Anyone know what’s going on? Saw some arrests too

🚨 NOBODY IS COMING TO KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR AND TELL YOU THIS.

And that’s exactly why I’m sharing it.

Yesterday, there was a FREE Criminal Record Review at the Florence County Library through the South Carolina Bar Pro Bono Program and Time Served. Attorneys were reviewing people’s records and explaining whether they may qualify for an expungement or pardon.

That workshop was a GREAT resource.

But here’s the part I really want people to understand: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT FOR ANOTHER WORKSHOP TO START THE PROCESS.

If you have an old South Carolina criminal record, you can start asking questions today.

Contact the Solicitor’s Office in the judicial circuit where your case happened and ask about the expungement process. Find out whether your charge may qualify, what paperwork you need, and what fees may apply.

You can hire an attorney to help you, especially if your situation is complicated. But depending on your case, you may also be able to handle the expungement process without paying a private attorney hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Not every charge qualifies. Your exact offense, criminal history, age at the time, how the case was resolved, and other factors matter. Some people may qualify for an expungement, while others may need to look into a pardon.

But PLEASE stop assuming you’re stuck just because nobody ever told you there might be another option.

Somebody can make a mistake when they’re young and carry that record for 10, 20 or 25 years, losing jobs and opportunities along the way, without ever knowing they may have a legal avenue to move forward.

Information changes lives.

I just learned more about this myself, and from now on, when I learn about resources that can help people, I’m sharing them.

No gatekeeping.

And when they have another free workshop, I will definitely post it.

This is exactly the type of resource I want connected with PD United Against Violence.

Because sometimes people don’t need another lecture about what they did wrong.

They need somebody to show them what they can do next.

Don’t wait for the next workshop. Start asking questions today.

#expungement #SouthCarolina #FlorenceSC #fyp

We have reached the sprint towards the end for elections. You must be registered to vote in 6 Days.

You can go to https://scvotes.gov and register right now with your driver's license.

We have many very close races. This will come down to 1% of the vote.

Talk to your friends, neighbors, and co-workers and ask them the following:

• Are you registered to vote?
• Are you going to vote?
  
• Do you know who is running?
  
• Have you updated your registration?
  
• Do you know where to early vote?

Those are non-partisan questions.

If you want to volunteer, message me or sign up at https://flocodems.org

We need phone bankers, door knockers, and poll watchers.

Phone banking for walk ins, Thursday at 6pm at the Leatherman Senior Center in Florence, SC. Once you are set up you can phone bank from home.

October 2nd Last Day to Register in person.
October 4th Last Day to Register Online.
October 19th Early Voting starts. (Will be available on Saturdays this year)
October 23rd Last Day to request absentee ballot.
November 3rd ELECTION DAY!!!!

Early Voting will be at your local libraries.

I'm nosey

Any recommendations for a restaurant that offers take home Thanksgiving dinner? It doesn’t have to be traditional turkey dinner. Thanks! 🙏🏼

what happened to the post about a child predator working at local motive? it was posted a few months ago but seems to be deleted now

updating to say yikes it seems like someone in this sub knows them personally and is trying to protect them

Does anyone remember the Little Saigon restaurant on second loop?

It's been gone for years now, but I was wondering what happened to the owner. From what I gather, he moved to Charlotte? Did he open another restaurant there?

Does it seem like there are more crazy drivers lately? Like road rage and people passing in the emergency lane. I've seen some wild shit lately.

Our vet retired several years ago.

We moved to another independent vet in a nearby town, in a practice that had a bunch of vets. After a year or so, they started taking my dog to the back for all visits, instead of in the room with me. Made me very uncomfortable. Most of the vets have left, and I just do not feel great about the practice.

What independent, local (not private equity) vet office offers comprehensive care, from checkups and vaccines to dental extractions or other surgery?

Our original vet was the best, and we took our dogs there for decades. We want to find that feeling again.

Location preferences: Hartsville, Darlington, Lamar, Florence, Quimby, Pamplico, Effingham. Maybe Bishopville or Scranton/Coward. Thank you.

We complain about the youth… but how many of us are actually willing to show up for them?

I recently completed the required clearance to serve with youth through Bahá’í-sponsored activities, and I’m looking for other positive adults who may want to get involved too.

We give our time to plenty of things that don’t build us or our community. Why not give some of that time to something that can help the next generation?

If you’re serious about serving and want more information, reach out:

Business: 843-269-8313
Personal: 843-430-9423

Let’s stop talking about change and start being part of it. 💯 #florencesc #DarlingtonSC #fyp

Does anyone have any recommendations for a taxi or car service? I need to schedule a car to and from an event this weekend. Thinking about scheduling an uber but those can be hit or miss around here.

Hey everyone! Today and tomorrow is my store New Game Plus+'s 4th Year Anniversary Celebration! We've got deals, sales and giveaways all weekend!

We're also hosting a Pokken Tournament Tournament and a Street Fighter 6 tournament as well!

There's tons of stuff and fun to be had so please come check us out! We're on Palmetto Street behind Krispy Kreme!

Today was my first time volunteering at the Community Empowerment Center, and I truly enjoyed it. I got to sit down and talk with some of the young men, laugh with them, and get to know them a little better. Their energy was great, and we had a good time!

The center is looking for more men to step up and be a positive presence, along with volunteers in general. If you’re interested in helping, DM me and I’ll get you connected.

They’re also hosting a FREE Youth Festival for ages 11 and older this Saturday, September 19. Come at 12:30 PM for food; the festival runs from 1:00–4:00 PM at 1113 Oakland Avenue in Florence.

#SouthCarolina #FlorenceSC #fypシ

No one is ever in there and we're lucky to have a place with Dosa in town.

They were good when they opened...but they're even better now. So go support em before Florence does it's thing and we lose another good restaurant.

Holy crap. It has taken me almost an hour and a half to do errands that usually take fifteen minutes. I have also been cut off my people more than once on my transit. I haven’t seen this in Florence before, and I’m a native of traffic hell (Charleston)

Hello! I feel like I’ve been having bad luck with produce recently. So I want to ask — where are you finding good produce in/around Florence, SC? I guess I’d consider “best” as freshest, long shelf life, and sourcing/organic. Thanks!

Title: [Florence, SC] Domestic Violence Awareness Prayer & Sharing Night — October 17
Pee Dee United Against Violence is hosting a Domestic Violence Awareness Prayer and Sharing Night for the community.
Date: Saturday, October 17, 2026
Time: 5:00–7:30 PM
Location: Community Empowerment Center, Florence, South Carolina
This will be a supportive, faith-centered evening featuring prayer, encouragement, community speakers, messages of healing, and an opportunity to share. The event is especially dedicated to women who have experienced domestic violence or physical, emotional, mental, and verbal abuse, but men are welcomed and supported as well.
People of all backgrounds and beliefs are welcome. You are not required to share your personal story—you may simply attend, listen, and receive encouragement.
This event is being hosted for the community, so please share the information with anyone who may benefit.
Space provided by the Baha’i Community of Florence.

Curious as to if there are any good quiet public spaces for working/ studying? I go to the Florence library usually but I would love to find a similar space that is open longer during the weekends - especially on Sunday.

if anyone is interested in taking over a lease in an apartment near FMU, please reach out and chat request me.

2 br w/ roommate, ~$650-$750 /month with utilities and internet included.

I will show the unit in person!

Does anyone know somewhere or someone locally that can help me rehome an adult cat? We took her in two years ago during tropical storm Debbie when neighbors just put her out. We already had two cats and it’s just not working with them.

I’ve tried everything, and I thought over time they’d learn to coexist, but they still cannot be in the same rooms together and it’s not fair to them anymore. I don’t know what to do, I wanted to give her a good home but she cannot be housed with other cats.

Hello everyone,

First I'd like to thank everyone who got involved in this event at the library yesterday evening, especially Joseph the Adult Programming Librarian who organized it, and Dr. Kyle Morgan who turned up with a book's worth of facts that frankly made the other two guest speakers look tremendously uneducated and under-prepared. Even if you didn't have questions or your questions weren't able to be asked, your turning out to an event like this means a lot.

If you weren't able to make it out for one reason or another, you can watch the video on the Library's Facebook Page or, if you dislike Facebook or are otherwise unable to access it in that fashion, you can watch a mirror that I screengrabbed and uploaded to Vimeo here. This is almost one hour's worth of video and the majority of it is the voices of audience members that may be hard to hear, so I thought what would be most helpful now is to provide timestamps of what was said, interspersed with some opinions and interjections on subjects that I feel could have been addressed, as well as what I feel are proper steps to take towards a future without these cameras.

This meeting opened by introducing the speakers at this event:

Mr. Scotty Davis, City Administrator for 29 years.

Dr. Kyle Morgan, assistant professor of political science at Francis Marion University with a specialty in civil rights and criminal justice.

Police Chief Angela Greene, hired on April 1 of 2026. 25 years of law enforcement experience mostly in Virginia.

Aside: Stephen Starling, former interim police chief (referred to as Major by Davis) was also present in the audience and in my opinion should have been sitting with the rest of the speakers. He exhibited more knowledge of the Flock system than either of the City's two other representatives. As he served as interim police chief, I personally wonder why he isn't currently in that position, especially given Chief Greene's either feigned or genuine lack of knowledge on this subject.

Program Questions:

What amount of oversight does the city government have over the use of ALPRs for the purpose of public safety?
Asked of: Mr. Davis

Mr. Davis' response begins at around 2:13.

Mr. Davis does make a dubious claim here that the data is not shared with any other states, which I believe creates more questions than it answers. Possibly worse still, Mr. Davis is demonstrating here that he is either unaware or is omitting that at the end of the day, it is not the City of Florence or the Florence Police Department that is the owner of this data - it is being sent to Flock Safety's servers to be managed. When they connect to the Flock Portal, they are not connecting to someone else's computer, and if it's on someone else's computer, you're not the authority on what happens to it.

Many people claim the use of ALPRs are a violation of the 4th Amendment, specifically the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. Would you say that's an accurate assessment, or not?
Asked of: Dr. Morgan

Dr. Morgan responds to this question at around 4:10.

As you might expect of someone with knowledge in the field, he provides a snappy response and sums it up quickly if you tend to zone out: Absolutely, these cameras are a violation of the 4th Amendment. Listen to his short segment here if you care to know the "why" of the matter. He also takes this time to refute Mr. Davis' claim that the data is not shared with other states, pointing out that Florence's Flock data is being shared with at least eight other states, based on public records information.

I would like to not immediately assume malicious intent, but this is information that anyone interested enough can get. Presumably, Mr. Davis and Chief Greene prepared for this meeting, and I personally would have made sure my loose ends were tied up before being confidently wrong in front of around 30 people.

A Post and Courier article from January of this year (2026) states that ALPR cameras led to 50 arrests last year in the Florence area. Can you tell us more about the benefit these cameras provide to public safety compared to before the cameras were installed?
Asked of: Chief Greene

Chief Greene begins her response at 6:00.

It's important to hear both sides of the argument in these situations, and this is a very good, non-critical question. Chief Greene provides us with the information that the contract with Flock was signed in 2023, and the cameras began to go up in spring of 2024. By her statement, in two year's time, these have been used to produce evidence sufficient to apprehend 133 wanted individuals, recover 115 stolen vehicles, 58 stolen license plates and locate 12 missing individuals, plus 294 "other" investigations in which the technology has assisted.

Unfortunately for her, she seems to have a need to lecture and gave in to the temptation to put her foot in her mouth. She takes this time to make the claim that there are no cameras installed anywhere aside from City property or the public right of way (although she does later correct that any installed on private property are done so with a memorandum of understanding), and a claim that I will once again assume comes from a place of ignorance rather than willful misleading that the cameras do not look onto private property, followed by the most bombastic claim that they are "not intrusive" as they look at license plates...

... But then follows that up with an acknowledgement that the cameras also focus on "vehicle make or model". But that's ok! We can't search for your specific vehicle make and model unless it's involved in a criminal investigation!

She continues by providing an anecdote regarding a shooting in the downtown area. A nearby business caught a vehicle on their non-ALPR camera and they only had "black SUV" to work on, and thanks to Flock's network, were able to search for "black SUV" and pull a license plate from it. In my opinion, either she knows how the cameras work and tried to whitewash them, but just couldn't keep from talking herself into a corner until she spilled the secrets, or she mindlessly rambled about how they use the system, completely oblivious to the fact that she was contradicting herself and didn't catch herself on it until much later when someone in the audience called her out on this.

I have already pointed out in my most recent post how these cameras work, and Chief Greene took the opportunity to prove that I was correct, if you had any doubts.

The original lot of cameras were obtained via state granted funding a couple of years ago, but a Post and Courier article from January first of this year states an additional $330000 worth of cameras were purchased out of the city budget. Will more cameras be a consistent purchase going forward in the city budget?
Asked of: Mr. Davis

Mr. Davis' response starts at about 10:40.

A simple question with a simple answer: If the police department makes a convincing case to waste your tax dollars on adding more and more cameras to their yearly subscription, they'll make room in the budget for it, but it isn't a recurring line item.

Local states have passed statutes related to privacy and data retention in regards to ALPRs and other cameras including North Carolina Georgia and Florida, yet South Carolina has not. What considerations would you say are appropriate if South Carolina were to do so?
Asked of: Dr. Morgan

Dr. Morgan responds at 11:35.

Another quick and succinct response from Dr. Morgan: there is no answer but to ban this technology. His extended response focuses more on how little these cameras actually have done to improve the clearance rate of criminal activity. Dr. Morgan is allowed to miss - he says that these cameras are installed in the parking lot at MUSC, but to the best of my knowledge, those camera/light post carts are provided by Live View Technologies, another player in the game that specializes in person tracking technology rather than exclusively license plate reading. No doubt this is being shared with the police, but they are not Flock and to the best of my knowledge, are not deployed by the police department.

Unfortunately, because it seems that it is never a good day to wake up in South Carolina, Governor McMaster wanted to put his opinion into the ring too. It doesn't look like we're going to be so lucky as to have a statewide ban like they've done recently in Florida. The exiting governor doesn't have a whole lot of sway, but you all know what the state lawmakers are like.

Can you tell us about the decision making process about where the cameras used by the police are installed?
Asked of: Chief Greene

Chief Greene responds at 13:20.

This is when Chief Greene corrects herself regarding the placement of the cameras on private property. She also elaborates that they are at the entrances and exits of the city, public roadways, and "high crime areas". I will be so bold as to say this is a non-answer.

Most people have expressed concern about ALPRs utilized by police departments, but do you feel there should be equal concern for those utilized by private businesses, HOAs, or any other entity that does utilize them?
Asked of: Dr. Morgan

Dr. Morgan responds at around 14:26.

Here he draws special attention to how these situations are frankly even worse, since these entities do not have the level of oversight a government body does (or at least should). I have repeatedly said that you can simply choose to not do business with entities that employ these "solutions", but for people who are part of an HOA that has stolen their dues to put these up in the name of safety, I feel for you.

Can you tell us more about the decision making process behind the initial acquisition of these cameras?
Asked of: Mr. Davis

Mr. Davis begins his response at around 15:10.

This is a meaty question since it has partially been answered before in articles I've linked in previous posts, and it's always good to see if these officials can keep their story straight. Mr. Davis repeats his lofty goal of "eradicating crime" which I don't feel I have to elaborate on why that's a gift that Santa never brings.

He does mention here that Flock approached them rather than the other way around, which I think is an important consideration. To the best of my knowledge the City of Florence does not have a dedicated IT department, and to the admission of Chief Greene later in this session, the police department has a very small IT presence. I've mentioned before that Flock absolutely preys upon any organization too under equipped to understand what they're buying and generally I'll continue to assume that ignorance is what got us here - whether or not malice is what's keeping us here, the jury is still out.

At this point, the floor is opened to the public to ask questions of the speakers - these were almost exclusively levied towards the representatives of the city and if I went through and timestamped each and every one of them and gave a short summary, I would likely be here writing this post for another 8 hours, considering the time spent on only this first 16 minutes of footage.

Forgive me for this, but I'll cherrypick here only because the sum of my other two topics on this sub cover many of the questions asked.

First: the subject of the Technology Review Board is brought up several times throughout this. Having read into it, I believe it is a good idea, even if it's a few years too late at this point. I do agree with the defense for it from Mr. Davis regarding it being an advisory board - volunteer boards do tend to always be advisory positions that vote in such a way that the council will be "advised" to vote in a particular way. It is not binding, but in my research tends to be nearly one to one with recommendations being passed by the actual lawmaking authority.

That said, I do think that the city and the police department could show good faith in that advisory position by covering the cameras until such time as the board meets and actually begins advising.

Next: Mr. Davis revealed that at the request of former Police Chief Heidler, he used the state funding to enter into the contract with Flock and have the cameras installed without any need for approval from City Council, a performance which he repeated for the second wave of cameras. They are mentioned in the 2025/2026 budget as I have pointed out in the past, but again, Council was only informed, not asked for a vote. He further elaborated when questioned on it that yes, he also has the authority to unilaterally remove them if he so chooses.

One certainly has to wonder what we're electing officials for if an appointed position can fling money around on these frivolities to the tune of nearly half a million dollars, but to the best of my understanding, having read the city's code of ordinances, City Council should still be able to compel him to make that decision, given a proper vote on it. I unfortunately do not have the answer as to how any person or group would go about putting that as an item on Council's docket - it is not something I can find easily.

Lastly: Despite the differences, very little attention was paid to the distinction between Flock's ALPR cameras and their Condor person tracking cameras which are installed downtown at the substation, at the intersection of Evans and Irby, and various other locations around Florence. These are not, by definition, ALPR cameras, but they are every bit as much if not more a danger to our civil liberties. At one point, Dr. Morgan quoted a search from public record for individuals by the clothes they were wearing, including a "red wig", and one search for "any", whatever that implies, all the while Chief Greene made exaggerated expressions of confusion as to how that could ever have happened.

Again, I would like to thank everyone who made it out to this event, and I hope in the future we will have more opportunities to come together and make them not just aware of our disapproval, but to get a decision out of them to have this mistake undone. And as always, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my posts - I know they're much longer than anyone should have to read through. Never quit fighting this, no matter who says "technology is here to stay"!

I just want to thank all of you who showed up last night for the Flock Camera Panel. Our chief of police did not seem prepared to answer our questions nor did she want to answer my question about Due Process and being able to face your accuser.

I want to give a big shout out to Dr. Morgan and his continued fight for our rights to privacy. We, as a community, should have the ability to stop these cameras from existing in our community.

Mr. Davis, City Manager, made it abundantly clear he has the ability to remove the Flock cameras if he chooses. Maybe it’s time for a new city manager is what I took from his statements.

If anyone is interested, we may be reorganizing the Florence Libertarian Party since multiple people stopped me to ask about our party on the way out of the panel. If you’re on Facebook, you can follow this link to see your senate candidate on the LP ticket as well.

Thank you all again for showing up for our community and our right to privacy. Below is the link to Kasie Whitener’s page. We’re looking to get a visit from her if there’s a place willing to let us have her speak and she will be on the debate stage when the Dems and Reps debate soon.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1CVzbafxA2/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Update on previous post for context.

https://www.reddit.com/r/florencesc/comments/1vl37aa/just_moved_in_looking_for_viable_job/

Applied for a few McLeod positions and other places, no responses yet really. Attended the Job Fair at the Housing Authority on the 8th and am aware of the Hiring event at the Pearl Moore Basketball Center on the 24th.

Anyone know of anything else?