The East Peoria City Council will weigh whether to add an additional 10 Flock-branded cameras to the police department’s program, nearly doubling its investment in license plate reading technology as the town next door deals with the fallout of alleged misuse by its police chief.
Former Creve Coeur Police Chief Justin Egan is off the job, accused of using his city’s three Flock-branded license plate cameras to track his ex-wife and ordering others to help. Egan, plus his deputy chief and one rank-and-file officer abruptly resigned last month amid revelations he is under investigation by Illinois State Police.
Current Police Chief Dale King, a former Creve Coeur chief who left retirement to try and help pick up the pieces, said he’s looked to East Peoria for guidance on best practices for using Automated License Plate Readers [ALPR], for which Flock Safety has cornered the market in U.S. police agencies.
City leaders have signaled their support for expanding East Peoria’s Flock program following unanimous approval of a first reading of that proposal last month. Opponents from Central Illinois anti-Flock groups hope to press council members to reject it anyway with a planned demonstration in Levee Park before Tuesday’s meeting.
Local control
East Peoria Police Chief David Catton said his department will “hold our people accountable if they abuse the system,” which he says undergoes regular audits.
“We don’t control what Creve Coeur does; we don’t control what other departments do. We control what East Peoria does, so we definitely hold people accountable,” Catton said at that Sept. 16 meeting.
Local control can be both a defense and a sore spot for agencies who say they’re using Flock the right way.
State law does not require police departments to make Flock data public and extends a long leash by letting agencies determine best practices for themselves apart from state- and federally-mandated rules around privacy. The constitutional amendment protecting Americans from unlawful search and seizure does not currently extend a reasonable expectation of privacy to their vehicles.
Brad Bell, an organizer affiliated with the Central Illinois group called Shut the Flock Off, says it should.
"We obviously believe that it's unwarranted surveillance, and we think that any such conduct is against the spirit of the Constitution and the values this country was founded on," he said.
Several departments have turned their Flock programs off, at least temporarily, including in Los Angeles, Indiana and Jefferson County, Wisconsin, where the state capital of Madison is located. Last month, the City of Moline announced it was turning off its cameras, without any reported mishandling of data.
Others are left to vigorously defend their programs and be as transparent as possible.
Like East Peoria, the Town of Normal in McLean County has a transparency portal, something Police Chief Steve Petrilli says is vital to curbing misinformation about his department's more than 50 Flock cameras. Petrilli encourages people to reach out directly with their worries about privacy and data management.
"I want to hear the concerns, because I think there's some valid concerns," he said. "But I also think facts and education is kind of how we meet in the middle on some of these things."
State police confirmed they're looking into allegations Egan “was in violation of utilizing his position of authority and ordered department members to unlawfully access Criminal Query History [CQH], use official department letterhead to obtain arrest records, utilize Flock camera to access information and conduct surveillance on [redacted].”
That’s in response to notice ISP said it received from the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board [ILETSB] flagging Egan’s alleged misconduct.
The redacted name is likely Egan’s ex-wife, who in late August filed a request for an Emergency Order of Protection against him. A second emergency order filed against Deputy Chief Dan Nelson has been dropped, WCBU confirmed, but the two complaints obtained from the Peoria County Circuit Clerk allege Nelson was among the officers ordered to monitor his ex-wife’s movements.
Police policing the police
“It’s almost not possible for smaller agencies. ...[I]t’s constant babysitting of the technology, constantly making things safe and acceptable for the public.”
Jack McQueen, Bloomington Police Department
A veteran crime data analyst with the Bloomington Police Department says the resources needed deem it “almost not possible” for small agencies to run a responsible Flock program.
“We have three people,” said Jack McQueen, who leads Bloomington PD’s real-time crime data center and monitors more than 30 ALPR cameras operated by the McLean County department.
“It’s not a fulltime job, but it’s constant babysitting of the technology, constantly making things safe and acceptable for the public. And we’re diligent about that, but I can’t imagine being able to do that without just writing a check to a vendor in a small agency. …It’s almost your only option.”
The Creve Coeur Village Board didn’t appear to ask about how then-Chief Egan planned to manage data collection and audit officer use. At least, it didn’t come up when the board unanimously approved $20,550 for its 2-year contract leasing three Flock Safety ALPR cameras.
According to minutes from the Sept. 11, 2024, meeting, then-Police Chief Egan had relayed the benefits of the cameras following conversations with the chiefs in Pekin and East Peoria, including that revenue generated from impounding vehicles tracked with ALPRs would offset the cost of the contract. One trustee asked about how impounds would be tracked to inform decision making when renewing the contract. Another worried notifications sent from the cameras would overwhelm officers. No one asked how the department planned to audit the data to monitor for abuse — though in this case, it might not have mattered.
According to Creve Coeur Police’s internal Flock policy [obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request], it was Nelson who was charged with safeguarding Flock data. Yet there’s evidence suggesting he has been reprimanded for suspicious behavior before now.
Disciplinary records from when Nelson was an officer in Marquette Heights, obtained through a public records request by the Illinois Answers Project and shared with WCBU, say Nelson searched the mayor’s mailbox and falsely accused other officers of stealing his duty bag from his squad car. A memo written by Chief Bradd Eliott says one of the department’s lieutenants believed then-Officer Nelson “can no longer be trusted and wanted a note made of that fact.”
The two-page Flock policy in Creve Coeur says Flock data management falls squarely under Nelson’s purview.
“Members approved to access ALPR data under these guidelines are permitted to access the data for legitimate law enforcement purposes only, such as when the data relate to a specific criminal investigation or department-related civil or administrative action,” it says.
The policy also states system audits should be conducted on a regular basis, though it does not say who will conduct such an audit, or how.
That’s something the current chief, Dale King, is seeking to correct. In a September phone call with WCBU, he said the department was “going to go through some changes.”
“[Flock] is being abused nationwide and I don’t want to lose it,” he said.
Meredith Newman of BGA's Illinois Answers Project contributed reporting.
