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here tonight at 6. Cutting off federal funding to those flock cameras around neighborhoods. Those high techch devices that capture you and your license plate clearly as you drive into neighborhoods and other places. Political reporter Isaiah Kim Martinez tonight explains why Congressman Thomas Massie is leading the way to cut the money. They're the cameras recording across Louisville that police say are an investigative tool, but critics call them surveillance. Now, Congressman Thomas Massie is pushing to punish local governments that use automated license plate readers. I think it's very concerning when you talk about withholding funding when these flock cameras are used for criminal investigations.
Colonel Steve Healey is the chief deputy at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. He says for law enforcement, flock cameras are not about tracking law-abiding drivers. He says it's about cases like a child abduction. He gives a hypothetical scenario. The suspect vehicle was a white Ford F-150 with ladder racks on top. Then we can see, okay, how many white Ford F-150s with a ladder truck passed our cameras. But like Massie, a Republican, Metro Councilman JP Lininger has concerns over privacy and the potential for the technology and the data it collects to be abused. Linger is a Democratic socialist. lots of people who look view themselves as conservatives and Republicans who also think I've got a problem with this from a couple of
different standpoints. Agencies like LMPD have credited Flock cameras for helping them arrest suspects of violent crimes and find missing people, but Massie compares them to government surveillance, saying he'll soon be sponsoring a bill to withhold federal dollars from cities that deploy them. I don't know that I would that's the mechanism I would choose, but you've also got to try to get people's attention, right? We are definitely behind the curve here in Louisville. I think there's somewhere in the middle that everyone can meet where we can still utilize this tool, but also put safeguards and guard rails in place on the use of them.
This year, Kentucky state lawmakers passed a bill that now limits the amount of time agencies can store data from automated license plate readers. The exception is if the information is actively being used in a criminal investigation. Isaiah Kim Martinez, WH11 on your side. Colonel Steve Healey with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office has says they have strict rules on the use of information from automated license plate readers. He says that includes requiring a case number for an open criminal investigation to be able to pull up the data and information.
