Flock cameras use solar power, cell phones and the internet
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JUNE 24, 2022 | The “Gwinnett Standard” that Chairwoman Nicole Hendrickson promotes may be finding its way into other counties. We saw in the news the other day that the City of Atlanta is telling about a new way to help solve crimes—-surveillance cameras mounted around the city.
Atlanta is finding out what many in Gwinnett have known for a while: mounting these safety cameras around high crime or high access areas can be a major benefit to the police in solving crime.
The cameras were introduced on a large scale in Gwinnett by several of the Community Improvement Districts. Almost immediately, the police began nabbing criminals much faster, since these cameras can give them real-time information. By the cameras spotting license plates of stolen cars, for instance, it is possible that the police can track that automobile and stop the drivers before they leave the county.
Sometimes, when the police stop such a car, its drivers have stolen the car to get away after they commit another crime, such as a robbery or home invasion. And often that person driving the car has a gun, often unregistered, with him. By the police pulling this person over soon after the camera recognized the stolen car, you might say that the police stopped another crime before it was committed. (The first crime was the stolen car.)
Recently Explore Gwinnett announced that it would install Flock cameras at hotels throughout the county. This promotes public safety, since travelers can feel that it’s safe to register at Gwinnett hotels. Criminals often target vehicles parked at local hotels. The funding to install these cameras around hotels come from the hotel-motel tax that Gwinnett levies on room rentals.
We’ve written about this before. The development of surveillance started when a Georgia Tech graduate’s neighborhood was the victim of organized crime where 100 cars were broken into one night in Buckhead.
Having an engineering degree and technical background, the Tech graduate, Garrett Langley, took action and recruited one of his former colleagues, Matt Feury. They built makeshift cameras which were then positioned around their homes to capture photos of cars and license plates. Little did he know that this ingenuity would soon lead to the arrest of another gang entering cars. The two men then launched a new firm, Flock Safety Company of Atlanta, to build and install cameras to help other communities fight crime.
Police told Langley “You gave us the evidence from the cameras, where before we knew nothing about who was committing the crime. Now we had hard identification evidence from the cameras, and have the information to make arrests.”
Today, Flock Safety cameras are in two thousand cities across the nation, from Dallas, Texas to Dallas, Georgia and they capture on average, one billion cars images per week with 3.5 percent of all crimes solved through their products. The company’s mission is to eliminate crime through objective policing, and not slow, investigative and subjective bias, meaning these cameras capture cars and plates; not faces. The results show that burglaries are down 10 percent and car break-ins reduced by 28 percent.
The company comprises 500 employees. To keep up with Flock Safety’s growth and client needs, they are adding 100 positions every 90 days. Wow.
And Gwinnett Community Improvement Districts initially adopted this method of improving public safety within the Gwinnett borders. It’s part of what Chairwoman Hendrickson calls “the Gwinnett Standard.”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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