A five five ninety Bible.
Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for our Chief Chat today and we're speaking chiefly to the Chief of Police, Kevin Michael Berry and also mister Elkins.
How you doing.
Today, Good morning, it's captain. I can't keep up with everybody's promotion.
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
But Chief and Captain, we have a very big informational session coming up tomorrow night.
Please explain that's that's correct. Tomorrow night, we're proud to host and please to host a flock camera session forum. It's gonna be a informational form to try to get the community involved answer some questions that have been brought up. There's been a lot of noise around the flock camera systems or LPR license plate readers, and they're new to our community.
So we want to answer some questions.
And we want to bring people up to speed on the law and on how we use these systems and some success stories from these systems already, the minimal use we've had of the system and the reason where we're policing the community with the aid of these cameras. So it'll be it'll be tomorrow night at Lion Hall at Oklahoma Westley University. That's on the top of the hill right there at the chapel. Plenty of room for everybody
there should be. We expect to have a large crowd of people that are against it, people that are for it, But we really want people to just to come open their ears, listen, and then make a good decision about how they what they believe in these systems.
So that's good. I have a couple of questions. It might be for Captain Elkins.
Sure, how many people do you have at the police department that actually watch that thing?
Or is that just all automated.
It's all automated, So yes, we don't watch the system at all. What hey, we get alerts on it or we intur alerts on.
It to Fort.
And Captain Nelson. The reason that Captain Elkins is here is because he has been working on this project for the last couple of years.
We've been working on trying to.
Get these available to us and way to fund them, and we believe strongly in the system. It's a great new tool. I like to equate it to fingerprints in the day, and then DNA came later. Those made the impact and law enforcement throughout the country and the world. The camera systems are also doing the same impact. They're not following following people who are spying on people, but they're allowing us to use them as a tool to make cases, to build a case around to find their
reverence or work. The evidence is either going, well, convict somebody or set them free, so to speak. Evidence is evidence, So it tells us one exactly, and it's been used for both.
Well, i'd like to it's really kind of a starting point as well. I mean, essentially, uh, it's a a picture of a known place in time of river vehicles. So there's still a lot of work to be done, a lot of investigative work and old school policing that who's driving that vehicle? How does this play into our investigation? And uh, you know, so forth.
Okay, So if if I'm a person that makes a lot of stops around town just for business reasons and things like that, the cameras aren't going to pick me one, two, three, four, five all across town just to see what Tom Davis is up to. I mean, I'd like to think I'm an important person, but I don't think I'm that important.
Well, and how we have the cameras, I don't think I am at all. And how we have the cameras place they're they're on the perimeter of our town looking inwards. So essentially that gives our officers time to you know, make their way to a real time alert if that's an amber alert or silver alert or stolen vehicle. You know it's going to be capturing a vehicle as it
enters into our jurisdiction. So the you know, being able to follow you as it as you move throughout town is really not how we have a system design it all. And again, you know, part of following or tracking or monitoring and surveillance is the continuation. You know, this is you know, a picture at one fixed location at a point in time.
So it's there's still a.
Lot of room to move about. We're publicly letting everyone know where these cameras are at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no no secret about it at all. You know they have it's a four pound camera, you know, solar powered camera.
It does not take.
Video, just steal pictures. And we see a lot of people didn't know that. A lot of people right there they thought this was running video. It did steal video. And I don't think anybody knew that what you right there said that these are just steel pictures.
I don't think anyone need Yeah, and tomorrow night at our community form, we'll be able to explain that and show that. And and part of which is, you know, there's a lot about the information being shared or sold to third parties that's not allowed, that does not happen. And flock itself doesn't even have the vehicle registration of
the you know, of the picture. I mean they literally have a picture of a rare of a vehicle or rear vehicle, or of multiple vehicles and that information is automatically deleted after thirty days.
So divorced attorneys don't have any hand on this, right, Absolutely, no, I'm just asking.
It's a great question, but yeah, it's it's not going to be it are so our policy outlines how uh this tool is to be used.
That has to have a law enforcement in nexus.
It has to be tied to a crime for us to query the system.
And in law enforcement we're not unique to that.
We have record management systems that we do our reports on. We have olets in our vehicles that we can run tags and driver's license status. That's a lot of very confidential information and that law enforcement across the nation you know, is in charge to be you know, responsible custodian of that information.
So this is.
Nothing new, uh, you know, for what we're typically you know in charge of UH. And it's just another tool to better enhance, you know, our ability to.
Keep the community safe.
The Department of Justice that did a research project many years ago talked about the silo effect amongst law enforcement and essentially how one agency or multiple agencies could have the same information on organized crime but without the really ability to share that across the board. Well, flock kind of knocks those.
Barriers down for us.
It really allows us to network and you know, fight crime together.
I have a question for you, cheap.
We've had some chances in doubt on over the last couple of months and will end up being stolen vehicles. Were those dinged by the cameras?
In most cases I don't know specifically of any of those being dinged by the cameras. However, we have had stolen vehicles coming into our city and to the point of spying on people. We've had those same vehicles in er the city and those same vehicles leave the city without us catching them, so we don't know where they've come after they passed the camera, right, so.
We have some successful reason.
The biggest thing about he was talking about the silo Daniel was talking about the silo effect. Uh, the biggest thing that's helped us as a networking part of the piece of this. Uh, there's over five thousand communities in the United States that have the FLOCK camera system or LPR camera systems.
UH.
Some of them use different companies, but being able to if you're on the FLOCK system, you can communicate with other agencies that are on the FLOCK system.
UH.
Therefore, if we have a stolen vehicle or a homicide suspect that we're looking for, where we can uh put the information their their vehicle into the system, and if it passes one of those cameras, it'll dean give us an alert. So we kind of know where they're at at that at that moment in time.
Uh.
But I mean they're going to be there when we get there. But it means that we at least have a starting point to work out from.
UH.
So the networking part is huge. We've got a couple of stores we can talk talk about dealing with that. We had a homicide UH over the summer that Highway one twenty three and Frank Phillips, I think most people are.
Aware of that.
Yeah, it was November three.
So it was it was Anyhow, during that time.
We were able to.
We were in the process, the honeymoon phase of trying to be talked into getting the FLOCK system and UH Daniel reached out to the Flock salesman and he actually worked for us, helped us and got that information in the vehicle suspect vehicle information and had it put in the system and Yep, it was a hit on and I think that was the one for Wichita. But we
had two different incidents. But we had suspect run from Bartsley, Oklahoma after he murdered the suspect and go into Kansas Coffeeville, Caney, Wichita. Several communities in Canty, Kansas have the FLOCK camera system. Input of that suspect vehicle showed that it had been in Wichita. So we got a hold of witch Tal PD and let them know. They began checking relatives of the suspect and located the suspects vehicle and located the suspects. So we were able to apprehend that suspect on the
homicide that happened two different times that summer. We had another homicide suspect that fled to Coffeeville in the same situations the type of situation you fled to no subject up in Coffeeville, and we were able to have Coffeeville PD go locate him and take him into custody. That's just a couple of homicide suspects that we've recovered from the networking of this camera system.
But I understand and I want you and I want to make sure people know you're going to hear some really good returns of people.
Oh.
Absolutely when we go to the event tonight.
Yeah, that's that's going to be something that could could you know, way one's opinion.
Well, and you know, we believed strongly in the in the system. Our job we've all sworn oas to protect and serve this community, and in law enforcement, a lot of that is give us the right tools and we can do a better job. And if we don't have the tools, we can only do what we can do as human beings. You know, as innovations come along, it's important for us to try to be on the cutting edge of those and move us forward not backwards.
You know.
I can think of a time I, as a detective, was chasing a young man that had kidnapped his son and was planning on killing him. I chased him four days straight, four days straight, no sleep, chasing this guy. I was always like an hour behind him four days inuntil I finally caught up with him at the Intahqua, Oklahoma, chased him back to Wagner, Oklahoma, where we took him into custody. Fortunately, the child was with him and we recovered the child. That took four days. Recently, we had
here Barsville. We had a young lady that's had put her son in the back seat of her car, went around to get in the driver's seat to leave, and her ex boyfriend came out of the bushes, came cameo gear sold the child out of the back seat of the vehicle, jumped in another vehicle, and they fled the scene with the child in less than an hour. Due to flock systems, we were able to enter that vehicle
information in the system. However, control had them stopped over by Clairemore and recovered that child.
That's the importance of this what it took me four days to.
Do and do for twenty four four twenty four hours a day for seven four days.
It took less than an hour for us to.
Be able to figure out where he's going or where he's at and get him get the child recovered. I mean, that's incredible to me. That's one instance. So their investigative tools, and again once they passed the camera, we know they passed the camera and sad then we have to start looking for him. We've had stolen vehicles enter the city limits of Bortlsville that we're still looking for it. You know they passed the camera, but where do they go
after that? We still have to try to find them and locate them, So tracking people, we're not tracking people.
Another part I would like to add is the access to this tool. We've really per our policy and locked the access down and we're only allowing lieutenants, which is meant to up arrange supervisor, to have access to the portal so their officers or detectives that they represent will come to them with investigative lead information to get plugged
in the system. So we have about nine people in total, that's lieutenants, in our dispatch supervisors you know who's in charge of a whole team and dispatchers twenty four to seven.
You know, they have access to it.
Again, that's just in the name of trying to compromise and keep people at ease on just being the custodians of this information.
This is interesting.
So once again, what time are we going to be meeting out at Lion Hall today?
Lion Halt Thursday night at six o'clock. Thursday night, Thursday night, yep, January sixteenth at at six o'clock. The lineup is pretty good lineup. We're going to have a just return to Will Drake. We'll be there to talk about the law and how it governs these cameras at the Constitution. Then we'll also have a representative from Flock Camera Systems present to kind of explain the system and how that works. And then our officers will be there to talk about
some of our success stories. We've got some pretty good ones.
And then we're going to have Jason White, who is a homicide detective with Tulsa Police Department, who is also most people know him from the first forty eight on A and E. Jason White as a national speaker, and he is very valuable to the Tulsa Police Department and obviously works as a homicide unit there, and he's got some stuff to talk about how they used for lock camers and how their crime has been reduced and how they rely on the same type of system to help
them solve crime. And I think they'll find interesting that Tassa Homicide not too many years ago used to have upwards of eighty and ninety homicides a year. The last two years they've had in twenty two or twenty three, they had like fifty two or fifty three homicides.
Of those, they saved all of them.
Two last year they had fifty homicides and they solved every one of them. Part of that is because of the technologies they use. So I think that's important for our audience to understand that if we don't change with technology, we're going to be behind and our people are going to get hurt. And again, we swore no to take care of our people, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure Borswell is a safe place to live and work and play and that you can move around.
And I'll be afraid come on a night six o'clock line Chapel.
That's correct, all right, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
But by the way, Captain, is it too early to start thinking barbecue contes.
No. I actually had some contestants that have their.
Hold coming up in a couple of months.
Their whole circuit planned out for this next year. They wanted one of the dates for our block party to plug them in because they definitely love coming to our cookoff. So after this I need to start thinking about that.
But right now we're thinking about that.
Yes, yeah, you know last year I popped I popped by and took a whiff.
I gained five pounds just smelling.
Were you not? Were you not a judge?
No?
Maybe somebody could make you a judge this year or something.
Well, folks, you know it sounds like I'm going to be in a lineup. Ah very much.
Police Chief miael Berry and Captain Elkins appreciate you being with you.