Kalamazoo Public Safety reviewed every flagged license plate reader search from October and found all within policy, Captain Chuck Mason said November 10.
Mason presented the audit to the Citizens Public Safety Review and Appeal Board. It covers October 1–31 and, for the first time, includes a second system, Insight, alongside the Flock camera network. Mason said Insight was added because its vendor only released an auditing tool this month.
Flock network. Mason said the network was searched just under 15,000 times in October. About 30% of those searches were by Kalamazoo Public Safety personnel. He said most were by Michigan State Police, and that any state police search covers all Flock networks by default, so it counts against Kalamazoo’s. Of searches by offense type, 37.8% were for stolen vehicles, almost 18% for weapons offenses including shots-fired incidents, 12.4% for drugs, 8.1% for burglary and 3.8% for assault.
The Flock audit tool flagged 24 searches under criteria such as repeated searches of the same plate more than 30 days apart and searches by a single user. Mason said he examined all 24 and found them within department policy. The network is shared with seven agencies: the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office, Portage Department of Public Safety, Western Michigan University Police, Kalamazoo Township Police, Battle Creek Police, Michigan State Police and the Michigan Department of Corrections.
Insight network. Mason said Insight recorded about 650 searches, all by Kalamazoo Public Safety personnel. Its tool flagged 70, which he also examined and found within policy. He attributed the higher share flagged to the smaller number of users, since a plate searched by one officer counts as a single-user search. Insight’s dashboard cannot yet break out search reasons.
Board questions. A board member asked why the department keeps data 30 days when Flock’s default for new users is seven. Mason said Kalamazoo joined at 30 days and existing users were not required to change. He said seven days would limit detectives and crime analysts in homicide and drug trafficking cases. Asked how the department weighs privacy against investigations, Mason said that is ultimately a question for residents and the City Commission. A board member asked whether the department could count how many searches fall within seven days of an incident, and Mason said he would look into it.
Board members also asked how outside agencies are held accountable. Mason said the department vets partner agencies, whose policies he described as similar to or stronger than its own, but relies on them to monitor their own users. He said an agency’s users can reach all shared partners unless the agency sets limits by role. Assistant Chief Victor Green said the department would review an agency’s access if it found improper use.
Complaint categories changed. In the police-citizen relations (PCR) complaint report for January 1–October 31, Mason split “harassment or abuse of authority” from “bias-based policing.” He said he re-categorized complaints back to 2023 on the department’s transparency page. Board members thanked him for acting within weeks of their request last month.
Asked about open cases dating to June and July, Mason said the department’s state accreditation year and a large officer-involved shooting investigation slowed his office’s work. He said he expects to clear the backlog with help from the new inspector.
