Flock cameras around Richmond record license plates, vehicles – have you seen any?

Inspired by Dave Infante’s recent piece about the Flock surveillance devices in the East End, we went for a ride from Forest Hill to Hillside to Bellemeade and back looking for them in our area.

We found 4 of what look to be Flock Safety Falcon®s, which record license plate numbers and vehicle descriptions:

• 2000 block of Maury Street
• 2400 block of Harwood Street
• 2300 block of Halifax Avenue
• 600 block of Holly Springs Ave

Mike O’Brien maintains a city-wide map of the Flock devices and other surveillance devices here, which shows 2 of the devices on Jahnke Road.

According to the Flock portal page for Richmond, there are 97 of the License Plate Recognition (LPR) devices in use in city – in addition to any number of Flock Safety Raven® devices (detects the sound of gun fire). According to The Lookout, the Richmond Police Department has declined to say where the devices are located.

Flock says that the devices are used to record license plates and vehicles, but not for “Facial recognition, People, Gender, Race”. They claim that the data is “owned by Richmond VA PD and is never sold to 3rd parties”, though there is a long list of external organizations with access (mostly police departments across the county – making this something of a national network of cameras). Flock also says that the devices and the network are prohibited from being used for “Immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harrassment or intimidation, usage based solely on a protected class (i.e. race, sex, religion), Personal use”.

Have you seen any of these around?

There are also Tsumani camera devices installed all over Hillside Court. Not sure if these are RPD or RRHA, though they are also present in at least the Gilpin, Whitcomb, and Creighton communities.