Clark Atlanta University doctoral student Ladavious McNair was arrested after police used data from Flock Safety cameras to identify him as the suspect in a road rage shooting near the Atlanta University Center.
After being held in Fulton County jail for 30 days, the Army veteran was released. Police had arrested the wrong man.
McNair now has a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Atlanta, the chief of police, and the investigator in the case.
“Still have some hard days. Still have many nightmares,” McNair said in an interview with 11 Alive. “I’m in therapy. I go to therapy multiple times a month.”
Now two years after McNair’s 2024 arrest, AUC students are the latest community to join the national protests against the surveillance tech company. They say Flock’s cameras violate their privacy and pose a threat to their safety. In addition, they say they fear that the cameras located around their campus could make them more vulnerable to wrongful arrests and harassment from police.
With the help of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, students held a protest and a tour of the surveillance cameras that pepper the AUC on Oct. 21 to raise the student body’s awareness about the issue.
“It makes me fear those scenarios of wrongful suspicion,” said Terianna Telford, a junior at Spelman College. “Because I am a dark-skinned woman, and historically there have been stereotypes that dark-skinned women or just Black women as a whole look alike.”
Isaiah Tripp, a junior studying art history at Morehouse College, said there’s been no transparency from administrators about the cameras.
“It [makes me] very uncomfortable because what are they there for? Who is watching? … What are they looking for?” Tripp said.
“My number one thing is just take them down,” he said. “There’s no reason for them to be watching our campus, especially seeing that each campus has their own police department.”
Flock was founded in 2017 by three graduates from Georgia Tech. Since then, the Atlanta-based surveillance tech company has placed tens of thousands of its cameras in communities across the country.
The private company uses automated license plate reader cameras to gather data on vehicles, and that information is then used to apprehend those suspected of committing crimes. Law enforcement agencies that have contracts with Flock Safety can choose to opt into both a national and state search network that allows them to access data from other cameras within Flock’s system to find persons of interest outside their jurisdiction.
In the past two years, reports have come out about Flock’s camera logs being accessed by federal officials for immigration enforcement. The company has also come under fire for its cameras having security vulnerabilities, being misused by law enforcement officials, and leading to wrongful arrests.
“None of us voted to employ these surveillance cameras throughout our neighborhoods, and yet they still appeared,” said Quincy Butler, a junior studying political science at Morehouse.
Butler and his friend Zendo Rouson are leaders of the young Democratic Socialists of America chapter at the AUC and helped to organize the campus Flock tour.
“Personally, I’d say my biggest gripe with Flock is how the data is used by immigration enforcement, especially with how the Trump administration has ramped up. And with how students have also been targeted by the Trump administration, getting visas revoked and stuff like that,” Rouson said.
Last year, the Atlanta Community Press Collective reported that Atlanta police officials had conducted at least 15 searches using the city’s Flock license plate readers to assist in federal immigration operations.
Morehouse, Spelman, Clark Atlanta, and AUC officials did not respond to Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment about if they have an existing contract with Flock.
A public audit of the Dunwoody Police Department’s Flock system showed Morehouse and Clark Atlanta Police were able to access Dunwoody’s Flock camera data. The audit also showed that Dunwoody has an agreement with Morehouse to access its Flock data but not with Clark Atlanta.
Public streets that run through Clark Atlanta’s campus and the cameras on those roads could be owned by the Atlanta Police Department.
In 2017, the AUC announced the consortium had entered into an agreement with the city of Atlanta, and the Atlanta Police Foundation to install 40 surveillance cameras on campus that would be jointly monitored by Atlanta Police and each schools’ police department in order “to create a safer environment.”
In 2023, AUC schools made public statements about increasing security after Clark Atlanta sophomore Jatonne Sterling was shot and killed in a parking lot near campus. Sterling, who played on the university’s baseball team, was 20 years old when he died.
Jamaerra Harris-Cannonier, a junior studying biology at Clark Atlanta, said she’s never felt unsafe on campus.
“I know some of my friends do have concerns about safety, but I personally have never felt unsafe on my campus. There are a lot of security and police officers around,” Harris-Cannonier said.
“I just think it just comes down to transparency about the cameras. Like, what are they using the information for? Is it just to keep us safe, or is it for other purposes?” she said.
The AUC students’ protest comes months after students at Emory University demanded that university officials end the school’s contract with Flock Safety and remove its cameras from their campus. Laura Diamond, assistant vice president of university communications, told Capital B Atlanta in an email that the cameras were removed in September.
“Emory discontinued its use of Flock License Plate Readers effective September 1. Emory leaders decided not to renew the contract when the current term ended and the LPRs have been removed from campus,” Diamond said. “This decision does not represent a retreat from cultivating a culture of safety. Importantly, this decision retains institutional control over our safety infrastructure.”
“Emory will continue to invest in safety measures to protect students, faculty, staff, patients, visitors, and guests while maintaining a campus environment that is safe, welcoming, and consistent with our mission and values,” she continued.
Anayancy Ramos, a doctoral student at Emory and an organizer, said that while the fight isn’t over to ensure the privacy and safety of students on campus, she considers the cameras coming down a victory.
“There’s more to be done, but I hope that students learn that when we work together, Emory has to listen to us,” Ramos said. “When we work together to center the needs of our most vulnerable populations, then we can win. We can pressure Emory to do the right thing.”
As for the students at the AUC, they’re hoping they can increase awareness about the issue on their campus, get answers from administrators, and eventually bring the cameras down.
Myana Garrison, a junior studying health science at Spelman, encouraged students at the protest to take action to get rid of the cameras.
“Privacy is not earned. It is a right that is extended to everyone, regardless of where you live, regardless of what you look like,” Garrison said.
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