TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo City Council voted Wednesday against asking the city to end its contracts with Flock Safety, the company behind the police department’s automated license-plate reader cameras, and then left the measure sitting in committee after a second vote tied.
Council voted 6-5 against Resolution R-435-26 on November 4, according to the Lake Erie Inquiry, which sourced its account to the city’s own meeting video and to Toledo Legistar’s posted results. The resolution asks the city to end and not renew its Flock agreements, take down or switch off the equipment, and delete Flock’s data as far as the law allows.
Voting to end the Flock deals were Councilmembers Mac Driscoll, Theresa Gadus, Nick Komives, Erin Kramer and Sam Melden, according to the Lake Erie Inquiry’s account of the Legistar results. Voting against were George Sarantou, Vanice Williams, John Hobbs III, Adam Martinez, McPherson and Theresa Morris.
The fight did not end with that vote. Driscoll moved to pull the measure back out of committee, and that vote tied 6-6 — one short of the seven votes needed to take an item out of committee, the Lake Erie Inquiry reported. The practical result is that the proposal to end the Flock contracts remains in committee, and the cameras remain in place while council decides what, if anything, comes next.
A competing approach is also before council. Martinez pointed to his own bill, Ordinance O-460-26, which would write limits on police technology into city law rather than ending the Flock contracts outright. The Toledo Free Press reported that the proposed restrictions would cover uses involving immigration enforcement, reproductive healthcare, gender-affirming care and profiling, and would require monthly reviews of Flock data sharing.
Hanging over both measures is an unfinished audit. The Toledo Free Press reported that City Auditor John Rivalsky’s review of the Flock system was still being compiled, and that he had run into problems getting access to Flock data because he needed law-enforcement credentials. Members who opposed immediate action on October 20, when council first delayed the termination vote, said the auditor’s report should be completed first, according to CitizenPortal’s account of that meeting.
What happens next is committee work: R-435-26 stays in committee unless seven members vote to pull it out, the limits in O-460-26 remain to be finalized, and the auditor’s report — whenever it lands — is likely to shape whichever vote council takes next.
Photo: Redaktor419, CC BY-SA 4.0