A controversy began last week when drivers noticed two cameras set up at Miller’s Kountry Store at the junction of Highways 160 and J and at West Plains Propane at the junction of Highways 160 and 5 South. Residents quickly took to Facebook, voicing their opinions and concerns about possible invasion of privacy and the use of images to try and ticket drivers over minor traffic violations.
After releasing a statement Friday afternoon, Ozark County Sheriff Cass Martin addressed the issue during the weekly Ozark County Commissioners’ meeting Monday morning.
“These [cameras] are built for businesses,” Martin told the commissioners. “Verkada is not Flock. The license plate reader does not tell me anything about who’s driving [that vehicle]. It doesn’t tell me the identification [of the driver], it doesn’t tell me the expiration [date of the license plates].
“All it does is it gives a good visual picture of a license plate, nothing more than if I walked through Walmart parking lot and saw everybody’s license plate.”
Martin said the goal of the Verkada cameras is to provide protection for the county’s business owners after several local businesses have been hit by burglaries in the past few months.
“We have very few business owners in Ozark County,” said Martin. “But the ones this [year] have been hit hard. I mean, Stockmens Bank is out $60,000 because there was not any security set up to protect them. I mean, they had cameras, but once they got past the property…we lost sight of them.”
Jeff Strong, owner of Miller’s Kountry Store, says he is more than happy to have one of the cameras set up on his property. “I was robbed two months ago, and if I’d had that camera [instealled then], they’d be in jail right now. Because my cameras…can’t pick up a license plate.
“Not only that, but there’s been a [driver of a] car that dumped 9 grams of meth out in front of my store. And if the camera had been up, we’d have had them dead-to-rights (an idiom that means caught in the act of doing something with clear proof). To me it’s just a good idea. It’s great. That’s just my personal opinion.”
Will information be shared?
Some of the concerns voiced on social media are about the possibility of information being shared on other law enforcement databases or being misused by officers.
Martin said the data collected by the cameras are not shared with other agencies or placed into a shared law enforcement camera network. “We maintain control of our camera system, our data and who has access to it.”
The information from the cameras currently set up can’t be shared “unless I give them access. [The information] belongs to the sheriff’s office,” Sheriff Martin said.
Martin also told the commissioners that only three people in his office have access to the camera footage and information: himself and Administrative Assistants Curtis Ledbetter and Rob Simpson. “Just because I don’t want them to be misused. [I’m] not saying they will, but I have seen the reports of law enforcement overreach.”
“These are not Flock cameras,” Martin wrote in the statement he released on Friday. “We are not using these cameras to track the day-to-day movements of our citizens of Ozark County. We are also not using them for traffic enforcement or to issue traffic citations.”
Why were they installed?
In the statement he released, Martin said the department is trialing the cameras to evaluate if they will be effective or beneficial to Ozark County. But, he said no decision has been made as to whether the cameras will remain or be installed permanently.
“We are evaluating these cameras strictly as an investigative and crime-deterrence tool,” he wrote. “They are intended to help us investigate criminal activity, identify suspect’s vehicle when appropriate, and provide our deputies with another resource for solving and preventing crimes in our community.”
“We specifically chose to evaluate a system that allows
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