Flock cameras are dividing Tennessee towns. Here’s the split in Murfreesboro.

Steven Gavel waits patiently for his turn at a Murfreesboro City Council meeting to speak about his opposition to Flock Safety cameras. In his lap sit neon flyers to pass out to others who feel the same way.

The surveillance company witnessed a furor in recent months and heightened scrutiny of its cameras and databases. Knoxville has done away with its Flock cameras, along with Coopertown, and those in Lebanon are questioning them.

In Murfreesboro, this tension has looked like an online petition that circulated this summer to “block Flock.” Instead, the city extended its contract with the tech giant for two more years.

Gavel said he doesn’t feel heard by those in power.

“I am very much against mass surveillance,” Gavel said. “I think that it breaks our Fourth Amendment rights. It allows the police to spy on us constantly, day in and day out.”

The night he spoke to the council, the Murfreesboro Police Department backed out of an agreement with Flock to integrate with the department’s drone program. That is something Gavel wanted to see.

“Warrantless searches are bad all the time, in my opinion,” Gavel said. “This includes Flock systems. This includes using drones to surveil whatever. So, I don’t want these systems to be integrated. I think that’s the main issue tonight, and millions of other Americans across the country would agree with me, whether they’re a hardcore MAGA supporter or a far-left communist.”

Continuing coverage: Surveillance

But members of the Murfreesboro Police Department see this differently from opponents. Police Chief Michael Bowen stood before council to explain his position. He said he felt like the department had been open to the public’s various opinions on the subject.

“For all these technology pieces, I think we have always tried to take the public’s privacy into consideration,” Bowen said. “I think we’ve been pretty open and transparent.”

MPD gave WPLN a tour of its real-time crime center, where Ryan Lawrence is the supervisor. He showed how his team monitors a wall of screens showing video feeds.

“If you had an armed subject call, and you know somebody called in and said that somebody had a gun and was standing with it [at a] specific intersection, that call comes in, it’s going to show up immediately on this call screen here,” he said.

Currently, the department has two dozen license plate readers through Flock, a gunshot detection system and more than 70 additional cameras throughout Murfreesboro.

Lawrence said the department has had more than 600 success stories with the cameras this year. That includes more than 100 cleared cases, and some arrests. But one of the biggest challenges has been public perception.

“The biggest thing is bridging that gap,” Lawrence said. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there on social media as far as you know what this technology does what it doesn’t do, what it can do and what it can’t do.”