By Greg Chandler
Zeeland Record
A 19-year-old Holland man is scheduled for a probable cause hearing today in 58th District Court in Holland on charges he damaged automated license plate-reading cameras around Ottawa County.
Jerod Allen Folkert is facing felony charges of malicious destruction of police property. He was arraigned on the charge Aug. 21 by District Judge Anna White. He was scheduled for a probable cause hearing today and a preliminary examination next Tuesday in 58th District Court. Folkert is currently free on $5,000 bond.
The Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that multiple Flock Safety cameras have been damaged in the county in the last month, following a nationwide trend of vandalism of automated licensed plate readers. One of those incidents was reported to the sheriff’s office on July 29. Damage from that incident was estimated at $1,500-$2,000, Capt. Jake Sparks of the sheriff’s office said in the news release.
A suspect was identified in the case and the damage report was turned over to the county prosecutor for review. Charges were authorized on Aug. 19.
Flock Safety cameras are automated readers that record license plates, vehicle characteristics, and the time and location a vehicle passed a camera. Such cameras are in use in more than 6,000 communities across the country, according to the company’s website.
The charges against Folkert come as some county residents are raising concerns about whether the cameras are doing more than take pictures of license plates. Several residents spoke out against the cameras at an Aug. 25 county Board of Commissioners meeting.
“These AI-powered cameras are the literal eyeballs for a supercomputer run by a private company,” Chip VanderZwaag said at that meeting. “They are highly capable of capturing detailed images of every vehicle and family coming and going from Borculo Christian Reformed Church, Borculo Christian School, and the rest of our activities on the roads.
“This private corporation has no right to build a mass surveillance dragnet of our community and places of worship. Worse, the sheriff has no way to audit or monitor how this private company utilizes our data.”
VanderZwaag called for the county board to pass a resolution requiring Sheriff Eric DeBoer to remove the Flock Safety cameras and terminate all contracts with the company.
Matthew Wohlford, pastor of Harlem Reformed Church in Olive Township, expressed similar concerns on constitutional grounds.
“I believe we can support law enforcement while still believing and defending the Fourth Amendment (against unreasonable search and seizure). We can pursue criminals without treating every innocent civilian as a potential suspect … A free country and a free county does not track its citizens with mass surveillance,” Wohlford said.
Commissioners are expected to discuss the Flock Safety cameras at a future work session, Board Chairman Josh Brugger of Grand Haven said.
DeBoer issued a statement after the meeting, saying he welcomes an opportunity to discuss with the board about how the cameras work.
“I've been following the national conversation around this technology closely, and I think it's important to say plainly: a lot of the concern being raised is based on misinformation or a genuine misunderstanding of what this system actually does,” DeBoer said in his statement.
“To be clear about that, it captures an image of a license plate already visible on a public roadway, the same information any deputy could lawfully observe and photograph without a warrant. It checks that plate against law enforcement databases for stolen vehicles, missing persons, and Amber Alerts, and notifies our office of a match. It does not run the plate with the Secretary of State to find the registered owner, it does not use facial recognition, it does not know who's driving, it does not track where a vehicle is headed, and it is not used for traffic enforcement. Every search of our system requires a documented reason, and no enforcement action is ever taken based on an alert alone; deputies independently verify every hit before acting.”
DeBoer said that since Flock Safety cameras were installed in Ottawa County in 2024, the technology has led to 124 arrests, the recovery of more than $906,000 in stolen property, and the recovery of 72 stolen vehicles and 11 illegally-possessed firearms.
“It's helped identify suspects in serious violent crimes, including assisting in the ongoing investigation of a shooting that injured five people, an armed robbery, multiple road-rage shootings, and a suspect facing a ten-count criminal sexual conduct charge, and helped bring home missing and endangered residents, including elderly community members and at-risk youth, safely and quickly,” the sheriff said.
DeBoer also addressed the recent spate of destruction of cameras around the county, including the incident that led to Folkert’s arrest.
“I want to be clear that public debate about this technology is welcome,” DeBoer said. “Destroying publicly funded property is a criminal act, not a form of protest, and it will not be tolerated.”
The city of Zeeland early last year purchased Flock Safety cameras. The purchase did not come up for a vote of the City Council because of a city purchasing policy that grants authority to the city manager if the purchase is less than $10,000, Interim City Manager Kevin Plockmeyer said.
“We discussed it (with the council) as part of the budgetary process,” Plockmeyer said.
The city pays about $6,000 per year for the cameras as well as the associated software, Plockmeyer said.
“They are a very valuable investigative tool for police agencies,” Police Chief Tim Jungel said in an interview last Friday with the Zeeland Record.
Jungel said the first use of the Flock Safety cameras in Zeeland helped law enforcement safely find a missing person who had Alzheimer’s disease.
“It was not a person from our community, but he was lost, and through our cameras it alerted us to him being in the area,” he said.
Jungel points out that the vast majority of images captured by Flock Safety cameras are deleted after a certain period of time.
“Ninety-nine percent of the images captured are deleted and never searched. They just sit there and then end up deleted, and no one is aware they are even (on camera) because it doesn’t get used,” Jungel said.
“The (law enforcement) agencies own the data. The images that are captured by each camera is owed by the agency that owns that camera. They can set that retention period, and once those images are deleted at the end of that retention period, they are permanently deleted.”
A student at Kettering University in Flint, Josh Tewolde, last month filed a lawsuit against Genesee County after the county refused to release key public records concerned its use of the Flock Safety cameras.
Tewolde, who is being represented by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, is asking the court to require Genesee County to disclose records requested under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, including a map of Flock camera locations, audit logs showing who access the camera data and when, and records of scans involving Tewolde’s vehicle.
While Genesee County produced some documents, it withheld the camera-location information, audit logs and vehicle-scan data. The county claimed that Flock owns the requested information even though Genesee County’s contract with Flock states that the county owns its data.
“This case is about a fundamental principle: When government uses surveillance technology, the public has a right to audit how it is being used,” said Steve Delie, senior attorney at the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. “Genesee County can’t outsource transparency to a private vendor. If the county owns the data, FOIA applies - period.”
Zeeland Record
A 19-year-old Holland man is scheduled for a probable cause hearing today in 58th District Court in Holland on charges he damaged automated license plate-reading cameras around Ottawa County.
Jerod Allen Folkert is facing felony charges of malicious destruction of police property. He was arraigned on the charge Aug. 21 by District Judge Anna White. He was scheduled for a probable cause hearing today and a preliminary examination next Tuesday in 58th District Court. Folkert is currently free on $5,000 bond.
The Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that multiple Flock Safety cameras have been damaged in the county in the last month, following a nationwide trend of vandalism of automated licensed plate readers. One of those incidents was reported to the sheriff’s office on July 29. Damage from that incident was estimated at $1,500-$2,000, Capt. Jake Sparks of the sheriff’s office said in the news release.
A suspect was identified in the case and the damage report was turned over to the county prosecutor for review. Charges were authorized on Aug. 19.
Flock Safety cameras are automated readers that record license plates, vehicle characteristics, and the time and location a vehicle passed a camera. Such cameras are in use in more than 6,000 communities across the country, according to the company’s website.
The charges against Folkert come as some county residents are raising concerns about whether the cameras are doing more than take pictures of license plates. Several residents spoke out against the cameras at an Aug. 25 county Board of Commissioners meeting.
“These AI-powered cameras are the literal eyeballs for a supercomputer run by a private company,” Chip VanderZwaag said at that meeting. “They are highly capable of capturing detailed images of every vehicle and family coming and going from Borculo Christian Reformed Church, Borculo Christian School, and the rest of our activities on the roads.
“This private corporation has no right to build a mass surveillance dragnet of our community and places of worship. Worse, the sheriff has no way to audit or monitor how this private company utilizes our data.”
VanderZwaag called for the county board to pass a resolution requiring Sheriff Eric DeBoer to remove the Flock Safety cameras and terminate all contracts with the company.
Matthew Wohlford, pastor of Harlem Reformed Church in Olive Township, expressed similar concerns on constitutional grounds.
“I believe we can support law enforcement while still believing and defending the Fourth Amendment (against unreasonable search and seizure). We can pursue criminals without treating every innocent civilian as a potential suspect … A free country and a free county does not track its citizens with mass surveillance,” Wohlford said.
Commissioners are expected to discuss the Flock Safety cameras at a future work session, Board Chairman Josh Brugger of Grand Haven said.
DeBoer issued a statement after the meeting, saying he welcomes an opportunity to discuss with the board about how the cameras work.
“I've been following the national conversation around this technology closely, and I think it's important to say plainly: a lot of the concern being raised is based on misinformation or a genuine misunderstanding of what this system actually does,” DeBoer said in his statement.
“To be clear about that, it captures an image of a license plate already visible on a public roadway, the same information any deputy could lawfully observe and photograph without a warrant. It checks that plate against law enforcement databases for stolen vehicles, missing persons, and Amber Alerts, and notifies our office of a match. It does not run the plate with the Secretary of State to find the registered owner, it does not use facial recognition, it does not know who's driving, it does not track where a vehicle is headed, and it is not used for traffic enforcement. Every search of our system requires a documented reason, and no enforcement action is ever taken based on an alert alone; deputies independently verify every hit before acting.”
DeBoer said that since Flock Safety cameras were installed in Ottawa County in 2024, the technology has led to 124 arrests, the recovery of more than $906,000 in stolen property, and the recovery of 72 stolen vehicles and 11 illegally-possessed firearms.
“It's helped identify suspects in serious violent crimes, including assisting in the ongoing investigation of a shooting that injured five people, an armed robbery, multiple road-rage shootings, and a suspect facing a ten-count criminal sexual conduct charge, and helped bring home missing and endangered residents, including elderly community members and at-risk youth, safely and quickly,” the sheriff said.
DeBoer also addressed the recent spate of destruction of cameras around the county, including the incident that led to Folkert’s arrest.
“I want to be clear that public debate about this technology is welcome,” DeBoer said. “Destroying publicly funded property is a criminal act, not a form of protest, and it will not be tolerated.”
The city of Zeeland early last year purchased Flock Safety cameras. The purchase did not come up for a vote of the City Council because of a city purchasing policy that grants authority to the city manager if the purchase is less than $10,000, Interim City Manager Kevin Plockmeyer said.
“We discussed it (with the council) as part of the budgetary process,” Plockmeyer said.
The city pays about $6,000 per year for the cameras as well as the associated software, Plockmeyer said.
“They are a very valuable investigative tool for police agencies,” Police Chief Tim Jungel said in an interview last Friday with the Zeeland Record.
Jungel said the first use of the Flock Safety cameras in Zeeland helped law enforcement safely find a missing person who had Alzheimer’s disease.
“It was not a person from our community, but he was lost, and through our cameras it alerted us to him being in the area,” he said.
Jungel points out that the vast majority of images captured by Flock Safety cameras are deleted after a certain period of time.
“Ninety-nine percent of the images captured are deleted and never searched. They just sit there and then end up deleted, and no one is aware they are even (on camera) because it doesn’t get used,” Jungel said.
“The (law enforcement) agencies own the data. The images that are captured by each camera is owed by the agency that owns that camera. They can set that retention period, and once those images are deleted at the end of that retention period, they are permanently deleted.”
A student at Kettering University in Flint, Josh Tewolde, last month filed a lawsuit against Genesee County after the county refused to release key public records concerned its use of the Flock Safety cameras.
Tewolde, who is being represented by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, is asking the court to require Genesee County to disclose records requested under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, including a map of Flock camera locations, audit logs showing who access the camera data and when, and records of scans involving Tewolde’s vehicle.
While Genesee County produced some documents, it withheld the camera-location information, audit logs and vehicle-scan data. The county claimed that Flock owns the requested information even though Genesee County’s contract with Flock states that the county owns its data.
“This case is about a fundamental principle: When government uses surveillance technology, the public has a right to audit how it is being used,” said Steve Delie, senior attorney at the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. “Genesee County can’t outsource transparency to a private vendor. If the county owns the data, FOIA applies - period.”
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