Chief Winstrom Explains His Flip on Flock Cameras — And What He Wants From Lawmakers Next

Pensacola, FL (NewsRadio 92.3) -- Pensacola Police Chief Eric Winstrom joined Pensacola's Morning News Wednesday to walk through the decision to shut down the city's Flock license plate reader cameras, a day after Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Department of Transportation moved to pull the technology off state roads across Florida.

Winstrom says he'd been a supporter of the cameras throughout his time as chief, but one word from the governor's Monday remarks changed his thinking. DeSantis specifically invoked COVID while explaining his concerns about surveillance overreach, and Winstrom says that sent him back to a specific stretch of his career leading police operations in Chicago.

He described a sequence of events from late May 2020. A day after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, a group of Chicago residents held a protest downtown against the city's COVID lockdowns. Winstrom says the mayor's office ordered police to arrest everyone involved, despite the protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. Officers ultimately talked the group into dispersing without making arrests. Three days later, when the first major protest referencing George Floyd's death arrived downtown, Winstrom says city hall gave the opposite instruction, giving the crowd space rather than intervening. That gathering spiraled into days of rioting that left roughly 70 buildings burned down.

Winstrom says that contrast is what worries him about handing a tool like Flock to leadership he doesn't personally know or trust, and it's what ultimately convinced him a legislative fix is necessary rather than leaving the decision to individual departments.

He predicts the loss of the cameras won't necessarily cause a spike in crime, but he expects Pensacola's case clearance rate to drop, since detectives use the technology on cases ranging from shoplifting to homicide.

Winstrom laid out what he'd like to see if state lawmakers take up legislation on the issue. He wants a shorter data retention window, saying most of the tool's investigative value comes within the first hour or two after a plate is captured. He also wants some form of statewide accountability standard, since he can hold his own officers responsible for how they use the system but has no way to verify what officers from outside agencies are actually looking for when they request access to Pensacola's camera network. He explained that access currently works on a reciprocal basis between agencies, meaning departments that want to use Pensacola's cameras generally have to allow Pensacola to use theirs in return.

Winstrom also addressed criticism directed at Mayor D.C. Reeves over the decision, saying the mayor had essentially no involvement in it. He says Reeves gave no pushback and left the call entirely in his hands as the department's policing expert, which Winstrom says has been his experience with Reeves on operational decisions generally.