Municipalities around the country are mulling surveillance concerns surrounding the use of automated license plate reader cameras, including those manufactured by Flock Safety. In the Capital Region, Troy officials and residents have been grappling with regulating the use of Flock cameras by city police. WAMC's Sajina Shrestha attended a council meeting in Troy Thursday night and provides the latest updates.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Ray Graf: In Troy, the fight over Flock Safety has culminated into changes made to Local Law 3. What is Local Law 3?
Sajina Shrestha: Local Law 3 is an attempt by the council to regulate all present and future license plate readers in the city of Troy. It comes after the council sought options to cancel the city's Flock Safety contract earlier this year. In the end, their mayor Carmela Mantello used her executive emergency powers to continue that contract. In a previous version of this local law, the data was only retained from Flock Safety for 48 hours. Now that part of the law has been expanded for 72 hours, and even then, if a police officer has "reasonable belief" that the data might be important to the city as evidence, it can be retained longer. In the council finance meeting discussing these amendments Thursday night, no one really seemed happy with these new amendments.
Ray Graf: Let's start with the Troy Police Department. They've advocated for the use of the cameras, what are their concerns with the new amendments?
Sajina Shrestha: Assistant Chief Stephen Barker answered some questions regarding data retention from flock cameras. He said Troy PD would have to put in more work to adhere to the local law that would require TPD to receive documented approval to extend data retention. He said Flock's searchability feature would not be as useful in the process of putting the data on hold for approval. Here's Barker speaking about that at last night's meeting.
Steven Barker: The initial obstacle in my mind is the way that the system is configured. You would need to basically just dump all the reads into like a CSV or an Excel document, so you lose some of the searchability other than just strict plate numbers. Then, for each of those instances, you're requesting that list of things of why we're doing it, and I think just the timeliness is, I imagine, is not going to be acceptable to you if we're doing that every Thursday or Friday night.
Sajina Shrestha: I've also reached out to the city of Troy's spokesperson to learn more about what was left off when the data is exported. They said the main issue is images that's being left out when the data comes back as a CSV file. He says those images are important because it can be used to identify subjects and be helpful in conversations with victims.
Ray Graf: Now let's talk about the residents. What were their concerns with the amendments?
Sajina Shrestha: A lot of them feel let down and disappointed. They say the data retention period should have been shorter, and are mostly concerned also about the police oversight. The amendments say if a police officer has "reasonable belief" that the data might be needed, they can use the ALPR camera and use that captured plate data. Now, the residents are raising concerns about this because, in their words, that term is a little bit vague. There is no laid out criteria for what constitutes as "reasonable belief," and in their eyes, it's still not enough to make sure the camera won't be misused. Here's resident Frances Sweet, who is a Troy resident who spoke at that meeting. For her, it was the fact that this conversation is actually still happening.
Frances Sweet: This was supposed to be quick, and it's been dragged out by the administration and by the police department for months. And meanwhile, ALPRs have been unregulated this entire time.
Ray Graf: The amendments passed the finance meeting last night, and you spoke to the council member who sponsored it, Noreen McKee. What was on her mind?
Sajina Shrestha: McKee said it's a fine line. She still believes it could be useful, Flock and ALPRs, but is trying to make sure residents feel like their right to privacy isn't being violated. Here's what she had to say about the meeting outcome and resident outcry.
Noreen McKee: I knew that they would be disappointed, so I wasn't terribly surprised. But like I said, you know, from day one, the council has been trying to thread this needle to give the police this effective tool. It solves serious crimes, but at the same time, we really had to put in enough guardrails so that we could protect the Fourth Amendment rights to privacy.
