you'll expect that something

[40:20] is done about it.

[40:21] And I'm not saying LPRs are appropriate tool

[40:25] for trying to sort something like that out.

[40:28] But I think it just highlights the pressure

[40:30] of that law enforcement has placed on it

[40:33] to solve crimes in the act on behalf of their citizens.

[40:37] And I hope that agencies don't want to handcuff

[40:41] their capacity of any police department

[40:44] Based on information that really isn't accurate, doesn't create a clear picture of what these

[40:51] tools can do or how they work.

[40:53] So the data only can be searched by law enforcement for a purpose authorized under this statute.

[40:59] All searches are logged and audited.

[41:03] Flock safety, the brand, has an automatic audit feature that flags suspicious looking searches

[41:11] And again, it's just, I haven't seen that aspect of it, but it's just, if you're query

[41:19] looks funny, it'll flag it for it to be checked out.

[41:23] And the thing that we are good in law enforcement is self-reporting people that go wrong.

[41:28] We're good at it.

[41:29] We don't keep secrets.

[41:31] And people who say that we do are wrong.

[41:36] In contrast, you know, we have this powerful cell phone in your pocket and you never once

[41:42] heard of a Verizon employee abusing Verizon's data to track a lover but do any of us honestly

[41:48] believe that no Verizon employee has never used their access to data of the cell phones

[41:54] within their network to track down somebody that, you know, somebody who broke their heart

[42:00] or stole their records or whatever they're dating myself, stole their,

[42:04] that's really the only thing I'm interested in.

[42:07] Yeah, that's really weird.

[42:08] Yeah, I've got flipped password, that's better.

[42:14] But of course, you know that that's happening,

[42:17] you just won't ever hear about it.

[42:20] And we do that.

[42:22] And we report that stuff because it matters to us.

[42:26] You know, we work for the citizens.

[42:28] Actually, people bring up 1984 to me too all of a sudden.

[42:32] And so they brought it up to me so much, you know,

[42:34] the book, or the movie, whatever.

[42:36] They brought it up to me so much that I bought the book again,

[42:38] because like, you know, I'm a person of a certain age.

[42:41] I graduated high school in the 1980s.

[42:43] And I probably had it as a Simon in 10th grade to read 1984.

[42:47] But it's not a valid comparison.

[42:52] The big brother was there to keep the government

[42:55] and power, we use this ALPR technology law enforcement

[43:00] that's to serve the citizens, that's it.

[43:02] And if we do anything beyond serve the citizens

[43:05] with any of the tools that we have,

[43:07] we've got a road and any user can be fired

[43:09] and or incarcerated if the statutes say that.

[43:13] So what ALPRs do not do, no facial recognition.

[43:19] It's not to say that facial recognition won't be possible

[43:22] somewhere down the road.

[43:23] I guarantee you it will, actually talk about retina scanning here in a second.

[43:31] That'll be probably the way area goes.

[43:33] But there's no facial recognition because Minnesota law says you can't.

[43:37] For sure, there are people working like crazy to figure out facial recognition.

[43:43] I know you've heard about other news stories about it being used elsewhere,

[43:47] New York or whatever, and they talk about how good it is or isn't.

[43:51] kind of the irony because it comes up regarding immigration enforcement, you know,

[43:56] ice work is that ALPR's being used for ice work again at Paul's in the category.

[44:01] I don't see the value or how it could have been an important tool.

[44:06] That said, was it used as a search term?

[44:08] Yeah, a few hundred times, apparently, I don't know what the number is up to deportations now

[44:14] in this country, but it's somewhere between half a million and one million and I don't know

[44:21] who typed in those search terms.

[44:22] But those search terms are not authorized

[44:24] in Minnesota.

[44:25] You can't use immigration as a search term.

[44:27] We don't allow that.

[44:31] And then I set, like I just reiterated a collection

[44:33] of any data that is not authorized

[44:35] is prohibited.

[44:36] ALPR do not have access to databases.

[44:40] So the database, like I talked, the hot file

[44:43] can be triggered by what the ALPRC is,

[44:45] meaning it's information goes to the data,

[44:47] but it doesn't go back to the camera and again you'll see you'll see videos on

[44:54] YouTube that'll say I hacked a flat camera and then there's like millions of

[44:59] views for one video

[45:00] That says, let us show you how we hacked a camera, and it was like three, three, four years ago or whatever. And it would appear to look at it as, yeah, they were able to hack the camera, but it was what the camera saw, which was that still limits, right? It's like, usually your eyes could see that. Or traffic management cameras have access to that. No, that said, we'll use Fox safety, but anyone who's eight, eight, ale PR companies, though,

[45:29] So clearly they went, oh man, our security needs to be better from our camera to our software

[45:35] and they upgraded the security.

[45:37] And again, I would just say to anybody, is that we hear about, we know about data hats.

[45:43] Your city, you train all your employees ruthlessly to not open phishing emails and all this stuff

[45:50] because you're terrified of some sort of hack that gets into water systems or whatever

[45:54] it is.

[45:55] But you don't say we're going to get rid of all software related to our water systems

[45:59] because it was hacked once.

[46:01] What you do is you learn from the hack, you toughen up your systems, you train all your

[46:05] employees that are not vulnerable to those classes or vulnerable to have incidents happen and

[46:12] then they don't happen.

[46:14] And then just for your record, if you haven't looked already, if you want to see who uses

[46:18] license plate readers, the BCA, maintains a website, you can click on it and see where all

[46:24] cameras are at. If you want to see specific locations of where cameras are

[46:30] nationwide, dfloc.org. You can see it. You haven't been there. It's worth. It's

[46:35] amazing to go there, I guess, and see what it all means. But like you have eight

[46:40] cameras, I don't think County Sheriff's Office operates eight cameras, and I just

[46:44] put it, put this as a slide to show you where they are. They're sort of, they're

[46:49] random. They do catch things that happen. But again, I put it in, I did this in the context

[46:58] of, like, let's say, and actually the way it phrases, Mary will say, I wanted to, I wanted

[47:03] to stop. Right. I'm, I'm a staff like he rides so bad, he just got some bones, I'm going to

[47:09] stalk him. And as soon as I type in his vehicle searcher license plate in the ALPR database

[47:18] I'm subject to be fired, I am, and under Minnesota law, it's not a recall election, it's my license, my peace officer license will be taken from me on the next cop.

[47:28] I'm going to be fired, and I'm going to go to jail, and it's possible that I'm so angry, that boy, I'm going to follow through, but even if I did that, and I say to people I'll take, even if I did that, what data am I going to get on you?

[47:45] that you drove on Bunker Lake Boulevard Westbound last Tuesday at six o'clock in the afternoon.

[47:52] What does it mean? Again, it's sort of the, I just try to highlight for people just like

[47:56] it's day to day use. It's an, I apologize for the children's reference, but I kind of refer

[48:03] to it as, where's Waldo? In that, you know, you're looking for Waldo, the ALP here looks for Waldo,

[48:08] but in reality, the rest of us are just the background noise. We're the other people that are in the

[48:12] well, where's Waldo, Cartoon, photo?

[48:17] And the answer is unless somebody's looking for somebody

[48:20] in particular, you're not noticed.

[48:24] And I hope nobody's offended that if you want to be paid

[48:27] attention to in that regard, but you know what I'm saying.

[48:31] And even if I were to stock, the audit will catch me.

[48:35] I'll get fired and I go to jail.

[48:37] And for all to have, for the sole purpose

[48:39] of knowing that on this date at this time,

[48:43] the car owned by Ryan went that certain direction.

[48:47] And again, it just, again, this feels a lot to me

[48:51] like the babies he had thrown out with an app

[48:53] letter for these places that he's choosing

[48:55] to ditch their cameras.

[48:57] And I'll just highlight if Minnesota has among the

[48:59] strilings of privacy laws in the nation.

[49:02] Our laws are comparable to California and California.

[49:05] It has, in many ways, embraced the technology.

[49:07] they're going through some issues too and it was San Francisco the city that two

[49:14] years ago was a laughing stock for their crime where I for many many many anecdotes

[49:22] if you want to San Francisco's rented a car they have a sign in there that

[49:26] tells you when you rent a car don't leave any of your personal possessions in

[49:30] this car it will get stolen where they're having the organized retail vuffs

[49:34] where smash and grabs and all this stuff.

[49:37] San Francisco fully embraced flock safety, the brand,

[49:41] for joining us as a response, and for ALPRs,

[49:44] animated dramatic difference you can look at yourself.

[49:47] Where they ran into trouble was, is that somebody

[49:50] was able to figure out an immigration search

[49:55] that came up on their audit, and the term immigration popped

[49:58] up an audit for ALPR data.

[50:01] And again, some human being made the mistake.

[50:03] It wasn't the machine that made the state, but some human made the state.

[50:08] All right, we're not just finished then here with, again, this privacy debate for people is that, you know, sort of my canary in the coal mine

[50:17] and you've probably gone into CBS pharmacies or pharmacy where, you know, you're in bad neighborhood when the store is locked up.

[50:24] But the store itself has every shelf that's locked up.

[50:28] And products are behind the lock.

[50:29] thing and you gotta go find an employee to unlock. Unlock a cabinet before you to get an item.

[50:36] CVS solution to that is their testing is that they're an app so they have

[50:42] automated locks on their stuff within the store in that you would use the

[50:48] Bluetooth on your phone. You would go on your CVS app, you would put all your

[50:52] private data into the app and then you would use your app to open the cabinet

[50:57] to be able to look at stuff. And again, in the context of privacy, you're like, man,

[51:02] how much privacy are you giving up for the sake of getting? I think that, I don't even know what it is.

[51:07] Danny Mosch. Danny Mosch in the back. So again, it's stuff that you're voluntarily giving,

[51:13] they're giving up. And again, it juxtaposed to what an ALPR does. Or, and these are both real photos.

[51:20] This is California, where beef now has tags on it, anti-thab tags, and it makes me nuts to go to, I'm not picking up on people necessarily, but we don't have to live in places where the stores themselves are fortresses, like, you know, it's unthinkable that 10 years ago that you'd have to find an employee to get you because you needed a drill.

[51:41] And yet, you know, somehow we're just accepting that that's the way life isn't, it doesn't have to be like that.

[51:47] And again, Bradweiser opinion, crime rates are dropping in Costa country because it's hard to commit a crime without getting caught.

[51:55] These days, much harder, you're much more likely to get caught.

[51:58] I would hate to see that every recent place where we deny law enforcement, technology that can make a difference

[52:10] for the sake of some privacy that isn't like, again, in my opinion, real.

[52:15] You know, so my last sentence is, I'll tell you, when I hang up my spurs, what I'm finally

[52:20] done with law and place language in four years or so, four and a half years, I guess, when

[52:27] I'm choosing a place to live, I'm going to live someplace safe.

[52:30] I swear to you, I'm going to find a lot for whatever town, and it might be my current

[52:35] talent and overwhelming it. But wherever they embrace technology to have this crap,

[52:40] not be a part of my existence. I'm not living in a community where I go into a pharmacy

[52:45] and everything is locked up or I go into home depot and I look like a fortress or I got

[52:50] to go past the security guard for everything I do. I want to place that embrace this technology

[52:57] and I say that to people because I trust the cops. These are good people that have given

[53:04] even a lot of their personal lives to keep a city secure.

[53:10] And if they tell me they need a tool, I won't even blank.

[53:13] I know how the hiring happens, I know how they work,

[53:17] I know their training, I know the laws that back them up.

[53:20] And without even hesitating, if the police department

[53:23] I live in says I need a tool, I'll be, yep, you do.

[53:27] You say you need a proof of the deal.

[53:30] All right, that's, I'm sorry if I went long here,

[53:33] but it's important stuff to us questions Michael the cameras are they fixed

[53:47] directionally yes and then the zoom also or there's only one aspect yeah they

[53:51] don't they just they get a set up and then they're not touching this and so that

[53:57] That view that you saw a few back, it was a flush cue on the top.

[54:02] Yeah, I see some, but you know you just changed it yourself.

[54:06] Yeah, yeah.

[54:08] And that being said, we have PTCs that are going in by block in our parks.

[54:14] We have three go in the new waterfront splash bed park, and then we have I think six or

[54:20] eight in the budget for 2020, seven for central Elmcrest in Rivers Bend.

[54:25] And those are different than these.

[54:27] They do not do license plate reading.

[54:29] They do Zoom and they do move and they have something called guardian mode where they

[54:34] can, you can set parameters if you wanted to flag the officers after 10 p.m.

[54:39] that there's 20 people in the park who can do that.

[54:44] Follow up my call.

[54:46] Good.

[54:46] Thank you.

[54:47] Other questions?

[54:49] Crystal.

[54:51] I recall correctly from your presentation at the local government's meeting, it's a third

[54:56] party audit? Yes a third party audit is required so that so again we use the

[55:02] branding block safety has this automated audit rate so like I'm going to use

[55:08] the wrong term I should have written it down but they have if there's an unusual

[55:12] search or repeated search it'll flag it and again it's just a I mean you can

[55:17] imagine for for the ownership of block safety it's like oh that's a no-brainer

[55:21] of a tool it's a good tool so if it's that see something that's an unusual

[55:24] pattern it'll say you know dear manager you need to take a look at this because

[55:29] this doesn't look right it doesn't need to wait for an audit before you

[55:33] investigate and it's a it's a really good tool but yeah otherwise it's a third

[55:37] party audit that we're recording out which is the same for our

[55:41] axon videos. We're going to pair that up with our body cameras we're due for

[55:45] that I'm in the spring so we're going to will be just under our two years that

[55:50] that actually requires, but we'll be doing the LPR audit

[55:54] at the same time, the same company, actually.

[55:57] Are you comfortable sharing the company does that?

[56:01] Yes, it's sort of the L care member.

[56:05] I can get it for you.

[56:06] There are a lot of those companies.

[56:08] It's a little bit lemma, can you give it?

[56:13] So there's an audit required over two years,

[56:17] but in between that time, if there's something as unusual,

[56:20] it would notify you.

[56:27] So, I know that you mentioned that people are maybe concerned that it is tracking speed.

[56:34] I do think that there's also people more concerned.

[56:38] And this is more like comment.

[56:39] I don't know if this is, this is nothing to do with you.

[56:41] You're not the one that would make this decision.

[56:43] But I've heard people being concerned about it more being like the infrastructure is there for speeding tickets later.

[56:49] Or for tracking certain things later on.

[56:52] which, once again, that wouldn't be you.

[56:55] That'd be like a legislative move,

[56:56] but just wanted to make that known

[56:58] that I've heard that people are concerned about that.

[57:01] That's no doubt true.

[57:02] Honestly, I've got, like, said 30 years from now,

[57:04] what technology will be available to shoot?

[57:07] I have no idea.

[57:08] Right.

[57:10] And it's, again, it's the idea that you can say,

[57:14] we don't want people with brains to think

[57:16] of this technology, that's not realistic.

[57:19] The only thing you can do is regulate how that

[57:21] how those tools are used, that's the only thing you can do because somebody somewhere

[57:27] is busy but you know like an air tag, Apple air tag is great you know you can't just

[57:32] put it, you can't just tape an air tag to your spouse's card, follow them around because

[57:36] their phone will trigger that air tag. Well as soon as that became true, there's some company

[57:41] in China that will sell your air tags that won't alert yourself on that air tag as part

[57:45] of it. If somebody will sell you, if it has value and clearly those, they'll market it for

[57:51] the right reason. Oh, keep track of your suitcase without alerting them. You know, the air

[57:56] boiler employee that he can, you know, know that you're tracking, you know, your Louis

[58:00] de Breton bag or whatever it is. So the law come off as legitimate, but for sure it can

[58:07] be used for various purposes. We're going to be wrestling with this, get used to this,

[58:12] I guess, this counsel's on getting used to it. He's in this a lot longer. I'm going to be

[58:16] is going to get used to it, too.

[58:19] Because it'll be exactly this.

[58:20] This technology can prevent this crime

[58:23] as the trade-off to great, yes or no.

[58:25] And sometimes the answer might be, yeah,

[58:26] the trade-off is to great.

[58:28] In this case, I don't think the trade-off is too great,

[58:30] knowing what I know about ALPRs.

[58:34] But people freaked out over, ring cameras

[58:36] being able to be a network, right?

[58:38] Like a neighborhood could agree to network their ring cameras

[58:43] in case their dog got lost, which is a great idea.

[58:45] But boy, that, you know, talk about creeping people out.

[58:48] That was a super cool ad if you remember reading them

[58:50] on that last year.

[58:52] But it creeped people out, but that capability is there already.

[58:56] 10 years ago, when those ring cameras first became part

[59:00] of the thing, is that when I was in Food and Rampage,

[59:03] we were trying to get people to sign up to give us access

[59:05] to the ring cameras, not thinking

[59:08] that there was a big brother feel to it, buy to it.

[59:10] You know, he said these ALPRs have been around since 2009.

[59:14] nobody ever nobody blinks over them ever that this all came up as a big deal

[59:21] shocked me. Now I didn't see a comment. It's like what do I mean? We've been using this for 17 years. What's the deal?

[59:31] I and then like for those photos that they're taking off the cars they only are

[59:37] or something that someone can see once they've put in information requesting, or if it's

[59:46] triggering a hot list, I'm sorry, not that they're putting in for it, or they're searching

[59:48] for it potentially, but it's not like there's just a camera or like a TV screen in your

[59:53] guys as PD where they're like scrolling through. You can see it. No, you can't. If in order to look, yeah.

[1:00:00] I have a reason to look, and that's what the audit is. You can't just look for the heck of it. And there is no capability of looking. So, for instance, our system requires a case summer to be added as part of it, of which case summer. You can't not have a case summer in there, it won't look. So it's, it's just one of the ways to restrict it. But you can't just for fun, these look. You know, that said, you can, you can go right now, look at men dot and look at highway time.

[1:00:29] maybe you guys do the guarantee of your traffic wherever it is your engineering is

[1:00:34] monitors your min. cam is pretty regularly but that min. footage you know

[1:00:39] their cameras are good cameras to not match cameras but what their cameras are

[1:00:43] capable of doing should we we all get new iPhones be only because the camera gets

[1:00:47] better right your iPhone 12 and your iPhone 17 are probably no different

[1:00:50] except for the camera maybe a little more data storage but you what is an

[1:00:55] Can I from camera going to be capable of 20 years from now?

[1:00:58] Or my ring camera?

[1:00:59] Can my ring camera zoom right into my neighbors?

[1:01:02] Can I read the newspaper again?

[1:01:04] Can I read the book that I was using?

[1:01:07] Well, you know what I'm saying.

[1:01:08] I don't, it's like the holy grail of some technologies,

[1:01:12] how good can the cameras get?

[1:01:14] And they, I'm willing to bet that they'll

[1:01:17] be shockingly good in a decade from now.

[1:01:20] And they'll be able to imagine aerial software,

[1:01:23] you could do all kinds of stuff. I don't even know what to say. Like, even now, what's the

[1:01:30] one that's going to court? The notification law that's in Minnesota that's in court,

[1:01:35] now that AI can just make up stuff. And I'm sure most of you read news stories nowadays.

[1:01:40] You probably, I don't know what your percentage is, but you 50% believe what you read. That's

[1:01:45] where I'm at more or less. If I read something, I immediately go, all right, what does the other

[1:01:49] side think about this, and then I try, I fact-of-fact check everything. I don't trust, I literally

[1:01:54] trust almost nothing.

[1:01:58] And then when you see something on a hot list, it's still, like,

[1:02:03] that's your connecting was that, like, you guys are still the ones that make the decision whether

[1:02:07] or not that's actually what the crime is. I'm so glad you said that because, again, because

[1:02:13] it was a big deal made of employment incident where there was a quote, a flock of mistakes.

[1:02:18] Again, when Brad Weiss started in 1995, if there's a bank robbery and it was a blue Toyota

[1:02:23] was involved, you know, like a teller called Screaming, Blue Toyota left the parking lot

[1:02:28] with a bank robber.

[1:02:29] We in law enforcement stopped every blue car, Toyota or not.

[1:02:34] That was anywhere in and around that of which 99.9 for some time it was the wrong car.

[1:02:40] That was routine.

[1:02:41] The technology that we have available now, the number of mistakes that we make is dramatically

[1:02:45] less than what it would have been in the good old days, a pre-technology.

[1:02:51] Shoot if it was a Toyota, that was red, and we'd stop that too, just for the sake.

[1:02:56] I was not saying this is again to keep all this stuff in contact.

[1:02:59] Is it foolproof? No, but the human beings, we train our cops to think.

[1:03:04] And we train the cops to believe that the ALPR or the technology isn't foolproof.

[1:03:10] You've got eyes and brain we expect you to use it, you know,

[1:03:13] discern the information that you're seeing and figure out if that actually merits a traffic

[1:03:17] stopper, or is it a suspect of something?

[1:03:20] And if you're wrong, you get sued and stuff, and there's accountability all on the

[1:03:24] way to this.

[1:03:28] The last thing that I had, and this just seemed context that was in Texas this week, and

[1:03:36] I talked with a Dallas sport-worth police officer when I was there about plot cameras.

[1:03:42] So, any opportunity I can to talk to someone about it, and he mentioned that the governor

[1:03:49] of Texas had banned them, but that they weren't going to support them financially, but in

[1:03:58] Dallas and Fort Worth, the Councils there had decided to fund themselves, because they found

[1:04:03] them valuable.

[1:04:24] I don't think anybody sits in their living room and goes, boy, I hope they get more

[1:04:29] LPRs in the law enforcement agency, but, again, when I just think about how much privacy

[1:04:38] people give up for, like I said, for a free copy, by comparison, and just knowing how

[1:04:45] the tool is used, the value of the tool, to me it just makes sense to use the tool.

[1:04:52] And, you know, for now we're doing this as a pilot project, I got beat up over, you know,

[1:04:57] how dare I do this pilot project thing.

[1:05:00] The only reason it got started as a pilot project

[1:05:03] or that was signed off by me a year ago,

[1:05:08] when we first started having meetings about this,

[1:05:10] we all had AOPRs, we all had drones,

[1:05:13] and it was G.E. we could coordinate, right?

[1:05:16] And because we worked well together

[1:05:18] and that's not like that in every place.

[1:05:20] We're lucky in that regard.

[1:05:22] And it was, oh, we should collaborate.

[1:05:24] And again, a year ago, we had never thought

[1:05:26] there's any controversy over any of it. I've never even entered my brain to think that there'd be

[1:05:30] controversy. Then Metro surge happened and then suddenly these two things got linked and then

[1:05:40] county commissioners because originally the pilot was going to be a two-year pilot project for

[1:05:45] 250,000 and then county commissioners lined up being all over the place. They didn't know what to

[1:05:51] think and I am and again it's not it's no disrespect from them and I know you

[1:05:57] don't have disrespect for them either because they're trying to read the

[1:05:59] tea leaves are like man where's the where the citizens at with this it's hard to

[1:06:03] figure out they're yelling you know this group is yelling and then the polar

[1:06:07] opposite are yelling maybe both sides are yelling I hit this right I don't know

[1:06:10] and it's everybody was just like wondering what to do in any and it was like with

[1:06:16] the commission's going back and forth with just this pilot project it was me

[1:06:21] saying look I'll take Yuri on a bad political spot there's an election coming up

[1:06:26] in the fall. I went to Fox Safety and I knew I had $175,000 spending limit

[1:06:33] under statute and policy of the number of county and it literally looks like to

[1:06:37] Fox Safety what can we get for $175 and they go you can have you can have a one-year pilot

[1:06:42] project and I'm like feel one year and that's what was past the election and then

[1:06:46] and people can get out of that space.

[1:06:50] And again, it's not, you know, I ran for office two

[1:06:53] and there were topics that came up when I ran in 2022

[1:06:56] where people are trying to pigeonhole me

[1:06:58] and one thing or another, you know,

[1:07:00] like asking me about my stance on abortion

[1:07:02] or something crazy like that, you know, for my position.

[1:07:05] And I'm going, wow, is this cost me those or not?

[1:07:07] And I understand the calculus all that.

[1:07:09] And it was just, it was no more complicated than saying,

[1:07:13] I'll just cut these people right there

[1:07:14] and I need to be a part of this.

[1:07:15] we just want the pilot to go and in the end, if the pilot project is successful, then the

[1:07:21] collaboration will be a county-wide collaboration under something we call a safe county initiative

[1:07:27] which would be, it would be a literal thing. There'd be no county I'd rather live in.

[1:07:34] Again, we personally, then a safe county county, you'll want that, that embraces DFR and

[1:07:41] OPR's and regional assistance organizations, and that's where we land.

[1:07:49] But there'll be a lot of conversations between now and then and a lot of agreements that

[1:07:56] will need to take place and it won't be for everybody to agree.

[1:08:00] But Columbia Heights takes their flat cameras off line and then they have 80 rounds shot

[1:08:07] off in a parking lot. It starts scaring their residents.

[1:08:12] And then, you know, you're like

[1:08:13] the officials, you know, to them. You're like the officials and Columbia Heights. What's

[1:08:17] your obligation to your citizens? There's a tool that would really help. In the circumstance,

[1:08:21] or he just hoped for the best or what, you know, it puts a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure.

[1:08:27] It's not easy being city council members these days. I know it was a lot easier. 2011 when I first

[1:08:37] I think I've known this participant for a minute, so there are at least programs, right?

[1:08:42] You don't actually buy the camera?

[1:08:44] Yeah, it's the upgrades will always be an option somewhere down the road.

[1:08:51] But again, it'll be conversational at that take place because it's no individual agency in a share of included.

[1:08:59] it can, it's just not possible in Minnesota that sheriff could say, I'm going to give this

[1:09:04] new technology, I don't care what the rest of you people think, sure that's not how that

[1:09:07] would work for sure, city councils. Well, actually, even the nice part, even for the pilot

[1:09:12] project to come to fruition, if that poll, you know, post-Bradwise, and it all goes sideways

[1:09:19] in city rams, it can save me one hour, and you get out.

[1:09:24] And then the data itself, obviously it's stored in their cloud servers, wherever those are stored

[1:09:30] as soon as it's not used in the US.

[1:09:31] Yeah, it's all the data, all the data belongs to us.

[1:09:36] And again, I'm not a, you know, I don't understand the technology.

[1:09:41] But again, I'll also say it is this way, is that we use, like in today for all of our police supports,

[1:09:47] our written under central square software, Axon has evidence.com.

[1:09:52] I have no idea how any of that works.

[1:09:54] We take it on faith that our data doesn't wind up somewhere,

[1:09:58] that it's not supposed to be you take it on faith

[1:10:00] all the time, you're watered, you know,

[1:10:03] it's, you rely on the agreements,

[1:10:05] because people want me to have some, they want some,

[1:10:08] because there's smart people out there

[1:10:09] that ask questions and they want technical guarantees

[1:10:12] that, that, that flocks safety or any company

[1:10:16] doesn't have access to your data.

[1:10:17] And you're like, I, I don't know how to even convince you

[1:10:21] of that at some point you have to just take it on. I don't know how you're not.

[1:10:32] Just for the county side, do you have, and you've obviously already shared a lot of really

[1:10:38] wonderful perspectives of cases individually that have been solved because of this, but

[1:10:42] do you have any statistics on how many more crimes have been solved because of the use of

[1:10:49] No, and I'll say something that we're bad about is that we're we've all been trained to talk all right when you rest somebody

[1:10:59] And somebody goes to jail is that you type up or a detective ultimately types up a criminal complaint

[1:11:05] That's headed through the attorney's office and then submit it to a court

[1:11:10] We always try to write that stuff as vague as possible because we aren't the bad guys to know how we do stuff

[1:11:14] Right and it's just our habit. It's the way we're trained

[1:11:17] So using an ALPR or drones has always been downplayed in how crimes were solved as it's related to criminal complaint.

[1:11:29] And we're just going to have to change the way we go about doing that.

[1:11:32] So I'm sure Chief Plumble will tell you, you probably never even heard a story about how an ALPR made the difference in a crime in Ramsey until all this came to fruition.

[1:11:43] and then I'll send you a hearing about it all the time.

[1:11:47] But, you know, that technology, like said,

[1:11:49] has been used for a long time.

[1:11:51] It started the first ALPRs where you find stolen cars.

[1:11:54] They looked like mailboxes that were mounted on a squad car

[1:11:57] and it just dried through parking lots ago.

[1:11:58] That car is stolen and you're finding stolen cars.

[1:12:01] And nobody, it would be us and law enforcement would say,

[1:12:05] I'll be required to recover 47 stolen vehicles in 2010.

[1:12:10] We never said if it was because there was

[1:12:12] a foot of snow on it or because the ALPR got it. So we said we'd better

[1:12:17] about that because I know people want to know. But yeah, the amygdolls are piling up and really, really

[1:12:22] significant. It's like right county to set up a homicide that was, or it was a potential homicide

[1:12:29] that was an ALPR stopped. They actually prevented a homicide because of an ALPR hot list.

[1:12:35] I've also probably made that too narrow because the salt is, I mean there's different ways that we

[1:12:41] think that a crime is solved. It doesn't always have to be like there's like actual answer

[1:12:45] or conviction or it's you know. Yeah anyways. So I'm sure there's a transparency portal

[1:12:50] right that you're working on in that of you. I'm sure the public needs to know if the

[1:12:55] success stories. Yeah. They need to know. We've got a couple more minutes. I guess I'll

[1:13:01] just say you've got a secondology who's been around for a long time. I used to manage

[1:13:05] had a mechanical security. We got approached by many companies that use license plate

[1:13:09] play readers and tow trucks to look for repo vehicles and you'd be surprised how much data tow trucks pull when they go through

[1:13:16] Vehicle parking lots and they drive down the road and the opposite direction of you are swinging through our grocery stores using

[1:13:24] the private

[1:13:25] Data gathered by private businesses

[1:13:28] I could put in my own license plate and I could see what roads I drive down where apart what grocery stores I go to

[1:13:34] The whole pattern of life analysis and the requirement for that software is that you have a physical building and you have a security officer's license.

[1:13:42] So it's been around for a long time.

[1:13:44] So I think to have that technology in the handle on enforcement is very reasonable since security officers could run that 10 years ago.

[1:13:57] personally very conservative very keep the government out of my life but I

[1:14:03] also look at this and I say there's a slippery slope argument and that's a

[1:14:07] valid argument but as as you already stated this listens to the

[1:14:13] conversations I have with my wife before I go to bed this tells the

[1:14:17] governments if they want to if they have the ability to do secret

[1:14:21] It fires a warrants, and I don't get to know about it.

[1:14:24] They're stalking me.

[1:14:25] This will tell them a hundred times more

[1:14:28] than a stationery or even a PTC plot camera will go.

[1:14:31] So, personally, for the council, if you want

[1:14:35] to know where I stand, any citizen that demands

[1:14:38] that we remove ELPRs, I will frequently agree with them

[1:14:43] as soon as we remove every bit of technology

[1:14:46] that does the same thing.

[1:14:48] So, when the person posts on Facebook

[1:14:50] look that the flock cameras need to come down. My first question is, you're okay, carrying

[1:14:55] advice that tracks your location and tells you how fast you're walking that knows what

[1:14:59] room and

[1:15:00] House you're sitting at. And yet, when we have a device that law enforcement can use to find missing children or stolen cars, that's where we put up the fight. I think it's low hanging fruit. I think it's lazy by residents. And this is somebody who will say this to both sides and somebody who would say on one hand, I'm very conservative. I think the government can say on a personal matters. But if I'm going to be completely consistent, if I take that stand strong, I'm the biggest hypocrite of all.

[1:15:29] because I care to acknowledge my pocket every day.

[1:15:32] That takes away my rights and I agree to it.

[1:15:35] You don't have a reasonable right to privacy

[1:15:38] in a public area as well.

[1:15:40] That's why we end the cameras everywhere.

[1:15:44] And I mean, as the sheriff said, technology is so crazy.

[1:15:48] I mean, if you want to look at open source news,

[1:15:51] they found the downpiled in Iran through a heartbeat sensor

[1:15:54] from space.

[1:15:56] you are a router at your house and three to map your entire house and see what we're

[1:16:00] moving into. It's all open source, you can check it out. So for me, I would be a

[1:16:06] million posts of block cameras if we started with the things that mattered most

[1:16:13] and then it's slowing me through for me. So I'll understand that the apprehension to

[1:16:18] and I appreciate where it's coming from for many residents.

[1:16:21] I just, I don't know if I can swallow a missing child getting out of the county while

[1:16:30] carrying a self on my pocket and say he ate from freedom and liberty, but I'm contributing

[1:16:35] to surveillance myself, so that's where I'm at.

[1:16:41] That's more mistaken than a question, but I think you did a great job of presenting, and I

[1:16:47] I think there might be more of these statements

[1:16:48] tonight if there are citizens within the point.

[1:16:51] So just wanted to be some perspective for that.

[1:16:53] And Chief, these are time for me to have a couple things.

[1:16:55] Yeah.

[1:16:56] OK.

[1:16:58] Just from Brown.

[1:16:58] Just locally.

[1:16:59] And he did a great job.

[1:17:01] I just want to touch on trust in that it's not mind trust.

[1:17:06] We take your trust very seriously as you can tell

[1:17:10] by how we try to be seen as humans, given the community.

[1:17:13] But right now, for our whole careers, when we go to an alarm at someone's home, and we find a door open, we walk through the entire house.

[1:17:24] And that was before body cameras.

[1:17:26] And so we really need to trust us and we realize that.

[1:17:32] And the second part is, I think we often talk about big cases, and it is fun to talk about big cases.

[1:17:38] because we just had another successful incident with a

[1:17:41] burglary suspect coming out of a river in the Ramsey

[1:17:44] and they were able to help us, who knows where they're going,

[1:17:47] but they came off highway 10.

[1:17:50] So, they came off the main roads into our city.

[1:17:52] So that's a good win, but I don't think we should overlook

[1:17:56] the single person who has a hit and run happened to them.

[1:18:01] You know, it might not be a cool story to tell,

[1:18:03] but that's still a victim.

[1:18:04] And we have searches where we're able to track that or find that vehicle using health care technology.

[1:18:14] And then also I have to have some local information for you guys.

[1:18:16] City stuff specific. I'm going to go real quick.

[1:18:19] But since January 1st with our license plate readers, the 8 of them, we've searched 1,012 vehicles.

[1:18:28] I might seem like a lot of that goes down to about 28 searches per week.

[1:18:34] So, when you have two-to-large shifts, four-rish off-serves,

[1:18:39] 95 per shift, just to not much reason it.

[1:18:43] And a search is not a case.

[1:18:45] For example, we recently had an officer do 13 searches,

[1:18:48] trying to find a hit-run suspect vehicle,

[1:18:51] knew the vehicle description, didn't have a plate.

[1:18:53] And when he come back from his day off, he tried to check again,

[1:18:56] just see if he could help this victim and have a meet.

[1:18:58] So, searches aren't cases.

[1:19:00] is they're just the number of times it's queried.

[1:19:04] And I have a lot more I can go into, but I'll keep it at that

[1:19:08] because you know, anything else until we're

[1:19:13] going to recess for the next two items,

[1:19:15] pretty short, minus the presentation is pretty short.

[1:19:19] Council meeting, so we'll have back here for this.

[1:19:22] There is kind of just more policy guidance.

[1:19:26] Is this something where we're good, supporting, moving forward?

[1:19:31] Cameras are going to stay in town.

[1:19:33] We feel as the county starts to implement them.

[1:19:35] Is that something where we look to add more or move around?

[1:19:38] The ones we have things in that nature, or is this something where we want more discussion

[1:19:43] on it?

[1:19:45] Not necessarily encouraging it, but it is an option to do maybe a standalone open house.

[1:19:50] More questions and answers with the public.

[1:19:52] but generally what I've heard from colleagues

[1:19:55] is it's relatively unproductive, very lengthy,

[1:20:00] but I guess looking for kind of our next step.

[1:20:04] So I think tonight was great for

[1:20:05] talk to me for question and answer

[1:20:07] and understand the program as a whole.

[1:20:12] I would, oh, Christopher.

[1:20:15] I was just gonna say I think the equation to present it,

[1:20:18] I don't mean we're gonna be back as a case

[1:20:23] I don't think we're in a place yet to get the direction one or the other, but I think the information's good, and we have more information now to bring to the table for a future discussion. Chris, I don't think an open house would be productive.

[1:20:39] And I would give chief role in my support that if he supports it, it's important to our city and it's important to me.

[1:20:51] I second would come to my Riley says but I also think it's for transparency state and

[1:20:57] that our citizens are interested in having an open house.

[1:21:00] I think it's important that people can come out and share their feelings and ask questions

[1:21:04] and that can be a part of our decision, but I think we all maybe have, I don't think we

[1:21:09] all but from what I'm gathering, maybe have similar feelings to what come to my Riley

[1:21:14] that's just stated, that's supporting the chief level, I'm sure it's nice.

[1:21:18] All right, well, are we going to put a back on a council session of summarizing how we feel and then everybody can take a couple of weeks to think about it.

[1:21:29] Maybe just if there's a few of you that want to, you know, we can play and move forward unless we hear otherwise.

[1:21:36] We'll monitor public input and if we're hearing stuff we can bring it back to.

[1:21:41] I think there's just no change at this time. We'll discuss whether we want change.

[1:21:45] All right, with that, we'll go ahead and recess until after the City Council meeting,

[1:22:00] the

[1:22:00] Thank you.

Untitled meeting

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