Three York County 19-year-olds face criminal charges after allegedly destroying two Flock surveillance cameras in Chester County, highlighting the same license plate reader technology Fort Mill and Tega Cay police operate.

James MacMillan Ryerson of Catawba, Samuel Jonathan Carlisle of McConnells and Blaze Lawrence Fuller of Rock Hill are each charged with malicious damage to property and conspiracy, The Herald reported. Arrest warrants allege the three cut down and hammered two cameras between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 15. All three were released on bail. No trial dates have been set.

The warrants state the suspects acted "with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population to influence government policy."

Chester County Sheriff Max Dorsey said in a statement that disagreement with the cameras is a legitimate right, but that damaging them is a crime, not a protest.

Fort Mill, Tega Cay run same cameras

Fort Mill police, Tega Cay police and the York County Sheriff's Office all operate Flock cameras. The sheriff's office runs 19 of the devices across the county.

The arrests come amid growing backlash against the technology in York County. A pending lawsuit filed in June alleges a Flock camera misread a Lake Wylie man's license plate on Feb. 14, 2024, leading deputies to hold him at gunpoint for five minutes at his neighborhood mailbox center before realizing the car was not stolen. The sheriff's office attributed the misread to an illegal tinted license plate cover on the man's car.

The sheriff's office acknowledged the error in an internal affairs report nine months after the stop, stating it "resulted from erroneous information associated with a Flock alert," the Post and Courier reported Aug. 18. The office has not commented on the lawsuit.

Sheriff Tony Breeden has defended the cameras, tying 250 incident resolutions in the past year to Flock hits. In a July 21 video posted to the sheriff's office social media, Breeden said his agency has "put good restrictions on who can use it, who can access it, the case numbers that have to be entered to utilize it … We are in the process of trying to add a transparency portal to our website."

That video drew nearly 12,000 comments.

Public defender calls for warrant requirement

B.J. Barrowclough, the 16th Circuit public defender whose office handles the majority of criminal cases in York County, has proposed a compromise: require police to obtain a warrant before accessing accumulated Flock data and require human confirmation of any AI-generated hit before officers stop or detain someone.

Online petitions to end Flock use in York and Chester counties have gathered more than 2,000 signatures combined, according to the Deflock York County SC and Chester County Privacy Coalition Facebook pages.

Statewide momentum

The controversy extends beyond York County. Oconee County Council voted 4-1 on Tuesday, Aug. 18, to give first reading to a Protection from Mass Surveillance Ordinance that would prohibit county resources from supporting surveillance systems that compile searchable movement histories, FITSNews reported. The S.C. Association of Counties believes Oconee is the first county in the state to take that step. The ordinance needs two more readings before it can become law.

Flock places its error rate at nine per 1 million alerts. The company also reduced its data retention period from 30 days to one week.

Residents who want to report information about the Chester County camera damage can contact the Chester County Sheriff's Office.