Update, 10:03 a.m.: The mayor's office announced the panel Friday morning. Read the full story.

Mayor Linda Gorton told a Lexington resident at a fundraiser Thursday evening that she planned to announce Friday that she is appointing an external review panel for the city's Flock Safety license plate cameras, according to the resident, who described the conversation to The Lexington Times in an email Friday morning.

The mayor's office told the Times Friday morning that "we will have an announcement later today," but did not say what it would be. The Times sent the office seven questions at 8:41 a.m. asking whether a review is planned, who will conduct it, what its scope and timeline will be, and whether its findings will be public. As of 9 a.m., the city had issued no news release on the subject and nothing about a review appeared on the city's news page. The source, who asked not to be named, said they did not know when or how the panel would be announced, who would sit on it, or what it would be asked to examine.

If the mayor follows through, it would be the first review of the camera program by anyone outside the Lexington Police Department since the cameras went up in 2022. The Times reported on Aug. 26 that all 27 published audits of the system were written by two police units, the Intelligence Unit that runs the cameras and the Public Integrity Unit, and that no independent audit has ever been done. Police have logged more than 400,000 searches over that period. In written answers to the Times on Aug. 28, the department said it had not sought an outside audit and cited the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services security policy, which governs who may access the data but does not bar an external review.

The tip lands a week after 20 people addressed the Urban County Council on the cameras on Aug. 27, 17 of them asking the city to end the program. Council member Emma Curtis of the 4th District said that night she would have voted against the contract had she been on the council in 2024. No other member responded from the dais, and nothing was voted on.

Pressure on the program has come from several directions in the past two weeks. Kentucky lawmakers from both parties questioned the cameras at an interim committee meeting in Frankfort this week. Two Northern Kentucky cities, Fort Mitchell and Independence, have voted to remove theirs. In Louisville, a Metro Police detective is under investigation over plate searches, and a Shively officer was charged Aug. 26 with running more than 2,000 searches on one woman's plates.

Lexington's contract with Flock, approved by the council in April 2024, runs through Feb. 28, 2029, at roughly $400,000 a year for 125 cameras. Section 11.16 of the agreement lets the city terminate for non-appropriation on 30 days' notice without penalty.

Update, 9:01 a.m.: Jacob Keeton, an aide to Mayor Gorton, replied to the Times' questions in a one-line email: "Paul - we will have an announcement later today." He did not address the panel's membership, scope or timeline. This story will be updated when the announcement is made.