Flint police identify suspicious device in mayor’s office as no threat
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FLINT, MI (WJRT) — The Flint Police Department is closing the investigation into an electronic device found in the mayor’s office.
Flint Interim Police Chief Phil Hart said investigators found it posed no threat to workers in the mayor’s office after taking a closer look at the device.
A police command officer discovered the device in a desk drawer. Police initially described it as a surveillance device, but later said they were investigating whether it could record or transmit anything.
Hart said the device actually records key strokes on the computer and has no way of transmitting data outside the office.
“Which quite honestly is the same thing that IT has the capacity to do at any location where you have a computer,” he said. “In a sense of recording, most people think of audio and visual — and this does not have that capacity.”
Hart said the device poses no threat to anyone in the mayor’s office.
“I have no reason to believe that anybody was trying to do anything nefarious,” he said.
Investigators are not sure how long the device had been in the drawer. Hart believes it could have been there for years, which is why police did not talk with members of past mayor administrations.
“Rather than waste a lot of resources and try to accuse someone of something, it’s just determined that we found it, it wasn’t connected and, therefore, it wasn’t of any real concern for safety or information being put out,” Hart said.
Neeley deferred most of the discussion about the device to Hart. But he appreciated the police department finding and investigating the device, which remains in the drawer where it was located.
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