- Title
- Chief of Police, City of Hendersonville
Surveillance record
Myhand’s department runs 16 cameras (15 plate readers) at about $45,000 a year; its Flock portal on August 22, 2026 showed 373,294 unique vehicles in 30 days, 83 searches, 4,703 hot-list hits, and 304 alerts, three from the NCIC “Gang or Suspected Terrorist” file (portal · Henderson County). His summary of the technology, to local press in August: “ALPRs are the best law enforcement technology since the two-way radio.” Unlike the county sheriff’s portal, the city’s does not display which agencies can access its data.
On September 3, 2026 he presented the program to City Council at council’s request, with no vote attached (the full account, with timestamps). The settings he described, each a description of the recording rather than a quotation: retention cut from 30 days to seven, a reason and case number required for every search, a monthly audit of every search by a civilian manager with no misuse found since the first cameras went up in 2024, and sharing without a request to every North Carolina agency and every agency within 100 miles, with federal agencies required to ask except the FBI (video, 0:50:12 · 0:54:23 · 0:56:26). On the word surveillance: plate readers take a point-in-time picture, so in his view the term does not fit (0:42:08); asked whether he could map a plate’s movements across the cameras, he said he could (0:46:09). He told council the data belongs to the city because the vendor has said so (1:14:32). He said the department is looking at publishing its monthly audits on a city web page (0:59:39).
He also described his national role (1:00:39): a seat on the executive board of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the chair of its working group on plate readers, which is writing a model policy and public communication materials for departments, and an invitation to moderate a panel with Flock’s chief executive, Garrett Langley, in October. The presentation his council heard on Sept 3 is, on his own account, the kind of material that working group produces (How Camera Systems Get Sold to Towns).
The question for him
The sharing ring and the FBI setting he described on Sept 3 are settings in the department’s Flock account, and the city’s portal does not display them. Will the department publish its sharing list, as the sheriff’s portal does, and the monthly audits he said the city is looking at posting, so the settings he described can be read directly?