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Livingston Parish Council unanimously votes to prevent installation of new Flock cameras, similar devices 105/255
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LIVINGSTON — The Livingston Parish Council voted to prevent the installation of new Flock cameras and other similar license plate reading devices along roads owned or maintained by the parish.
The decision to enact the new policy was unanimous.
"It's any camera that does that, surveillance cameras in the public right-of-way," Livingston Parish Councilman John Mangus told WBRZ.
Councilman Ryan Chavers' ordinance was passed at Thursday's meeting. It is the first such ordinance restricting the use of automated license plate reader cameras to be passed in a Louisiana parish.
"Some of his constituents were concerned with data acquisition and possible tracking, which you know could be Fourth Amendment violations with certain types of cameras," Mangus said about Chavers.
"It's an honor to be able to protect citizens' privacy," Chavers told WBRZ. "We want to make it very clear that the Livingston Parish government is not surveilling or using these cameras."
The ordinance prohibits new privately owned cameras from being installed on parish-owned land and rights-of-way, but does not require existing cameras to be removed.
Chavers told WBRZ that the ban went into effect immediately.
The councilman introduced the ordinance earlier this year, with the council voting on it in August without passing it due to additional changes the council wanted to see in the ordinance.
In August, Chavers said the goal is not to eliminate Flock cameras from Livingston Parish, just to keep them off parish property.
"We, as the government, have no dealings with these AI-generated cameras and we definitely want to make sure that your privacy is getting protected," Chavers said.
The revised and passed ordinance says that the owners of any of the cameras that were grandfathered into the new rule must submit the date of installation, as well as the brand and the number of cameras installed.
"As a safety consultant for 25 years, we've had the cameras for 10 years. To clarify where this information is going, it's going straight to the sheriff's office. No residents have access to these cameras to view," Livingston Parish resident Kyle Parker told the Parish Council.
Several residents of the Easterly Lakes subdivision supported a proposed amendment to the ordinance to have readers already being used by subdivisions be grandfathered in.
"How that works is they will have to self-identify and say we're x-y-z subdivision. We adopted this camera and installed them in 2025; we have three. Once they turn that information in to administration, it'll be recorded," Mangus said.
The new ordinance also gives the parish the right to remove any cameras that are newly installed after the ordinance went into effect Thursday. Private cameras on private properties will still be allowed with the new ordinance.
"Absolutely, they absolutely can. Their private property is there's to do with what they want," Livingston Parish Councilwoman Erin Sandefur told WBRZ.
Councilwoman Sandefur says that this ordinance will be revisited and possibly even amended in the future as technologies advance.
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