This is an automatically generated transcript for the relevant parts of the Dunwoody, GA, City Council meeting for April 13, 2026. (Video link).
Initial Public Comments on Flock
Kayla Bthun Good evening everybody. My name is Kayla Bthun. I live here in Dunwoody and I work in IT audit and cyber security. I am here today as myself, my family and friends are deeply concerned with the security and ethics issues that arise with the use of a third-party surveillance company within our community. So beyond the privacy issues that coincide with constant surveillance, I noted on Flock’s website when I was looking at their current audit reports that their SOC 2 Type 2 report, which is an evaluation performed by an independent firm that evaluates how effectively a company is safeguarding customer data and enforces their security controls, was last reported to be done in 2023. Now, it was noted that they have since hired a firm to re-evaluate these controls as of February of this year, but as it stands, I was unable to verify that Flock has a more current report.
A citizen of Dunwoody spoke at last month’s city council meeting and demonstrated that he was able to access these cameras using common exploits and another citizen was able to show via an open records request of a Flock event log that Flock employees were accessing cameras around Dunwoody, including those in sensitive areas such as the MJCC pool and gymnastics room. It was noted that this information was provided to y’all on April 7th, but to ignore these red flags is incredibly concerning and irresponsible when we’re talking about the safety, health, and privacy of our children. So before we continue or expand the use of the third-party surveillance companies, I strongly urge the City of Dunwoody pause until the city council and Flock can answer the public’s questions regarding Flock security and are able to obtain a more recent security audit. Thank you all for your time.
Jason Hunyar All right. So, all the information I found here is just what I’ve been able to obtain through public records requests. Although, to find out who surveiled us and why in 2025, the city wants to charge me 5.4 million. That being said, by looking at what I have been provided, I continue to find a number of concerning things. This is from Flock’s own FAQ page: “Flock customers own their own data. Flock will not share, sell, or access your data.” Flock employees access our data all the time and have admin-level permissions. Flock employees conducted over 414 trackable actions in our network since the start of 2025. This includes disabling multi-factor authentication for users and disabling users showing up in search audits. They have also created users in Dunwoody’s network that do not show up on the user exports. The system is not transparent and auditing has failed.
The next part from their FAQ: “Nobody from Flock Safety is accessing or monitoring our footage.” Who monitors the camera footage? We seem to be spending a lot of time talking about hypothetical children. Real children are being watched by Flock employees at playgrounds, parks, their schools, private gymnastics centers, private pools, and private gyms directly through Dunwoody’s Flock network because the city refuses to take any meaningful action to independently evaluate citizens’ concerns. Doing nothing is a choice. You meet with their CEO behind closed doors. You continue to ask the same people who would benefit from abusing the system to audit it and refuse to engage citizens outside of three minutes of public comments that you hide behind not being able to respond to. I continue to ask for you to hold a public town hall for these technologies and am ignored. You are choosing the wants of corporations over the safety of our children.
Bob Carter is a Vice President of Business Development for Flock. On September 30th of last year, through Dunwoody’s Flock network, Bob Carter logged on and viewed one singular live view camera. This camera was in the gymnastics room at the JCC. He did not view any other cameras in the entire Flock network that day. On July 23rd, Randy Gluck, who is a Business Development Manager for the 911 product you’re being asked to vote on tonight, looked at three cameras at the JCC before he looked at the camera [at the] main pool, right? It was over three hours before he looked at any other camera. Real children, real names, and real timestamps. As a dad whose son is going to go to the JCC for daycare, I have one question I want you to ask Chief Carlson today: Who is responsible for authorizing Flock sales employees to watch our kids directly through Dunwoody’s Flock network? Thank you.
Former Mayor Denny Shortal (Excerpted for Flock relevance) I want to talk about Flock real quick. There must be some way to fix the problems that the citizens see in that issue. But let me just tell you it’s a good system in principle. Whether it needs tightening up, I don’t know. But we catch people all the time passing through the city, getting the flock with their driver—excuse me, their license off their cars and arresting them. We keep people off the streets. If you want to clean it up, you don’t want to have it, you know, at the JCC, well, don’t have it there, but don’t knock that out for the rest of the city because it’s a tremendous safety factor for all the citizens of this city. Thank you so much.
Zach Humphrey (Excerpted for Flock relevance) …At the end of the day, this contract does not prevent ICE from kidnapping members of our own community. And I really love everybody in this community. I want them to be safe. I want them to be well. And at the end of the day, ICE can produce whether it be a judicial or an administrative warrant either to AWS or to a police department that we share our information with and they will have access to those people’s data. I really hope that even if this contract does pass today that there can be a post-Flock future. There can be a future where y’all can come to us and let’s figure out something together where you know we can have our own internal data servers where we employ people from Dunwoody to code these new systems, where we create systems in which we come together and we trust each other, and I think that that’s the beauty in community.
Jessica Burbank Hi, everyone. My name is Jessica Burbank. Thank you. I’m here tonight because mass surveillance has spread across the country, municipality by municipality, in the name of safety. And it might feel like a local issue—we’re here tonight with members of our community at a city council meeting—but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. They’re building a national network of surveillance cameras, and I think it’s time to carefully consider if this is really how we want to live in America. Flock’s got a pattern of securing local government contracts with as little public input as possible, with as little information provided to elected officials as possible. In the case of Scarsdale, New York, on April 8th, without public notice beyond posting a topic of public safety equipment, they voted to add to the agenda a decision to adopt a contract with Flock. They voted on it within that night and it was adopted. The same surreptitious approach occurred in Sedona, Arizona, in Eugene, Oregon. In at least one case in Lucas County, Ohio, they secured a local government contract accidentally in a consent agenda. And when the county commissioners attempted to overturn this, Flock sued to ensure that they would maintain a contract that not only did the public not want, but the county commissioners did not want.
So if anyone in Dunwoody feels that this contract has been pushed on you without enough information maybe too quickly and without public comment, that’s not just Dunwoody; that’s been happening around the country. And I think this is an issue that requires public oversight and attention because in the case of Scarsdale we’ve seen public records requests reveal that the police chief Steven Delben was in touch with Flock representatives on January 15th. He didn’t take office officially as police chief until February 1st. The public was not notified about the contract until April 8th. So months in quiet, they secured this contract and Flock has provided a sole source justification letter insisting no other provider can give the technology that Flock has. This is not true and this has gotten the attention of antitrust regulatory agencies. And now we’re at the point where that same sole source justification letter signed by the CEO of Flock, [Garrett] Langley, is appearing in California, in Mississippi, in states across the country. And so today, a year after my investigation into Flock began, Flock officials will no longer speak to journalists on the record. They will not be named. They only want to speak to us anonymously. And I think that reveals a level of malpractice on behalf of a corporation if your own staff doesn’t want to be associated with you. And so I hope you all look into the many cases around the country where Flock data is being misused, where the cameras are being accessed by individuals with questionable motives.
Isaac Thomas Hey, I’m Isaac. I wanted to quickly talk about the stalking case involving Jose Ayala, a police officer from Wisconsin. He was recently charged for using Flock’s system to stalk his girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend around 200 times while on duty. This happened from March through May of last year. His abuse of the system was caught through Flock’s built-in auditing tools, leading to him being charged. However, since this incident, Flock has revoked police departments’ access to these tools. Without these specific auditing tools, it is no longer possible to catch a similar future abuse of the system. If Flock’s system existed as it does today, back in March of last year, Jose would not have been caught.
The mayor made a comment last council meeting about asking why all of these external police departments need direct access to our data. Why can’t they just pick up the phone and call us if they think there’s a dangerous criminal headed toward Dunwoody? Flock does the exact opposite of this. As of last December, Dunwoody no longer has access to view which external officers are searching our cameras or what vehicles they’re searching for. I also want to bring up the police department which is still in our system titled “Do Not Use”. Somebody is actively logged into this account still running searches in the last 3 weeks.
Last meeting Flock was asked if Dunwoody footage is being shown overseas. Dan said, quote, “It is not shown overseas. It’s a very common thing for workers overseas to perform that kind of very manual work but they’re not doing anything with the images other than testing them for quality,” end quote. So Flock does send images to overseas workers. This process of gathering machine learning annotations from offshore human reviewers is largely facilitated through a third-party platform called Upwork. There has been documented evidence of North Korean IT workers purchasing Upwork accounts of real people to complete IT work and other tasks on their behalf. Flare Research in partnership with IBM X-Force recently released a threat intelligence report uncovering thousands of North Korean IT workers impersonating people from all around the world, specifically through Upwork and similar platforms, with the goal to infiltrate Western companies. Thank you.
Sabrina Raheem Good evening, city council and everyone. I’m reading a comment on behalf of my son who has been raised in Dunwoody but is attending college in another state. This has made national news, the issue of Flock safety, and he’s been following it. Based on overwhelming evidence of deception, harm, and the potential for future harm by Flock Safety, Dunwoody should end its contract with the company. In the meantime, it’s important for Dunwoody residents to understand that they should not use the Camera Connect service offered by the Dunwoody Police, and the police department should stop using it. Granting the police real-time access isn’t simply a personal choice. Even if you don’t care about your privacy, you are sacrificing the privacy and security of unsuspecting passersby. This is profoundly anti-democratic. This would be true even if individuals were aware of camera locations that share footage and also if there were transparency about the manner in which the footage is used by the police. It would be true even if it weren’t so easy for bad actors to hack Flock cameras and access sensitive data as demonstrated by Mr. Jordan and others. So, if you have a CCTV camera outside your home or business, please don’t share the footage with the police. And my advice for the Dunwoody police is this: Only seek camera footage retroactively to conduct a criminal investigation and never without a judicial warrant. Thank you.
Kenneth Westmoreland It’s pretty shocking to me that in less than a month basically, we’ve found out that Flock employees are not only lying more than they said they were but watching children in Dunwoody. Like, isn’t that mindboggling? You guys want little Epsteins to have access to cameras all across your city? I mean, that’s crazy to me. I’m not going to talk about all of the technical aspects of Flock. I think that other people are going to talk about that or have talked about it. It just became clear to me when I was here last time that most of you all were not discussing whether or not you should accept Flock contracts, but what little tiny changes you should make to try and get your constituents to shut up because your ears are so plugged with their money. So, to me I couldn’t understand how after we’ve learned that they’re logging into the JCC cameras, that they’re sending footage overseas on top of all of the other things that they’re doing, how when we know that they’re lying to you guys, you could possibly approve this contract at all, unless you’re corrupt.
It’s obvious that Flock’s systems do not have the safety of anybody here at heart, right, at all. And that they’re not going to tell you the truth. The only other thing I would just say is I beg you guys, I mean, there are people here who actually have the information you want. Last time you guys let the Flock employees come up and just lie for half an hour or an hour straight, and just say complete nonsense while people who actually have correct information begged to give you guys the information on how Flock worked. You know, that would go a long way if you just showed even a little bit of willingness beyond public comment to listen to people who actually know what they’re talking about and want to tell you the truth and actually care about something other than just stuffing their pockets full of cash and creeping on children. I mean, that’s crazy to me that they’re watching the children at the JCC. Isn’t that crazy to you guys? It’s like you couldn’t make up a better idea for an absurd comedy sketch about people hawking cameras to police than that they log in and watch children swimming. And you’re thinking about approving a contract with them?
Aaron Miller Yeah, Aaron Miller. I want to believe that you guys have your constituents’ interests in mind. I want to believe that you can hear the facts that are being laid before you and make a sensible decision. It really comes down to liability. You know what Flock reps, what police officers are doing with all of this data and when things go wrong, you will be on the hook for it because you knew, you’ve been warned many, many times. We’ve already seen police officers in other locals abusing Flock searchable databases to stalk women as others have noted. Our own police department was recently embroiled in scandal where I believe an officer held a tire shop owner hostage to get a better deal on tires. So maybe this isn’t the best combo. I know there was a sexual harassment scandal as well. We’ve seen ICE and other agencies access local databases without the knowledge or approval of local law enforcement, even in direct opposition to internal policies against partnering with ICE.
And as many others have noted, thank you to the research done by Jason Hunyar, now we have Flock employees watching live streams of children doing gymnastics. It’s disgusting and it directly contradicts everything that Flock representatives assured you at the last meeting. And if it doesn’t already cross a line for you, that’s a problem. But if and when this misconduct crosses yet another line into unequivocal stalking or God forbid something worse, you will be responsible and you will have to answer for the fact that you knew well in advance that this technology enables and facilitates these kinds of gross violations. And it’s not just about the fine details of the contract because Flock has demonstrated in several other municipalities, including Syracuse, New York, Santa Cruz, California, and Evanston, Illinois, that they’re willing to operate in explicit violation of their contracts, including secret prohibited data sharing, operating without state licenses in Texas, and reinstalling cameras after contract termination. It doesn’t matter how solid the contract looks, they are willing to violate it if it benefits the company. Lastly, the technology is flawed. It’s led to hundreds of wrongful detentions across the country, which has led to dozens of lawsuits against the cities employing the technology. And just to point out another lie, at the last meeting, Flock reps claimed that these cameras only capture license plates. Less than a week after they said this, GSP issued a ticket to a motorcyclist for violating the hands-free law. And maybe you’ve seen this. So, you just really can’t trust what they’re saying. And I’d urge you to just look at the facts. Thank you.
Sean Collins I want to quote Chief Carlson from the strategic planning meeting two weeks ago or retreat… and I quote, “The reason we put our shot detection down there is because it’s a predominantly Hispanic community. They normally do not call the police, so nobody would call to report those gunshots.” These are not enemy combatants. These are community members. And instead of, you know, researching why they don’t call, instead of trying to work with them and earn their trust, our police force has decided that it’s easier to racially surveil them whether they like it or not. Instead of looking into well-documented research around real solutions to crime, preventative solutions, we’re going to spend another $200,000 on another Flock drone. More surveillance, more reactive solutions. You’ve been shown example after example of how Flock’s technology can be abused by police with proper access as well as others with improper access. Real-world examples of stalking a single target. Why is it so hard to imagine a world where someone searches “dark-skinned man” or “Mexican teenager” or “woman in hijab” or even “man in yarmulke”? Our own police chief has shown it’s okay to generalize. Do you really think bad actors won’t? There are better, safer ways to do this without Flock and similar companies. We should get rid of Flock.
I thought the presentation three weeks ago by Ginger was less than great. She just sat there and copy and pasted Flock’s own website and then she let Flock talk more than she talked during the presentation. I think it’s BS that Flock gets to just walk up here or tune in on Zoom and hop in to answer questions during a presentation that was supposed to be by the city for the city. I think there’s a lot of complaints about the city manager and even in the new MSA and how he gets to approve stuff without y’all voting, without the public knowing and stuff like that. I just want to congratulate everyone sitting here that has come out all these weeks and put their effort and their time into this to not only research and write speeches, but to try and inform you guys and persuade you guys.
Business Item: Flock Master Services Agreement (MSA)
Mayor Lynn Deutsch Before Jill comes up, I’d like to say a few words on this item. So I want to start with the JCC situation. So when I learned of that, I was concerned and perplexed and I requested more information. And when I learned why and how it happened, which was what I would have guessed, which is that the members of the Flock sales team were using it as a demonstration of the E911 system or their system for a potential sales call with another law enforcement agency who didn’t already use that particular service. I sought a solution and where we landed is that Flock will no longer use Dunwoody for demonstration projects. So that is… wasn’t acceptable. They have apologized to the JCC. We will no longer be a demonstration location for Flock that keeps them out of places they should not be. And so just to clarify the how and the why—and I’m not excusing it at all. I was very frustrated and angry and I believe this is a solution, at least part of a solution, from keeping them out of places Flock should not be.
I want to also address some of the things that were said in public comment because I think they deserve to be clarified. We haven’t done any deal with Flock in secret. We have been customers of Flock since before I was mayor, I believe. I think Mayor Shortal was here when we started and he’s my predecessor. Everything we vote on is on an agenda. It’s been fairly widely covered and I just the inference that we’re doing something behind doors, that we’re taking bribes, it’s all kinds of not at all correct. We have… we talk about it, something changed, someone became aware and paid attention but we haven’t done any of this in secret. I cannot stress enough that none of this was done without proper notice. Our meetings are advertised. Our agendas are published. We’re all over the internet. We broadcast. This is not new news to us.
And then finally, in the process of evaluating the situation and the complexities of Flock, we learned two things. Well, we learned lots of things, but we learned that there are two paths to how we address this. One is through the master services agreement that we are discussing and voting on tonight. The second is through internal policies and procedures that clearly need addressing, and that is a separate entity that’s a separate activity from the Flock service agreement. So, I just want it to be clear that not every concern that we expressed up here—and certainly concerns have been expressed—can be addressed in the master service agreement because it’s not necessarily an issue of Flock. It’s an issue of how we’re using Flock.
And I was confused about the comment about the audit tool because the audit tool still exists. There’s still a list of who… I believe because you’re getting open records requests. Someone internally maybe Jill can correct me when she comes up here, but in fact my understanding is Flock is getting ready to come out with another audit tool. Also, Atlanta uses Flock cameras and then they use a different system at the end of that process that doesn’t even provide an audit log. So, it’s my understanding… I believe the audit tool still exists. With that I will invite Jill up.
Jill Dunn I can just speak about the background of how this has been developed and then you can have discussions. What we’ve done is kind of start from scratch essentially and create this new master services agreement trying to address the concerns that the council has raised in prior meetings along with other concerns that we’ve become aware of. And I think that what this does, as the mayor pointed out, this creates at least a set of guardrails to govern the city’s relationship with Flock. It’s not going to cover things that should more appropriately be the subject of policies that will be developed in the future. But this does create a situation where the city has a great deal of control over what Flock does with the city’s data, where that data can go, where it can be disseminated, what it can be used for.
The city manager has become the primary point of contact for approving virtually anything that Flock wants to do with the city’s data has to be approved by either the city manager if appropriate or in some instances the council and the mayor depending on what the regulations provide. The premise is that there will be a set of order forms in the future each of which will fall under this master services agreement and be governed by the terms of this master services agreement which cannot be changed without the mayor and council’s approval in writing. We also built in that the terms and conditions, the privacy policy, all of the regulations and conditions that are on Flock’s website today are frozen in place and cannot be changed. Those are what will govern and be incorporated into this master services agreement. The city will not be bound by any new terms and conditions that Flock may come up with in the future. Those will actually be attached as an exhibit to this MSA.
City Attorney Ken Mayor, can I fill this part in? The concept behind this MSA is probably fixing the past relationship into a document that is manageable. It still has to be negotiated. It’s not a one-sided thing. Although we made a list of everything we heard y’all talk about and Jill and team, which included technology folks from her law firm and the chief, included staff here to try to address those in a way that we felt like was reasonable. We kept falling back on this concept that one, the past problem is these order forms sound as if they’re contract terms being added and we wanted to get away from that. We didn’t want anything to overcome the MSA. The second is there needs to be some civilian oversight. The chief was part of this conversation that there needs to be some civilian oversight when new technology is developed, that Eric [City Manager] has the authority to approve the technology and he can do it by email but what he can’t do is change terms and conditions by email or spend more money by email. If he gets enough that he feels like he’s comfortable with us testing it, he can authorize testing it. But to change the contract terms or spend within his spend authority, it has to be in writing. Period. And if it goes above his threshold or is non-budgeted, it’d have to come to you.
I wanted to address that there was also an issue about the toggle button. The toggle button is off as I understand it, Jill, in the contract.
Jill Dunn So that’s my understanding is that’s the default, but even let’s assume that that’s not the default. The contract gives the city immediately the right to have it turned off and it can’t be turned back on or off without the city’s approval. So the city has complete control over what happens with that toggle.
City Attorney Ken So going forward and this is not going to be an overnight solve, Eric is going to develop with the team a set of policies to govern decision-making on the use of new technology in this field. We feel like the policies are where the meat is going to hit the road. But if they want to change anything, they got to go through civilian oversight. It’s not just law enforcement saying, “We want this asset” without somebody reviewing it. Now, having said that, this is not going to replace us policing ourselves. This is not going to replace the police chief policing his people. We have to be good stewards of whatever it is we’re using. Is it perfect? No. I can’t say somebody isn’t going to violate something in this thing. But what I can say it’s much better than where we were.
John Heneghan I have a couple questions, but really I just want to say thank you. First, I want to say thank you to Jill and Ken and our legal team in our city for taking this seriously and council taking this seriously. We’ve done a deep dive. I don’t know of any other city that has gone to this level and pushed back against Flock to negotiate with them, their president, their legal team. Jill, I have reviewed the current agreement in front of us, but I also looked at the other Flock items that are on the agenda. One of which is the OS 911 system. In there, there’s a link that shows the standard terms and conditions for us to approve. If there’s a conflict between what we have in front of us now in the sense of the master services agreement versus the standard terms and conditions for the next system, which one has controlling status?
Jill Dunn The master services agreement controls all of that. Theoretically in the future those order forms would… like there’s not an MSA in place right now for those order forms to fall under. So those are the terms and conditions that I talked about that will be incorporated into this document, but this document controls.
City Attorney Ken And John, the way it’s on the agenda, if the MSA gets approved and if one or both of the other things get approved, it’s subject to not only our approval of the MSA but full execution of the MSA. So if for any reason the MSA was not signed by Flock and us or not approved by y’all, it’s a conditional approval essentially. The MSA is worded in a way that those future things are governed by the MSA as long as we have the relationship.
John Heneghan As far as Flock, what we approve today, if we do approve the master services agreement, where is Flock on their agreement of the MSA? Have they already signed off?
City Attorney Ken Well, there’s been a lot of back and forth. But this is the last thing your lawyers are recommending that we can get behind. What’s before you, they’ve seen. I think the last pushback was addressed already.
Jill Dunn Yeah, I think they’re not going to have a choice. They’re gonna have to sign it this way or there won’t be a deal.
Dan Haley (Flock Chief Legal Officer) Folks, this is Dan. I’m online as a panelist, Flock’s Chief Legal Officer, and we are absolutely prepared to sign this document. Thank you.
Stacey Harris And I didn’t see it in the agreement, so sorry if I didn’t understand it, but how often does the agreement get renewed or is it just looked at or how often would it come back in front of council if we approve it tonight?
Jill Dunn So my understanding is that it’s based… there’s a fiscal year attached to it. So you have to approve the funding each fiscal year. The agreement can terminate.
City Attorney Ken And theoretically, Joe [Stacey?], every time you look at your budget if you fund it there’s no deal, right? There are ways to get back in a discussion on the MSA in the future.
Joe Seconder Procedurally, again, I just want to clarify. Thank you for getting here. Thank you for having this pause. We’ve had a pause now for at least a couple of months. As our mayor alluded to, this has been going—we’ve had services and contracts with these people for many, many years. So it’s a reset. Are we going to iteratively… will this go back? So this is as an action item. It’s not a discussion. I’ve had discussion with the city manager as well, that we implement an independent cyber security and IT audit on all of our systems, everything that we own, that we subscribe to, etc. So above and beyond the specific vendor, at least on an annual basis we put out for procurement an independent cyber security IT audit on all of that. Second, and then the second one as the mayor and we talked about was policies that we do also this broader governance policies, procedures, audit as well. So the second proposal I have is that we also do a third-party audit on our governance policies and procedures.
(Motion to approve the Flock Master Service Agreement passes unanimously, 6-0)
Business Item: Flock OS 911 Contract
Chief Carlson Good evening, mayor and council. For the past several months we have been testing using the Flock OS 911 system with our real-time crime center. It has proven to be very effective, which means if we have somebody that calls in in another language, it’ll translate it for us. And we can also hear it real-time as it’s being dispatched into the ChatCom 911 center. So, if it is something critical, the staff that is operating the real-time crime center can go ahead and dispatch us early so we can get to the scene quicker. So, I’m asking you to approve the contract for the Flock OS 911 for 15,000.
Stacey Harris Move to approve with the Flock OS 911 contract subject to approval and full execution of the Flock master service agreement.
John Heneghan Second.
(Motion passes unanimously, 6-0)
Business Item: Flock Drone First Responder Expansion Agreement
Chief Carlson The next one is in reference to our drone first responder program. We have partnered with the Perimeter Community Improvement District regarding the area here in the perimeter. So we have shot detection, we have cameras and license plate readers that they are funding. So, this is a request to approve that agreement as well as adding another drone to cover the other side of the city.
John Heneghan I’d like to move to approve the Flock drone first responder expansion agreement and renewal of PCID’s technology partnership commitment subject to approval in the full execution of the Flock master services agreement.
Joe Seconder Second.
(Motion passes unanimously, 6-0)
Final Public Comments on Flock
Jason Hunyar Hi, I’m Jason Hunyar again. Mayor Deutsch, what you said was patently false about being transparent with the public. I’ve sent you 14 emails before last week, and you’ve never responded to one. Yet, when I show you evidence of Flock employees looking at the gymnastics center of the MJCC, instead of meeting with me, you went down and met with their CEO. It really makes me concerned that instead of meeting one of your taxpaying constituents, you want to go meet with the CEO of a private company whose employees are looking at children in gymnastics studios and pools.
I have sent so many emails to the city manager who has never responded before today besides a deferral to Chief Carlson. You mentioned that you’ve been transparent with contracts and I would love to share this with all the media. We have technologies in Dunwoody that we don’t even have contracts for: Flock Nova. Let’s take this for example. You go to the Flock Nova website. On Flock’s website as a different product, do we have a contract for Flock Nova? Absolutely not. I sent a Freedom of Information Act request in for it. What is on the Flock Nova website? Oh, it’s Flock Nova with the tile of Dunwoody, my house in this screenshot, and we have no contract for it. That is not transparency. I have asked multiple times what authorizes this. No response whatsoever. Is this a software enhancement? No. Go to Flock’s website. Go to products. Scroll down. What does it say? Flock Nova. Separate product. What do we use? Flock Freeform. Separate product. Do we have contracts for any of this? No. Absolutely not. And the city refuses to answer and give public comment about what technologies it’s even using today.
Jacob Robinson Hi, Jacob Robinson. I am a new resident in Dunwoody. I’ve been here for about eight months. He took pretty much everything I’ve been writing down for the past two hours. I work in fraud, cyber security, and investigations. When we do a fraud investigation, we always look for a pattern of behavior. What I am hearing and what I have learned about the Flock safety program company over the course of the past couple years is that it is rife with abuse. There’s problems constantly and all you are doing is opening yourselves up to liability, the city to liability because what they’re going to do is they’re going to violate the MSA. What are you going to do when they violate the MSA? Are we going to have another meeting in a year where we go, well, we felt bad and we asked them about it and the sales department only looks at… gymnastics with the gyms at the MJCC because that was one guy? My daughter goes to a daycare down the street. I don’t want her daycare to be broadcast around and “Oh that’s Jacob’s kid.” You know what she gets to do? Somebody in California now knows that my daughter goes there.
You’re talking about Flock like an abusive partner. Like, oh, if we just give them the right contract, they’ll treat us fairly and they’ll treat the people of this city fairly. They’re not going to do that. They have a pattern of behavior. Crime rates around the city are going down. We don’t need to be going to get an extra 2% reduction in petty theft in Dunwoody by going and paying $215,000 to Flock Safety so that way every single child in this neighborhood and in this city can be publicized.
Kenneth Westmoreland I’m not interested in talking to these people, but I’m interested in talking to you guys. This was a small encounter in a fight which if we win can result in the end of Flock Corporation, the abolition of ALPRs, all of these people losing their jobs. But if we’re going to do that is dependent on whether or not we learn the lessons from coming here that we have learned. Last meeting we came, some people were disruptive. They didn’t vote. They pushed the vote back. This meeting, we sat here silently and we let them vote this contract through unanimously. We didn’t do anything to stop them. We didn’t do anything to make sure that in our homes and in our communities, they’re not putting these cameras up. They have shown us who they are. This guy over here, he just nods at anything anybody says as if he’s listening, right? Doesn’t ask any questions afterward, just voted the contract through.
Oliver Smith Hi, I’m Oliver. I want to come up here and congratulate the council on the strength and health of the democracy that we have here in Dunwoody. Really impressive display today, guys. I was really pleased. I wanted to point out a couple of really great moments when Mayor Augusta Pinochet over here talked about transparency which we’ve been informed is a lie by our wonderful friend Jason over here. But even if she was being transparent—transparent about what? Screwing us over. I mean there was like no deliberation. You could be transparent about how you’re going to move forward with the Flock contract despite basically unanimous public comment against the Flock contract. You presented us two ways we could move forward with the Flock contract. You would think the second option would be not moving forward with the Flock contract instead of “we could either do it this way or we could do it that way.” Oh, and then later on what was really great was Councilman Mussolini over here decided to talk about how this posturing about how we’re putting up this great resistance and Flock has had more trouble in the city than any other city. We’re being really careful. Um, very quick unanimous vote. What incredible resistance you guys showed. I’m really impressed. This was not a democracy. You weren’t listening to your constituents.
Zach Humphrey It’s so wonderful to see all these young people here at Dunwoody City Council. I know for me, I spoke against this Flock contract back in February of last year and I was here. I was by myself and like there are times when you feel very, very alone and yet you still speak out against something because you believe it to be true, and you know, and then I saw some continual contracts with Flock going and then I see a wonderful person like Jason Hunyar who cares so much about this community… like thank you so much. It means a lot. I don’t want people to be disheartened by what happened today. You know, we’re going to continue being involved in the community. We’re going to continue advocating for the things that we believe in, and that’s an important part of a democracy and community. I think it’s unfortunate because these are the people who want parks, who want paths, who want like a greater bigger future for Dunwoody, who maybe might not mind a special purpose tax district if it meant that we changed systems that weren’t with Flock, if we created something internally. Like these could be your biggest advocates, but they’re not because, you know, we try to talk to y’all, but y’all don’t always listen to us.
Aaron Miller I’m also going to turn around because I have nothing to say to them. They’ve proven themselves to be morally bankrupt and unfit for service. I want to talk to you. I’m not great at speaking off the cuff, so I’m going to refer to my notes. We witness the system working exactly as it’s designed to. They’re elected by money in elections with very poor turnout because most people know that none of the options will fight for them. We saw that on display and they remain through and through accountable to money and big corporate business interests and the racket of the police. Most of you are smart people, so I don’t need to belabor the point that mass surveillance is part and parcel to authoritarianism. Tools that have mostly so far been used to repress poor people, and to round up immigrants are increasingly being turned against journalists, professors, activists, and any political opponents of the current far-right regime. But we can’t vote this out because our very own liberal city council just unanimously approved the expansion of this mass surveillance state against the wishes of their constituents. So, I just want to encourage all of the intelligent people of good conscience here, not behind me, to meet each other, talk to each other, and start to get organized together because it’s going to be a long road ahead in the fight against big tech authoritarianism.
Unidentified Speaker I guess we’re going to do the same thing that you did before. So, I know someone that’s not here now that actually came early and they wanted to talk, but somehow their card didn’t get pulled. Interesting. I’m just going to… I love you guys, but I do want to talk to you guys. I am truly disgusted by all you guys trying to renew this contract. I really hope that you really think about this vote when your children and your grandchildren are being watched by neighborhood pedophiles or when your daughters, nieces, aunts, moms are being stalked. Blood is on your hands. All of you guys, blood is on your hands. I rewatched the last meeting. Your words, you already told me everything I needed to know, saying, “Oh, we’re going to do this right this time.” You already said that you were going to vote last time, but somehow that changed. And we do need to stand up sometimes. And one thing I could say is it’s money. It’s definitely is money. You let me down, but you also let the people behind me down, your neighbors, and your community. It’s definitely money. You lack morals, principles, and my city of Dunwoody deserves better than all you guys. Let’s keep the good fight. Let’s keep going. And let’s remember these people when it’s time to election to not vote any of these losers or dummies or puppets. That’s it.
Al Thank you. I’m here today because I was brought up not too far from here and now study downtown at Georgia State. As proof of Flock blighting not only random suburbs, but anywhere its poles are planted, students have identified at least six sneaky Flock cameras surrounding student housing, which, as a side note, have been flooding recently, resulting in the relocation of hundreds of students with no reparations for their damages. It has been documented on several occasions by reputable Atlanta journals that these cameras have been used by ICE to kidnap immigrants. Not only is this university implicated in this anti-people crime, but so is Flock. You don’t need a bright head on your shoulders to catch that Flock isn’t here for our safety. If the extent of their accountability is telling us sorry for spying on local kids minding their own damn business at the pool, who will answer for their further abuses of the community at large? We will not forget who invited Flock into Dunwoody when they operate with impunity. You think the absence of a turnpike is detrimental to the community but not mass surveillance? You think any of us will benefit in the long run from this? Keep dreaming. Little master service agreements my ass.