A legal fight over Flock cameras could be brewing in Marshall County. The prosecutor is threatening to sue county commissioners over their plans to bag the cameras.
As they finalize next year’s budget, the Marshall County Council last week passed a resolution saying the county won’t fund any more of a contract with Flock Safety, citing the community's privacy concerns.
County commissioners have said they want to cover or bag the cameras for now.
At their meeting Monday, commissioners’ attorney Sean Sirisi said he'd contacted Flock to ask if covering the cameras will damage them. Sirisi said the company representative told him about a waterproof booty or bag the county could order through Amazon.
That sparked an angry letter Tuesday from county Prosecutor E. Nelson Chipman Jr., whose office has the contract with Flock. Chipman wrote that bagging the six license plate readers would be “tyrannical” by the commissioners, effectively amounting to “disabling personal private property without due process of law.” He told commissioners to “cease and desist” their plans, a legal term that can precede litigation.
Commissioner Adam Falstich asked Sirisi if covering the cameras puts the county at legal risk.
“These are all kind of murky issues that I think we’d ultimately win on but it’s not the kind of thing that would be dismissed right away," Sirisi said. "So there is a little bit of risk but it’s my hope that we’re not headed there.”
