Blue Springs Flock RecordPublic document archive

Sep 21 Council transcripts

Transcript · Robert Jestus & Adrian

Blue Springs City Council visitor comments, September 21, 2026. Resident transcription of City meeting video, not city minutes.

← Speakers · Jestus · Adrian · Council reply

Source

Robert Jestus

Position (from speech): Asks a future agenda on city-held analysis for Resolutions 87 and 108, success metrics before expansion, third-party audits, and terminate authority.

[Chair:] The first one I have is Robert Justice to speak about Flock cameras. Mr. Justice, if you're here, you got three minutes to tell us what you're thinking.

Mayor Lievsay, members of the Council. My name is Robert Jestus. I've lived in Blue Springs for 13 years. I'm a husband, a father of three, and a homeowner. Earlier this year, after learning around how $4.67 million was committed to expanding the city's Flock program over the next 10 years, I contacted the Council and filed Sunshine Law requests. I'm joined tonight by other Blue Springs residents who are concerned about the program.

In my request, I asked for the records the Council would need to judge the program, such as cost-benefit analysis, performance and crime analysis, effectiveness reports, and metrics used to justify the expansion. I also asked for outcome data, including search reports, arrests attributed, and investigations assisted. Finally, I asked for the policies governing the program, including who may search, how access is authorized, compliance reviews, and oversight documents.

The reply stated that there are “No Preexisting documents” for those items. The only metric produced was that as of July 15, 2026, there had been 618,781 alerts. Policy and audit questions were referred to Flock's transparency portal. A count of alerts and a vendor-supplied portal with anecdotal success stories is not city-authored evaluations or policies.

Interestingly enough, on September 14, our police chief told KCTV the department runs bi-weekly audits. I am unclear how there are no preexisting documents when the department is auditing itself. I'm not alleging Blue Springs officers have misused the system. The reports across the state and nation of other agencies misusing the system have been abundant enough that on August 26, our own Senator Josh Hawley launched an investigation into Flock and other surveillance systems. More recently, on September 16, Governor Kehoe signed Executive Order 26-18 with oversight requirements for state-funded agencies.

As Missouri's first Flock Safe City, Blue Springs has an opportunity to lead by example and provide a model for cities across the nation. We should not wait for the federal and state government to mandate the protection of our citizens' privacy.

Tonight, I ask the Council to place Flock Safe City on a future agenda that would cover at least these four points:

  1. Review what city-held analysis justified Resolutions 87 and 108, which committed funds from the public safety sales tax, or clearly state that an analysis was not completed.
  2. Either provide or commit to creating a process to evaluate the success of the program with publicly available reports residents can inspect on a regular cadence before any further expansion of Flock or similar surveillance systems, or clearly state that the Council will not monitor the program's success.
  3. Commit to ongoing third-party independent audits of the search and sharing activity designed to watch for the types of misuse we've seen documented in peer agencies. This commitment asks the City no longer rely solely on vendor-provided tools and self-auditing, or clearly state that the Council will not implement or enforce any oversight requirements.
  4. Assure the citizens of Blue Springs that the Council maintains the authority to terminate the program if success conditions are not met, or clearly state that the Council has no such authority and the program will continue indefinitely.

I have copies of my questions along with others that I have printed out for the Council. Who would I give those to?

[Chair:] Does that complete your comments? Thank you, Mr. Justice.

Adrian (late speaker form)

Chair introduced a late speaker appearance form as Adrien Klene (auto-caption spelling). Chair later thanked “Mr. James” in error after Hunter James had been called and was not present. Chair form spelling is not confirmed against posted minutes.

Position (from speech): Backs accountability asks; questions outcomes without driver ID / facial recognition; asks future-use safeguards for retained data.

[Chair:] Do have a late one here from Adrien Klene. Is Adrian in the room? Adrian, come on up. You got three minutes. Tell us what you're thinking.

Hey. So I think you did a great job of covering just about everything. I realize that we're at the point now where it's very hard to roll a lot of this stuff back, us being one of the first cities. I appreciate the focus on public safety. Some of my concerns are the lack of accountability, the lack of how we got to this place in the first place, and I just want to give a couple examples of where my concerns come from.

So, while I trust the Blue Springs Police and generally admire a lot of things they do, one of the things that I've run into in the past is that they cannot pursue anything against someone unless they can prove who was driving. So we've had some issues with some kid driving crazy in the neighborhood. It's come up many times. I think a lot of these people might even know who this kid is. Every single time, we're met with the issue that if you can't prove who was driving, we can't do anything about it. So my question then becomes, if we're not using facial recognition data, what crimes are we actually solving with this? Now, I think it was covered greatly that we need some statistics on this, some sort of accountability, but there seems to be a double standard here given to me directly by the Blue Springs Police.

Another thing that I want to point out is that regardless of your stance on immigration enforcement, doesn't matter. It's been proven that the US government is willing to use facial recognition data on its own citizens. There are plenty of accounts of them scanning faces in protests. Now, this is one of those examples of it might not affect you today, but I want everybody to take a moment here to critically think and understand when the side that you don't like is in office, how will this technology be used? And again, right now standards say that we can't use facial recognition data. That can always change and the data is retained. So we can always go back and run this facial recognition over data they already have. So my request would be then if we can get some sort of outline on how the data is going to be used, how that is enforced, and then some sort of prevention in the future of misuse. Right? I want future safeguards for how this data is going to be used. Thank you very much.

[Chair:] Thank you, Mr. James.

Council reply (chair / Mayor Lievsay, same night)

From the meeting audio (not formal minutes):

  • Thanked both speakers; recognized resident concern and prior Flock comments.
  • Called Flock a police-department tool they evaluate; said changes would be communicated to the public.
  • Said they will look over materials Jestus left and want Sunshine / records-request compliance.
  • Cited responsibility for public safety and for protecting rights.
  • Noted Council questions at prior approvals; said they will continue and share information as it becomes available.
  • No on-floor commitment to place Flock / Safe City on a future regular agenda.

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