Lindsborg renews $6,000 Flock camera contract, orders policy review before October expansion

Lindsborg's license plate reader cameras will keep scanning every vehicle entering town for another year after the City Council unanimously approved a $6,000 renewal — but ordered the camera policy reviewed and possibly rewritten before October. Nothing about the scanning changes in the meantime.

October is the month the program is expected to grow. Public Safety Director Terry Reed said the city was awarded $78,000 at the beginning of this year to place a camera at each of the five entrances into town for five years, money originally expected in 2025 but pushed to 2026 after federal cuts. The city must apply to the U.S. Department of Justice for reimbursement, Reed said.

The council first authorized the cameras in 2024, when the department installed one at the north end of town and one at the south edge, on the expectation of federal funding.

According to a report on the meeting, council members said they wanted stricter guardrails in place first, including formalizing data-sharing reciprocity limits with other law enforcement agencies.

A council member who had raised questions at the previous meeting said the item before the council was the annual subscription rather than the policy. The member asked whether the city's existing safety board or a new board should review camera policy and bring recommendations to the council.

City Administrator Tanner Faust told the council that he and Reed were comfortable bringing back stronger policy language and a written description of the audit process for the council's approval.

Three residents spoke against the cameras during public input. One council member said the turnout brought more constituents to the meeting than previous ones.

Two argued the artificial intelligence-powered readers create a mass surveillance system that logs the daily movements of drivers who are not suspected of any crime, sidestepping the warrant and probable-cause protections of the Fourth Amendment. They said residents are being taxed to have their privacy invaded. One told the council that nearly 100 U.S. cities have terminated their Flock contracts.

Another speaker said the technology could be acceptable if the city used it ethically and built in accountability measures, but questioned what products the company will sell next and urged the council to consider an ordinance prohibiting surveillance technology.

Reed defended the system as an investigative tool. Before the cameras, he said, a string of overnight burglaries committed by someone in a white four-door car and the theft of a trailer holding more than $20,000 in mowers and weed eaters went unsolved because officers had vehicle descriptions and routes but no license plate. Since the cameras were installed, he said, they have helped solve hit-and-run accidents, recover vehicles stolen from town and identify a vehicle burglary suspect.

Reed said the system captures only a photo of the vehicle and its license plate and that no personal information is obtainable through it. He said a transparency portal shows the department's usage, which was twice in the last month. He said officers are not allowed to run a query without a case number, that audits are set up on the city's usage and that Flock is moving toward automatic auditing.

The department's retention setting is 30 days, Reed said, and Flock recently announced a seven-day option that cities can opt into.

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