Commission candidates offer thoughts on Flock
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MORGANTOWN - Ron Lytle, the Republican candidate for the Eastern District seat on the Monongalia County Commission, said he recently spent more than an hour sitting with Sheriff Todd Forbes discussing the county's implementation of Flock Safety automated license plate reader cameras and walked away from the meeting comfortable with how the technology is being utilized in Monongalia County.
Julie Knight, who defeated incumbent Jeff Arnett in the Democratic primary for the seat, has been outspoken in her opposition to the cameras, explaining her concerns are not based in a mistrust of Forbes or the sheriff's department, but in the county's participation in a surveillance network operated by a private company that is beyond local control.
In November 2025, acting on a request from Forbes, the Monongalia County Commission approved the use of up to $180,000 in directly allocated opioid settlement funds to place 20 Flock cameras at locations across the county.
As it has in political jurisdictions nationwide, the decision to partner with Flock has garnered public pushback. The issue had drawn more sustained, and pointed, public commentary during weekly commission meetings than any in recent history, inspiring online petitions, social media groups, and even a write-in candidacy for the commission seat from Logan Wheatcraft, a regular commenter before the body.
The Dominion Post recently spoke with both commission candidates on the November ballot about their thoughts on Flock.
Knight, who held a community forum on the topic earlier this week, said she believes the issue comes down to government overreach.
"You know, the quick answer for why I don't like Flock cameras is because I'm an American and I'm a Mountaineer. The basic West Virginian in me says the government doesn't get a right to watch me wherever I go unless I'm doing something wrong, and I'm absolutely not," she said. "As an American, there is a freedom issue. There is a 1st Amendment right issue. There is a 4th Amendment right issue. There is an issue in infringing on our unalienable rights – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For some, this technology, this type of surveillance, infringes upon all of that."
She continued.
"This for me is not a local issue. I'm not worried about what our sheriff will be using this technology for … My specific issue with is how our federal government would be using the data and I am fully aware that whatever type of guardrails, whatever type of contract, whatever type of agreement that we have here locally does not keep anyone outside who has this data from being able to share it or access it."
In July, the sheriff's department hosted the media for a presentation on its implementation of Flock technology.
It was explained that the data collected by the cameras is limited to license plate text, vehicle attributes, the date and time the vehicle was photographed and the camera's location.
It was further explained that the images captured by the cameras are owned by the county but held by Flock and that the company has no contracts with any federal agencies and does not resell data.
As implemented locally, the sheriff's department explained, the system alerts MECCA 911 and MCSD of plates passing cameras that have been entered into the National Crime Information Center, are tagged as part of missing persons alerts or have been entered on a hotlist of active investigations by the department.
According to the MCSD, officers trained on the system cannot conduct a search unless an active case number is part of the search information, and the system is audited every 90 days.
"I think the way the sheriff is currently using the system is not violating the rights of citizens. The county commission should make sure that the policies at their level control any future misuse of the system," Lytle said, explaining he would like to form a volunteer committee that could regularly review every use of the system by the sheriff's department as well as each request for Monongalia County data from parties outside the county.
He went on to say that he would not immediately vote to turn off the cameras if elected.
"My hour and fifteen-minute meeting with the sheriff made me comfortable that the way he is using them is not to surveil the people," Lytle said. “I’m skeptical of the company because I don't know enough about the company. That was the commission's job to review that and be comfortable with that. I don't know Flock well enough to have the ability to make a call on that right now and say I need to see all the information about how Flock's using this information. Somebody needs to be able to do that, and I believe the county commission did that and understands that. I can say that if I was on the commission and I didn't have that access, that would be the end of Flock."