Smyrna has filled out the roster of a new resident task force charged with keeping an eye on the city's license plate readers, surveillance cameras and drones, just months after two residents urged the council to cancel the contract. The eight-member Public Safety Technology Task Force includes a retired municipal attorney, a cybersecurity specialist and a federal patent examiner, among others appointed by Mayor Derek Norton and the Smyrna City Council.
Who's On the Panel
According to WSB-TV, the task force is made up of one appointee from each of Smyrna's seven wards plus a mayoral pick. Ward 3's Lem Ward brings two decades at the City of Atlanta's law department and municipal law experience at Dentons US LLP before retiring in 2022, while Ward 5's Doward Wilkinson has a background in enterprise data protection, cybersecurity and cloud security evaluation. Ward 4's Doug Godbold works as a primary patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and also serves on the Smyrna Housing Authority board.
Rounding out the group, Ward 6's Luci Hogue directs transaction services at an Atlanta commercial real estate firm and previously worked in community outreach for Kennesaw's Town Center district. Ward 7's Cody Hugley serves as treasurer on a homeowners association board and regularly attends public meetings on residents' behalf, and Ward 1's Brian Ollison brings a background in technology and user-centered design from his work with the Montclair Townhomes HOA. Ward 2's Skyler Akins spent nearly a decade with the City of Atlanta in procurement, compliance and policy work. Mayor Norton's appointee, Mike Smith, is an engineering manager at the Atlanta tech firm Renewed Vision who leads software teams building products used worldwide, per the same WSB-TV report.
A Contract Born From Pushback
The task force grows out of a $5.7 million, 10-year contract the Smyrna City Council unanimously approved in December 2025, bringing 70 cameras total, including two drones, and a mobile security trailer into the city's public safety arsenal, according to WSB-TV. Smyrna's relationship with Flock Safety runs deeper than most cities': the company opened a $10 million, 97,000-square-foot manufacturing and drone assembly plant there in April 2025, a project the Office of Governor Brian P. Kemp said was projected to create roughly 210 local jobs over three years.
That dual role as both customer and manufacturing host became a flashpoint during an August city council meeting, when residents used the public-comment period to press officials to cancel or scale back the contract, arguing that the combined camera and drone network amounts to an intrusive tracking system on residents' daily movements, according to Citizen Portal. City documents say the new task force is meant to identify policies and safeguards that support public safety while protecting residents' privacy and civil liberties.
State Law Sets the Boundaries
Any safeguards the task force recommends will operate inside limits already set by state law. Georgia Code § 35-1-22, enacted in 2018, requires law enforcement agencies to destroy license plate reader data within 30 months of collection unless it concerns a toll violation or a law-enforcement purpose, according to Justia Law. The same statute makes unauthorized use of that data for non-law-enforcement purposes a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature, as reported by FindLaw.
Captured plate data itself is also shielded from the Georgia Open Records Act, though agency contracts, invoices and operating policies remain public, per The Roundabout. That carve-out limits public access to the raw location records the cameras generate.
A Statewide Reckoning Over Misuse
Smyrna's oversight push lands amid a wave of misuse scandals that have rattled confidence in automated license plate readers across Georgia. A Clayton County deputy was charged in September, and Albany police requested a GBI investigation in June before five officers were arrested in July. State Senator John Albers joined a task force to consider whether legislation is needed, according to the Cobb County Courier.
Flock Safety itself has responded to the scrutiny. In August, the company announced platform-wide changes, including lowering its default recommended data retention window from 30 days to seven and adding mandatory audit tools to flag abnormal search patterns, reports The Current GA. Police officials elsewhere in the region have pointed to cases like the May 2023 capture of an active shooter suspect from a Midtown Atlanta hospital, aided by a Flock camera in the Smyrna area, as evidence of the technology's investigative value.
Residents with questions or concerns about the task force's work can email [email protected] to have them addressed at a public meeting. Smyrna's debate echoes similar fights playing out across metro Atlanta, including a Cobb County town hall about cameras and among Fulton County students who have pushed to remove school-campus cameras.
