The St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners in its meeting on Tuesday voted 3-2 to remove Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) from county right-of-ways.
Action News Jax told you at the end of August when the Florida Department of Transportation issued a memo revoking all approved permits for ALPRs in the right-of-ways on the state highway system.
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Law enforcement agencies across the state were ordered to comply with this directive by September 30.
We told you in early September when some St. Johns County residents were asking county commissioners to deny the sheriff’s office funding for ALPRs for the upcoming fiscal year.
We also told you in mid-September when St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick said there are at least 100 license plate readers are owned by neighborhoods in the county.
On Tuesday before the vote, St. Johns commissioners heard public comment from many residents on the issue, and also heard from Director Howard Cole of the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
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One commissioner asked Cole if Flock camera data was ever misused by members of the department. He confirmed there was one instance.
“Through that, we have what we call most frequent users, we have anomalous searches, and it kind of helped us narrow down where we need to look deeper,” Cole said. “In that case, in that process, we did find what I would call a personal use case. Without getting into granular detail, we did have a detective who was working an operation and at the same time he was purchasing a vehicle from out in the Panhandle. Some time during that situation, he felt like he might be getting scammed. So he went into the system to search for his vehicle to see if it was actually being transported down I-10 like they said it was. Obviously, completely inappropriate personal use. He was disciplined, probably forfeited his right for promotion, which is about a $30,000 mistake. But that is the only misuse case we have. We do not have a single case of anybody searching, stalking, looking for another person or citizen in this county.”
Action News Jax’s Madison Foglio is reaching out to SJSO about this latest development and will have the latest updates beginning on FOX30 Action News Jax at 4.
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