Houston County sheriff keeps Flock data for 30 days; Perry police cut to 7

Flock now recommends seven-day retention. Sheriff Matt Moulton says keeping data longer helps investigators connect vehicles to crimes.

HOUSTON COUNTY, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) — The Houston County Sheriff’s Office is keeping Flock license plate reader data for 30 days, despite the company’s new recommendation that law enforcement agencies retain the data for seven days.

The sheriff’s office says the information can help investigators connect vehicles to crimes, but the retention period is also raising privacy questions.

In August, Flock Safety changed its recommended data retention period from 30 days to seven days and made seven days the default for new law enforcement customers. Existing customers can keep their current retention periods.

Houston County Sheriff Matt Moulton says his department will stick with its 30-day policy, arguing crimes can’t always be solved within seven days.

“With that 30-day period, that’s going to allow us to search back to that Saturday to hopefully identify the vehicle that was captured on your neighbor’s surveillance camera,” he said. “Then we can identify a tag number, then that can assist in that investigation to identify that broke into a house, business, or whatever it is.”

Moulton says some cases may require data to be preserved beyond the 30-day retention period.

“Let’s say we have a drive-by shooting and someone gets shot,” he said. “We can do a Flock search, and if we capture a vehicle on that camera, we can download that image from the Flock server and save it on our computer for prosecution purposes, then it’s retained permanently.”

Moulton says despite public pushback, Flock has been a positive tool for law enforcement.

“I’ve been in law enforcement for 31 years, and this is the single greatest tool that’s been introduced to law enforcement to help us solve crimes,” he said. “Not only solve crimes, but find missing people, stolen vehicles, elderly people that suffer from dementia. We’ve been able to locate them faster, because of Flock.”

Perry Police Chief Alan Everidge says the Perry Police Department changed its Flock data retention policy from 30 days to seven days last month following a comprehensive review.