Dutchess to End Flock Camera Use More Flock News

District attorney, sheriff respond after public forum The Dutchess County district attorney and sheriff announced on Friday (Sept. 25) that, following a public forum in Pleasant Valley, they no longer support the county's use of Flock license-plate readers. At the same time, the county executive said the $500,000 budgeted next year for the cameras would be diverted to other resources and Democrats in the county Legislature called for the county to immediately suspend data collection and to cover the cameras until they can be removed. They said a resolution to enact the changes will be introduced at the Legislature's committee meetings next month. The flurry of announcements came after about 30 speakers uniformly opposed the technology during the Wednesday (Sept. 23) forum in Pleasant Valley. It was organized by Eric Alexander, a Democrat who represents municipalities in central Dutchess and chairs the Legislature's Public Safety Committee. At the forum, District Attorney Anthony Parisi said he wanted to see 20 "non-negotiable" changes to the next contract with Flock Safety, including disclosing what the company does with the data collected in Dutchess, or he would oppose a new agreement, reporting by The Daily Catch. The current contract, which includes 65 LPR cameras, expired on Aug. 28, but the cameras remain active during renewal negotiations. In a statement released on Sept. 25, County Executive Sue Serino said she would not renew the Flock contract. "If the district attorney and the sheriff no longer believe that Flock Safety technology is a tool that they need, I stand by them in that decision," she said. "As the sheriff and the district attorney begin the process of rescinding the Flock contracts and dismantling the network, I commend them for being responsive to community concerns and being willing to change course." Serino said that she would recommend diverting the $500,000 allocated in the district attorney's 2027 budget for LPRs "to help protect many other critical programs and services that our neighbors depend on, including EMS services, veterans, seniors and youth programming." Had she included the funding in her 2027 budget proposal, the Legislature could have removed it, Alexander said. The county had six contracts with Flock spanning October 2022 to Aug. 28, according to the Dutchess Comptroller's Office, which posted them at dub.sh/DC-flock-contracts. They ranged from $63,000 to $199,950. Using artificial intelligence, the Flock system analyzes photos of passing vehicles, records their plate numbers and categorizes them by make and model, color and any damage. The system's database is searchable by law-enforcement agencies seeking stolen vehicles, criminal suspects and missing persons. Overall, the network includes 437 cameras in Dutchess, including those on private land and on roads controlled by the state and townships. Dutchess officials said that the contract with Flock stipulates that only the county owns the local data and that it cannot be sold to third parties, but Parisi told The Daily Catch this week that the county has limited control over what the company does. "The reality is, we talk about the security, we talk about the information, [but] it's not sitting on a Dutchess County server, so the control that we have is limited," Parisi said. "Once we contract with private companies, we're relying on what they're telling us to be true. … I can't go in and see everything that Flock personnel are [doing]." In their Friday statement, Parisi, elected as a Democrat, and Sheriff Kirk Imperati, a Republican, said they "spent considerable time discussing what we heard from residents." Parisi said: "We agreed that the appropriate response is to listen to our community and change course." According to Imperati, "The district attorney and I supported this technology because we believed it could help law enforcement protect people and investigate serious crimes. We still care deeply about giving our officer...