FARGO (KVRR) — The Cass County Sheriff’s Office is working with communities in rural Cass County to expand the Flock camera system outside the metro.
The Flock camera system has been in use in the Fargo-Moorhead Metro since last year, with police in West Fargo, Fargo, and Moorhead using the cameras to help locate suspects and missing or vulnerable people.
Cameras like the one behind me can track data like license plate numbers, state of plate, color, model, even damage or alterations to the vehicle that help track cars that may be stolen or involved in a crime.
“If someone is involved in criminal activity, and we have that information, that information is going to be plugged into the system and then if that individual drives by one of these camera systems that camera system alerts us that that individual is in that particular area,” Sheriff Jesse Jahner says.
Jahner has been working to get these cameras into communities in rural Cass County as well in Casselton, Horace and Harwood saying that crime isn’t isolated to the metro.
“Criminal activity doesn’t just stay stationary in one area,” Jahner says. “Typically, criminals travel around for their criminal enterprise, if it’s you know, thefts, burglaries and things of that nature,”
The system requires law enforcement officers to enter the data to be searched, and after 30 days, the data is deleted.
It also has no facial recognition capabilities, and keeps a log of which officer entered in the data.
Jahner adds that the cameras won’t be used for traffic citations, and that the main goal is to help share information between agencies.
“Sometimes those individuals will leave that area because law enforcement is actively looking for them and they will go out onto the rural areas, and so this will give us that opportunity now that if we do have that situation where people are going on to the rural areas that we will be tipped off to that and then we can protect our rural communities,” Jahner says.
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