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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION — MAY 27, 2025 2 Undersheriff Ramacher said Commander Hankee had sent some information to City Administrator Jagoe. Commander Hankee said that specific assessment wasn't available. Flock has multiple levels of privacy and are in compliance with the UA and US standards. Undersheriff Ramacher asked if the concern is about the company. Councilmember Rousseau said she has three concerns. The first one is she wants to learn more about the vendor. The residents she has talked to don't seem particularly excited about this. She is curious about what marketing presentation was given to North Oaks. She asked what would happen with the contract in the event there was a bankruptcy. They have 30-days of data that they could give to another organization before the contract could be cancelled. She also wants to see the body -worn camera bi-annual audits. She would like to discuss where the cameras are placed. North Oaks is getting one and paying for one. Arden Hills is getting three and paying for three, however, two of them are being placed on the border of Shoreview. Undersheriff Ramacher said Flock is the predominant vendor in law enforcement for License Plate Readers (LPR). They designed their software with law enforcement in mind. RCSO chose Flock because they are widely used in Minnesota and in the region. It is the most used platform by law enforcement, across the nation. LPR is regulated significantly by statute in Minnesota. LPR has been around for a several years but it is surrounded by the privacy controversy. He believes that has subsided significantly. This technology has been adopted by many cities. This technology is widely used in the private sector. This will make law enforcement investigations much more efficient. It will make our cities safer for the public. One of the reasons they are interested is they don't have to add officers and Full Time Employees (FTEs). The profession of law enforcement is getting into technology such as LPRs and drones to help us better do their job. These are areas that RCSO is starting to invest in to become more efficient. The platform can be used by other law enforcement agencies when they have a valid law enforcement reason. Similarly, RCSO can request LPR data from other departments when there is criminal predicate in a case. He believes the stigma regarding privacy and big brother watching you, has subsided. The data that the plate reader collects is benign. It's just numbers. It's what they do with the data after it's collected, that people may worry about. That's no different than any other law enforcement database. RCSO has had LPR technology in the sheriff's office for several years. Seventy-five of the squad cars have LPR. This is just getting into the fixed camera market. They believe Flock is the best vendor to do that. They have been the most responsive company in complying with all the different data practices laws. Minnesota is very restrictive in that category. The law allows us to keep the data for 60-days, however Flock has a baseline deletion after 30-days. Councilmember Rousseau asked if he has talked to them about how the algorithm works. What if it's a cloudy day? Her household has three drivers, in three vehicles, registered to one individual. How do they identify that? Undersheriff Ramacher said he is not a techie person so he doesn't get into the weeds on algorithms. This company complies with Minnesota law. Their product captures benign data. RCSO has to determine criminal predicate, probable cause or reasonable suspicion in order to enter the data from Flock into any other data base. Flock requires a valid reason and case number before the data can be accessed.