Knox County Mayor Betsy Henderson announced the county will place covers over the mounted Flock cameras purchased by the sheriff's office because the company will not remove the cameras by a Sept. 16 deadline.
Henderson said the company told county officials they can't pull the cameras until Oct. 7.
"Don't worry, we found a cost effective way to protect your rights, now," Henderson wrote in a statement shared on social media. "We put our brightest minds on designing a personal privacy shield to place over the cameras throughout the county until Flock has taken them down."
County crews designed "personal privacy shields" to place over the cameras, she said, so Flock Safety cannot collect license plate data.
The Knox County Commission voted last month
to ban the cameras and ordered the company to take them down by Sept. 16.
The cameras drew bipartisan ire from residents over civil liberties concerns, culminating in a series of intense county commission meetings in which representatives of the previous sheriff's office administration struggled to answer basic questions.
Much of the outrage was directed at the Knox County Sheriff's Office's discreet acquisition of the cameras over time without seeking the commission's approval.
The Knox County Sheriff's Office has used Flock license plate readers since 2020, when it bought five through a service agreement. The contract allowed KCSO to build on the purchase in small increments, which kept the price under a threshold that required approval from then-County Mayor Glenn Jacobs or the county commission.
Over time, according to an Aug. 12 letter from Jacobs to Flock, KCSO spent $274,720 on its agreement, which is over the threshold required to receive county approval.
Earlier this year, KCSO spent $800,000 of a $1.5 million state grant to lease more cameras from Flock.
The county is in the process of determining whether its Flock contract is valid and whether it is on the hook to pay back a state grant used to purchase more cameras earlier this year.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knox County puts shields on Flock cameras after company misses removal deadline
