Last week, a 75-year-old man with a history of dementia ran out of gas while driving and got lost in Roanoke.
The city’s police department was able to use Flock license plate reader technology to locate the man and return him to his family, Paris Lewbel, public information officer with Flock, said in an email Wednesday.
Thirty-seven license plate readers and other cameras are active throughout the city. According to the city’s privacy policy, located on its Flock transparency page, that technology should only be used for criminal investigations and active investigations related to missing or endangered persons. The data the city collects is purged every 21 days.
The city is now looking at installing 75 more Flock devices. These new devices aren’t cameras, but Flock’s Raven gunshot detectors that alert the police when gunshots and other noises, like racing cars, car crashes and fireworks, occur.
On April 20, the Roanoke City Council voted 5-2 to approve encroachment permits for the new technology, with Councilman Nick Hagen and Vice Mayor Terry McGuire voting against the permits. It is a first step toward implementation, and contracts will need to be signed before the cameras can be installed.
The city would pay for the Raven devices with $57,000 in grant funding from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Program. The program provides states, tribes and local governments with funding to support personnel, equipment and training for criminal justice or civil proceedings, according to its website.
The grant’s site states the funding can be used for a variety of resources, including law enforcement programs, prosecution and court programs, prevention and education programs, corrections programs, drug treatment and enforcement programs, technology improvement programs and mental health programs.
Payton Mayo, police department spokesperson, said in an email that the city chose to use the grant funding to expand Flock technology to reduce gun-related violence and to locate and assist victims faster.
In 2025, Roanoke saw 25 gun violence incidents, according to a report published by the police department in January. There was a 55% reduction in non-fatal shooting incidents in the city in 2024 and 2025 when compared to 2022 and 2023.
Agenda documents from Monday’s meeting detail the city addresses of where each gunshot detector would be located: 50 in Northwest Roanoke, 16 in Southeast Roanoke, eight in Southwest Roanoke and one in Northeast Roanoke. Over half of the city’s non-fatal shooting incidents in 2025 occurred in the Northwest quadrant of the city.
Deputy Chief Adam Puckett, who answered the council’s questions about the new tech during last week’s meeting, said the department’s analyst team decided where the devices would be located based on where the most active calls for service are in the city for gunshots.
He said the tech is trained to ignore human voices, and that it does not actively record noises until it is triggered by gunshots or the other listed noises.
Multiple residents spoke during the meeting to share concerns with the council about implementing this tech.
Some residents and council members noted privacy concerns. Others supported the potential for safety improvements with the devices.
Justin White, who works for a small cybersecurity boutique called Stratum Security, told the council on Monday that he is an “ethical hacker.” He said he believes that Roanoke’s Flock systems are not secure, and that Flock needs to overhaul its security processes before Roanoke brings more devices into the city.
Other residents, like Megan Peterson and Scott Duvall, noted that AI systems often make mistakes, and that there could be potential for stalking or wrongful arrests with the tech.
Multiple people who came to speak said they had only found out about this agenda item that day. Amelia Anderson, who noted a lack of public awareness on the subject, said expanding the surveillance system is “not only unnecessary but deeply concerning.”
“Adding more powerful monitoring capabilities without clear safeguards moves us in a direction that residents find concerning,” she said.
Some council members took issue with privacy concerns surrounding the sensors.
Hagen said in an interview that while there is not a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to talking in public, he “tends to err on the side of caution.”
He noted that there is a “push and pull” of security versus addressing concerns about crime.
McGuire said he voted no on the encroachment permits because of the reported inaccuracies that he has heard with these systems.
“I’m worried about what too many false positives could look like with police ready for a gun fight when it’s just kids setting off firecrackers,” McGuire said in an interview.
McGuire said the council was not informed of the other options that were available for the grant funding. He said he would have chosen crisis intervention or mental health resources over this.
He said the decision to place most of the cameras in Northwest Roanoke “gave him pause” with the potential for inaccuracies. “I generally think our police are doing a good job,” McGuire said, “I just think there are better ways to do community policing.”
Councilman Phazhon Nash said at the meeting that some people in Northwest Roanoke, where a majority of residents are Black, don’t feel comfortable calling the police when they hear something concerning. He said while living in Northwest Roanoke, he has called the police multiple times to report hearing gunshots, but was usually not able to say where they had come from.
Nash said he’s heard from people who have asked him to get cameras put in Eureka Park and other neighborhoods to stop vandalism.
“So there’s interest, people want to feel safe,” Nash said. “Different things make us all feel safe. Different lived experiences make us feel safe. So we have to balance that.”
Councilwoman Evelyn Powers noted that her son, who used to be a medic, often said people with gunshot wounds would have lived if they had gotten to the hospital sooner.
Puckett added that with serious gunshot wounds, “seconds and minutes matter.”
He said the contract, if signed, would be active for two years. City Attorney Laura Carini said she would look into whether or not the city could end that contract earlier, and Councilwoman Vivian Sanchez-Jones suggested adding a clause that would allow for that.
Martinsville implemented this same technology in 2025, and terminated it at the beginning of this year, police Capt. Ben Peters said in an interview.
Peters said the sensors did not pick up on every gunshot that occurred, and that sometimes it would pick up sounds from cars and trains. But he said it helped lower response times to shootings with the immediate alert system, and helped with timely evidence collection.
He said while the audio sensors were a useful tool, they had been paid for with grant money that had run out, and the city couldn’t budget for the tech out of pocket.
“Overall, it was a useful tool, but when it comes to cost, we had more successes out of [license plate readers] so with a limited budget, we’re focusing on the LPR versus the Raven,” Peters said.
