Col. Michael Winquist with Col. Steve O'Donnell

From the Seacock Supply Hotline, we have Colonel Michael Winquist. Colonel, welcome to the Tara Granahan Show. Good morning. I know you've been to hold for a while at the first five or ten minutes. We go. We have news. And just introducing everybody. So welcome to the show. Those who don't know, Colonel Winquist is the Colonel and the Chief of Police of Cranston Police Department. He's a career renowned estate trooper. He spent probably 10 years at Cranston PD. And he's one of the most well-versed chiefs on flock. Cranston does use flock. So talk to the listeners, Colonel, about what the license plate reader does. in general, the successes, and then we'll talk about the piece of the controversial piece. But more importantly, I think protecting the data. And what I know about flock is quite a bit. And one of the things that I wouldn't say astonishes me, but the pushback on these license plate reader is if for some reason the information that was inside the cloud that was stored was somehow hacked. then whoever got that information would get access to a picture of a car with a license plate on it and maybe a description. So talk to the listeners about that and why the police support it and why they're so adamant about its effectiveness and keeping our citizens safe. Sure. So we've been using ALPRs. We used the flock brand for the last five years. One of the first departments. I believe we might be the first department that fully deployed. these cameras. And they've led to ready many high-profile arrests and then many other arrests that maybe you didn't hear about, but over 200 arrests resulted from these cameras. You covered stolen motor vehicles, wanted persons, missing and endangered people. There's just too many success stories to go over and we try to promote those successes through the media. in our community. But basically the flog cameras are stationary devices. As the vehicle travels past a flock camera, it takes a photograph of the rear of the vehicle and the license plate, and then what it does is it cross-checks the NCIC system to see if that vehicle has been entered as stolen or it's associated with a wanted person or an endangered person. It's limited to that information. It does not run the plate, so there's no personal identifiable information that is collected at that point. And once the information is captured, it is securely transmitted into an encrypted format, into a cloud-based storage system. And that data right now, the retention period, is 30 days. flock announced yesterday that they're going to reduce that retention period down to seven days to alleviate some of the privacy concerns. But again, what it doesn't have, because you hear a lot of information, is that it's tracking people. It has AI capabilities, things of that nature. There's a lot of misinformation out there, and that's why I'm glad you have me on just to educate the public on these devices.

Well, the pushback, and I was reading up about it last night a little bit, and I believe in Salem Mass, they took down the license plate readers for the same reason some other communities do, but they quickly took flock down and put up another license plate reader. So is it fair to say that the cost for, say, a state agency, local agencies, to implement this without going through a private vendor? would be cost prohibitive. It's a lot easier to go through a company like flock that puts them up and maintains them, and you pay a lease payment instead of purchasing the whole system, having a server, and all the things that go with that. Absolutely. So one of these cameras probably cost several thousands of dollars, and we're fortunate that we have... lease the cameras. So there's 29 cameras in the city of Cranston, and they're roughly $2,500 a year per camera. So it costs effective. As the technology changes, we would get upgrades and things of that nature. So one thing I wanted to go back to what I forgot to mention is one of the biggest things that's out there is who owns the data that's being collected. And the police department is it can treat it. They own the data. and they're in complete control of the data. So we decide if you want to share with anybody at all. And I can tell you in Cranston and across Rhode Island, we do not share with any federal agencies, including ICE. So I know that was one of the concerns. I just wanted to make sure that your listeners are aware of that. Well, I think that's a touch point. Ice, every time you turn around, it's somebody talking about ice, ice, ice, and using that data to track illegal immigrants and things like that. But my understanding is exactly what you said, that the police control it, and that is the law enforcement professionals. What is your argument, Colonel, to those who are retracted to this about your own police officers? How do I explain this? In the last couple weeks, you hear about different agencies that had different scandals, so to speak, where someone used the license plate readers to track girlfriends or the boyfriends or whatever may be. How do you police that internally? I know that... The policies in most departments say that a supervisor has to look at it. One, it's got to be a criminal nexus. A police officer has to go to a supervisor. Say we have a crime committed. Say it's a carjacking. They want to use that. So the police officer has to get permission from a supervisor. That's tracked. And then later, the police chief, if it's a month later or weeks later, there's an audit trail to that. Can you explain that to the public? Sure. So obviously, I know those stories that you mentioned, and I can tell you that we entrust our police officers with a lot of tools.

You know, obviously they carry firearms, whether it be radios, they have access to a number of databases, quite frankly, that have much more information in them. And, you know, with anything that you trust somebody with, you expect them to use the information or you use that equipment responsibly. And anybody that, you know, violates that trust is going to face serious consequences. So we do have a system of audits that take place on a routine basis. As a matter of fact, Flock implemented a internal audit system and also a flag system. So if somebody is searching the system in an abnormal manner, such as running the same plate over and over again, will automatically flag that search and will notify the administrator at the police department. In my case, it's the captain of our records division. And then he will look further into it to make sure that there's a case number that was a legitimate search that took place. So there are routine audits. The officers know that. And unfortunately, some departments have thrown away the baby with the bathwater, if you will, and had shut down the systems. And rather than addressing the particular officer that might have misused it. But I think what you mentioned before is... What they're getting is a picture of a license fleet. And to say that you could track an ex-girlfriend, an ex-boyfriend, whatever it may be, is really not accurate because once somebody drives by that camera... they could go anywhere at that point. So we have 29 cameras in about 800 miles of roadway in the city of Cranston. So other than knowing somebody goes by a camera, where they go after that is a guess, if you will. So it's not as detailed as, you know, people may lead you to belief. Well, Colonel, in about 30 seconds, we're going to break and we'll come back. But just to prep you, I want to talk about geo-fencing and then the license plate readers, how they're different and how the Supreme Court has said they're much different that you don't need to warn. It's a public place, and it's just the same point. It's taking a picture of a license plate. And even just think about this, different from a red light. Like, we seem to be okay. But the same people that don't believe in license plate reader technology used by the police, so the same people have put up cameras to give you traffic tickets, to give your red light tickets. And those, and those gather much more data than a license plate reader. A license plate reader does nothing except help the public. To my argument would be... If you have a red light camera, you're getting a ticket for that. And they're capturing a picture of my car. And there's no one complaining about that now in that city or town or state, whatever it may be, gets revenue from that. There's no revenue generated from a license plate read it. Only assist law enforcement in solving crimes. So with that, we're going to take a quick break. We're right back with going to Mike Winquist. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday.

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quickly solve crimes. And just talk about that, Colonel. And I know there's a million examples, maybe not examples, but the powerful tool that licensed point readers are in solving crimes quickly and taking people off the street as another tool for law enforcement. Well, we've had many cases in Cranston where absent the camera. footage, we would not have been able to solve the crime or it would have took a lot longer. And I'm talking major crimes. I'm talking homicides. I'm talking drive-by shooting. So it's absolutely a game changer for us. It kept our community safe. I have full support from Mayor Hopkins from their very beginning. And he continues to support the cameras, our city council. Unfortunately, these cameras have been politicized. You know, it is an election year, and I know you had some of the candidates on from Providence that have far different views on flock cameras. And I really worry about a city like Providence with the cameras potentially going away, because I know they're having great success. And as a neighboring city, I have great concerns because we share information all the time, including camera information, and we've solved crimes in each of our own cities. I can't, I'd say over the last 36 years I've been a police officer, this is the most impactful technology I've ever seen. So to me, it's worth keeping this technology. We're all for, if people have concerns, educating the public, we have very strong policies. If people wanted us to codify those policies and some type of regulatory process with the state, I would be open to that. I would be more than happy to sit on a committee to do that task. No, I appreciate that. I'm sure they would love to hear from you. Again, we'll be closing out. And if you want to listen in after at 930 with Trevor Chandler, he's the Director of Public Affairs for Flock is going to come on. I've seen, you know, how they've adjusted to things. The data is stored by the police. So at the end of the day, if you don't believe the data is going to be entrusted by the police. We have bigger problems than we actually think we do. We have data, to your point, NCIC systems that go deeper into people's backgrounds that police have legally as tools. The police are sworn to protect that data. And again, any data can be subject to hack. That's why we have IT directors that make sure we're as secure as possible. But utilizing technology. is what it is. There's cameras up and down the highway. There's cameras when you open your door. There's ring cameras when you walk out a door. And there's so much technologies out there. And even in the Brown Shooter, when they wanted to use the technology, they had to get warrants to go and, you know, to pull those things up. So, Colonel, I appreciate you very much calling in. If you got any questions, you know, you can...

Text the text line or text me while Trevor is speaking about it, but you're always pretty informative about flock. Anything you want to close out, you get about 10 seconds. No, I hope that the public takes the time to learn about the cameras, to understand the technology. There's a lot of misinformation out there. And, you know, it's our jobs as police chiefs to educate the public on what we're using, how we're using it, and the fact that it is protected and it's being used in a responsible manner. Well said. Colonel Michael Winquist from the Cranston Police Department. Colonel, thank you. We'll be right back after Bill Haberman's news update. The U.S. Soccer Podcast. These players are battered and exhausted, but you don't hurt like this if you don't care about this team, about this country, about this game. You can feel the intensity, the goals, the energy that, wow, look at us. Here in the U.S., I have got some news for you. There's so much more to come. My name is Megan Klingberg, and we're just getting started. The U.S. Soccer Podcast, presented by Henkel. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.