What the chief told council, Sept 3
Hendersonville City Council heard from Police Chief Blair Myhand at its September 3 regular meeting, on an agenda item filed as a presentation with no motion attached and no slides in the packet (the agenda, item 6.C · the packet, page 170). The city’s own recording is linked from its meeting page (the meeting page · the video, 3 hours 25 minutes). We transcribed the full recording and matched speakers by voice against earlier meetings. Every timestamp below links to the moment; the lines are descriptions of what was said, not quotations, until the tape has been checked word for word.
The chief presented in public and took council’s questions for ten minutes. City Manager John Connet asked on the record that the Flock contract be posted on the city website (1:05:08): two identical records requests for it were pending, staff time had gone to a lawsuit, and he said the delay was a workload matter rather than an effort to keep the contract from view. The chief said the two requests had been sent up (1:05:56). The contract is not posted as of September 4; when it is, we will link it here.
What the meeting did and did not do:
- The item ended without a vote or any direction to staff. The chief said at 0:36:59 that next steps have not been defined.
- Nine residents spoke during public comment, two minutes each, from 0:03:22 to 0:24:52. Every speaker who addressed the cameras opposed them. Speakers are private residents and are not named here.
- Mayor Barbara Volk said at 1:04:41 that the meeting was not the place for public questions, that there would be opportunity for public input and discussion, and that those events would be advertised. No date was given.
The chief’s account of the program:
- First cameras in 2024. His case examples go back to the first cameras installed in 2024 (0:37:32). That supports the split Cardinal & Pine reported, three cameras in mid-2024 and twelve in November 2025, and it dates the department’s search history from 2024.
- Retention is now seven days. Flock’s seven-day period is a setting the company leaves to each agency, and the department chose it, down from 30 (0:50:12). He said he had asked Flock that week how deletion is verified, would share the vendor’s deletion documentation in a monthly report, and said the vendor’s written explanation of the deletion process was not clear to him (0:52:03). The city’s portal showed 30 days on August 22; we will re-read it and record what it shows.
- A reason and a case number are required for every search (0:52:23). A civilian communications and technology manager, in a role created last year, audits every search each month, with the report reaching the chief by about the 10th (0:53:02). Asked by council how many misuse cases had been documented since 2024, the answer was none (1:06:48). The audit method, described at 1:07:04: Flock’s anomaly flag on one user searching one plate, and on searches for one plate spanning more than 30 days, plus 20 searches pulled at random each month. The department is looking at publishing the audits on a city web page (0:59:39).
- Sharing. The department shares without a request with every North Carolina law enforcement agency and every agency within 100 miles of the city, a ring that reaches into South Carolina and Tennessee (0:54:23). Agencies outside the ring must ask. When the program began it was open to every agency in Flock’s system; the department narrowed the setting on its own initiative (0:55:03). Federal agencies must make an official request, with one exception: the FBI has not been set to require one (0:56:26). The city’s portal displays no sharing list, so neither the ring nor the FBI setting can be checked from outside; the sheriff’s portal lists its 2,048 agencies.
- Prohibited uses, listed at 0:49:29: civil matters, monitoring protests, churches, or lawful gatherings, immigration, and politically motivated searches.
- Whether the word surveillance applies. The chief’s position is that calling plate recognition a surveillance tool is not accurate, because surveillance is a real-time, forward-looking activity and the system takes a point-in-time picture (0:42:08). Four minutes later, asked whether he could map a plate’s history across the cameras, he said he could, manually, and that he would track a suspect any way he could (0:46:09).
- The name comes from another system. The plate image carries no identity; the name comes from running the plate through the state and national criminal databases, which predate his career (0:48:35, 1:10:29). No specific statute covers plate reader misuse the way misuse of those databases is covered; he said the department is advocating for one (1:11:20).
- Private cameras. Homeowners’ associations and retailers with their own Flock cameras cannot see police data; police can see theirs if the owner allows it (0:55:46).
- Data ownership. The vendor has assured the department that the data is the city’s; he can only relay what the vendor has told him (1:14:32).
- The national statistics on abductions, dementia cases, and homicide clearance (0:38:33) were attributed to law enforcement sources he did not name. Two cases were described without case numbers: a locate in Jacksonville, Florida (0:55:21) and a missing man found deceased in Pisgah National Forest through his vehicle (0:40:34).
- The vendor and the messaging. The chief sits on the executive board of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which recently published a statement on plate readers. He chairs an IACP working group of about a dozen chiefs writing a model policy and public communication tools, and he has been asked to moderate a panel this October alongside Flock’s chief executive, Garrett Langley (1:00:39). The working group’s output is the layer above the vendor script that How Camera Systems Get Sold to Towns describes.
Council’s questions. Mayor Pro Tem Jennifer Hensley, a candidate for mayor in November, asked how many misuse cases had been documented (1:06:48), how another agency requests access to city cameras (1:09:00), how officers stalked partners before this technology existed (1:10:17), whether any device the department owns can trace a phone signal (1:12:11, the answer was no), and whether a records request had gone unanswered (1:12:56). A second council member asked what happens to Hendersonville’s data once an agency in the 100-mile ring has pulled it under a different retention policy, and what Flock itself can do with it (1:13:17); the answer was the data-ownership assurance above. City Manager Connet closed the item from the manager’s seat (1:15:50): over 34 years residents had complained that police could not solve thefts, the tool was helping solve those cases, and it needs to be controlled, with guardrails, and used properly.
What the presentation did not cover. The adopted capital plan’s Real Time Crime Center, the two drone programs, and the camera infrastructure line, described on the Hendersonville page, were not mentioned; a search of the full transcript finds no reference to any of them. The five questions in that section remain open.
Also in the packet: the draft minutes of the August 26 meeting (page 59) record the city manager introducing a Community Advisory Committee, replacing the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, as a body for staff to take complaints, “for example utility billing or flock cameras.” Under the city’s plan, that committee is where a camera complaint would be routed. Its charter was on the September 3 consent agenda.
What the city committed to on Sept 3
Each item is a statement on the recording; none is in writing yet. When a document exists, it will be linked here.
| Commitment | Who, when | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Post the Flock contract on the city website | City Manager John Connet, 1:05:08 | Not posted as of Sept 4 |
| Publish the monthly search audits on a city web page | Chief Myhand, 0:59:39, “looking at” | No page yet |
| Report Flock’s deletion documentation in a monthly report | Chief Myhand, 0:52:03 | Not yet reported |
| Advertised public input sessions on the cameras | Mayor Barbara Volk, 1:04:41 | No date announced |