One Northern Kentucky city is leaving the flock, deciding to shut down their pilot program of automatic license plate readers, also known as Flock Cameras.

Our Emily Prince takes us to Newport for this development.

The Newport Police Department announced they would end their pilot program of flock cameras.

It's a license plate camera reading system that captures folks information as they drive by, like their license plate number or the color of their car.

The administration decided not to push forward.

Mainly because I think the public is not real receptive to this, and I don't believe that the demo demonstrated a crying need for this.

For the last three months, Newport police have piloted 17 cameras across the city.

The department held a public townhall on July 8th to get the public's input on the technology.

As the department made the decision of purchasing some of the cameras for permanent use.

The people that were there voiced very strong objections to it.

Mainly on, a feeling of invasion of privacy.

And I completely understand that, but legally, technically, when we're out here on the street, we've given up our rights for privacy.

Jackie Mayor Grant, a Newport resident and local defense attorney, was one of many citizens who turned out to the town hall meeting.

At the meeting, I said, you know, I don't have any questions.

I'm just not for this.

And as a citizen, I wanted to be heard.

About a week after that meeting, the city of Newport released a statement saying they were concluding their pilot program and will be removing the flock safety brand cameras.

They said, quote, during the pilots Alpers or automatic license plate, readers successfully assisted police with criminal investigations, demonstrating their potential as a public safety tool.

However, after reviewing the pilot results, public feedback, and recent developments in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the city has decided not to move forward with a permanent Alpr program.

And quote.

I was very happy that the city of Newport listened to us.

The city cited a June 29th decision from the U.S.

Supreme Court, where the court ruled that individuals maintain an expectation of privacy regarding their cellphone location data.

Newport City Commissioner Ken Renton said while this case didn't explicitly discuss license plate reading, cameras, it's still related.

I think it makes sense to slow down.

Mayor Grant said this is a prime example of why she believes there should be more safeguards and legislation around data tracking.

The argument that because we're giving that privacy data over all the time, that we should then be okay with FLoC, I take that a different way.

I think that, you know what?

Maybe we need to hold the brakes on a lot of this privacy data and how it's shared in everything else, because flock is raising the alarm as to how much of our data is out there.

There are still many cities across northern Kentucky, even here in Campbell County, that are still using the technology.

Belleview and Wilder are just two examples here in the county, but the Newport Police Department said they had to listen to their residents.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Emily Prince.

Thank you so much, Emily.

As Newport made the decision to cut ties with their flock cameras nearby, Kenton County officials are considering purchasing the automatic license plate readers.

The Newport Police Department reported they would have paid $3,000 a year for each camera.