Danny Clawson
Role at the time: Democratic candidate for Roanoke City Council
Condemned
Statement summary
Danny Clawson said he is clearly opposed to Flock and Raven operating in Roanoke and said the city should invest in community-based violence prevention instead of surveillance.
“So I'm very clearly opposed to Flock and Raven as companies in our city because we cannot surveil our way to safety, right? We need to be investing in community-based solutions like we've been doing with things like Fed Up and these organizations, social networks uh, that are changing the way young people react and respond to violence.”
Open source (opens in a new tab)Melrose Mixer: Nine Council Candidates Spar Over Schools, Flock Tech, and Housing ReformCandidate answers in the Flock Cameras and Surveillance section of the article
Why we used this label
The reference point is whether networked license-plate reader systems such as Flock should exist and be used. Asked whether candidates would remove the company from Roanoke, Clawson said he is clearly opposed to Flock and Raven as companies in the city and that the city cannot surveil its way to safety. That is a rejection of the system in Roanoke, not a call for limits, so Condemned fits.