PALM BAY, FL (The Palm Bayer) — Less than twenty-four hours after Palm Bay City Council voted to eliminate the city’s automated license plate reader grid through emergency budget defunding, municipal grapple trucks took to public thoroughfares to pull surveillance hardware directly out of the earth.
On Friday afternoon, September 4, Palm Bay Public Works crews unbolted hardware across municipal rights-of-way, hoisted black steel poles into dump beds, and hauled all 51 camera stations into city storage yards. Council members celebrated the 4-1 defunding vote as a clean, definitive severance from private contractor Flock Group, Inc.
Key Takeaways:
• What Happened: Palm Bay defunded its 51-camera Flock surveillance grid on September 3, but now faces a 148-page federal wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit in Orlando federal court.
• Why Residents Care: The lawsuit exposes a five-year absence of ALPR audit policies within PBPD and reveals officers entered tag KPQQ61 into Flock under ‘Intel’ without a warrant or probable cause.
• The Retaliatory Pretext: Retaliatory ‘S20’ sovereign citizen dispatch tagging occurred after Niebuhr visited City Hall and PBPD headquarters to formally complain about warrantless vehicle tracking.
• The Monell Nexus: Paragraphs 195-196 formally tie Niebuhr to Farley v. City of Palm Bay (Officer Derrick Mitchell) and Fisher v. City of Palm Bay (Lance Fisher whistleblower memo), establishing municipal custom liability.
Read the full investigation, verified transcripts, and public records at The Palm Bayer:
https://news.thepalmbayer.com/news/flock-niebuhr-federal-lawsuit/
Primary Source Court Records:
• First Amended Complaint (Doc 38): https://news.thepalmbayer.com/assets/pdf/Niebuhr-v-Brown-Doc38-Amended-Complaint.pdf
• Executed Palm Bay Flock Agreement (Exhibit A): https://news.thepalmbayer.com/assets/pdf/Palm-Bay-Flock-Safety-Contract-Exhibit-A.pdf
So Rob Medina was Mayor when the PBPD instituted these cameras? Who gave the police dept permission to place the cameras?