BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Gainesville Police Chief Nelson Moya told the City Commission during an August 6 quarterly update that the department is continuing to use Flock cameras as part of its public safety strategy while confronting a 22% rise in violent crime compared with last year.
Gainesville Police Department (GPD) Chief Nelson Moya opened the quarterly presentation by introducing Assistant Police Chief Efrain Torres, pictured above.
Moya reminded Commissioners that GPD recorded a 16% overall drop in crime and a 10% decrease in violent crime from 2024 to 2025. For the first six months of 2026, overall crime fell another 6%, but violent crime moved in the opposite direction, climbing 22% from last year. The increases included a 133% rise in homicides, a 27% increase in rapes, a 22% increase in robberies, and a 20% increase in aggravated assaults. Addressing the rape statistics, Moya said, “I want you to focus on what that means in terms of actual cases: it’s gone from 74 to 94… We’re only talking about 20 extra cases.”
Moya said GPD’s review of rape reports found “an uptick in some of our houseless encampments,” adding that the department hopes those numbers decline as outreach and services continue for people living in encampments. “The cases that I have seen in our houseless encampments are cases that are violent in nature,” he said, noting that “some exceptional violence” has heightened the agency’s concern.
Confirmed shots-fired incidents increased from 11 in the first quarter of 2026 to 14 in the second quarter. Seven people were shot in each quarter, while suicides rose from three to five.
Domestic violence
Captain Summer Hallett said GPD has assigned an additional detective to support the department’s recent emphasis on domestic violence cases. She said GPD representatives met in June and July with the Child Advocacy Center, Peaceful Paths, the State Attorney’s Office, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, the University of Florida Police Department, victim advocates, Elder Affairs, the Combined Communications Center, and the Alachua County Crisis Center.
GPD has committed to writing reports on all domestic disturbances, whether or not anyone is charged, “because sometimes, if those go undocumented, they will escalate… to violence,” Hallett said. She said GPD would like to provide services to families before it gets to that point. GPD is also updating its domestic violence policies, along with the sexual battery policy and other criminal investigations policies.
One idea that came out of the meetings was to have a single email address for reporting violations of domestic violence injunctions so the victim doesn’t have to wait until victim advocates or detectives are in the office.
Flock cameras
Mayor Harvey Ward mentioned recent social media posts from a person “who was absolutely convinced that we’ve spent millions of dollars on Flock cameras at the City of Gainesville, and it gets out of hand pretty quickly, what people believe about what’s actually happening.” He said he had asked Moya to be prepared to talk about GPD’s use of Flock cameras.
Chief Moya began by expressing his “support of technology that helps us fight crime… It is a tool, provided that tool has some safeguards, so it is not used irresponsibly.” He said, “At last check, we have 10 of them, 10 different locations, and… about five other locations through another vendor; both provide the same data.”
Chief Moya: “Flock, even with a subpoena, will not give us any data past 30 days.”
He said GPD’s contract with Flock allows the servers to retain the data for up to 30 days: “Flock, even with a subpoena, will not give us any data past 30 days. It’s also important to note that Flock and their servers are under the regulations stipulated by the DOJ through the FBI, hence through FDLE, and hence [Florida’s] Criminal Justice Information System; they are the ones that regulate the technical aspect of the storage, as they inspect Flock.”
Moya said he was not aware of any local breaches or misuses of Flock data. He said nobody sits and monitors the Flock cameras; the cameras capture a tag, and the system pulls the registration information for the tag and checks that the registered owner has a valid driver’s license. Moya said, “It does not have a facial recognition component.” He said it also provides alerts for Amber Alerts that are tied to a specific tag, along with stolen vehicles and stolen tags.
Moya said the agency can also do specific searches: “For example, if we know that we’re dealing with a shooting suspect and he’s driving a black Mazda, we can input that to the system so that it gives us alerts on black Mazdas — but beyond that, it is strictly and solely used [on a historical basis], based on reported crimes.”
Moya said the cameras are important “from a public safety aspect: the cases that I know for sure have yielded success… [are] irreplaceable.”
Chief Moya: “If you’re a police officer, you can’t sit there [and] type in a tag [without entering] an active case number.”
Moya said GPD has “parameters [and] policies in place internally… that manage who enters our portal… If you’re a police officer, you can’t sit there [and] type in a tag [without entering] an active case number.” An administrator than tracks which cases are being entered, “to ensure that it is relevant to public safety. So there is no free-for-all, where we can sit there and look up a tag to see if a Commissioner is going by this intersection at what time.”
Moya concluded, “It is a network that is extremely beneficial to law enforcement in general, not solely here, but throughout our country.”
Ward asked Moya to confirm that GPD’s Flock cameras “are specifically license plate readers,” and Moya said that was correct. Ward added, “Flock has other kinds of cameras, but we are using license plate readers”; Moya again confirmed that was correct.
“A process of inspection, audit, and accountability”
Moya said it’s his responsibility to “infuse a process of inspection, audit, and accountability” around access to the data.
Commissioner Bryan Eastman said he wanted to do a “deep dive” into that at a future meeting: “What we’re talking about is a much larger question about how we collect data, how we share that data, how much our police department utilizes that data, and how we make sure it’s not misused.”
Commissioner James Ingle said, “As I’ve found with almost every part of the City, I’m consistently impressed with how much outside the normal job description people think of, when they think of a police department, a fire department, Parks and Rec, or any of that – like, how over and above pretty much every part of the City does, and I think this shows a lot of that.”
