Troy announced plans this week to implement safety measures regarding how Flock Safety will collect and share data gathered by roughly two dozen of its artificial intelligence-powered license-plate-reader cameras stationed throughout the city.
This is the latest update in a saga that has included debate over the renewal of the city's contract with Flock, resident concerns over how data is collected and used, and the city's public safety needs.
Mayor Carmella Mantello said the measures her office announced this week followed a meeting with the city council, city police and Rensselaer County District Attorney Mary Pat Donnelly.
Council President Sue Steele said this is a first step, but the council still plans to move forward with a local law it proposed two weeks ago.
The law would aim to create guardrails for how Flock uses and shares data from its cameras. It also calls for the deletion of footage captured within 48 hours of collection, an annual audit of the data collected, and limits on sharing data with outside agencies.
The measures announced this week involve implementing some of the guardrails set out by the council in its proposed law, including the annual audit and limits on data sharing to other agencies, including federal agencies. It also includes a 60-day period during which Troy police will audit how the data is used, including how it is or is not helping solve crimes.
The mayor said she believes the audit proposed in the measures announced this week might change some minds about the need to move forward with the local law.
“My hope is that the council will see firsthand through this 60-day period ... how critical this tool is, and work with us if they have mentioned they want to codify the policy, and we'll take it from there,” Mantello said.
A majority of the all-Democratic city council took office this year and tried to block payments to Flock in protest of the automatic contract renewal in March, about which they claimed they were not properly notified. Residents also voiced concerns at the time about the oversight of the cameras and how the data collected is shared. Mantello declared a state of emergency to keep payments going.
When the council proposed the law — known as Local Law 3 —Mantello said she worried it rendered the cameras useless to solving crimes. She said deleting the footage within 48 hours is unhelpful to investigators because many victims take longer than that to report a crime.
Troy residents spray-painted anti-Flock messages on city hall as well as other city property Thursday, in an apparent expression of their continued opposition to the use of Flock cameras in the city. Many spoke in favor of the council's proposed legislation when it was introduced earlier this month, while also suggesting ways to build on its aims.
Mantello has said local residents' security risk concerns raised, referencing Flock cameras in other communities, aren’t relevant to the devices used in Troy.
"We use Flock only for the LPRs. Many of these other states and unions use Flock for other purposes. We don't," she said.
At the council meeting where the law was proposed, residents mentioned Dayton, Ohio, which has a contract with Flock for the same type of cameras Troy uses, where its use of cameras was suspended after discovering a security breach.
Troy residents also mentioned Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, where the same type of Flock camera continued to misidentify a man’s truck as connected to an outstanding warrant.
Steele said addressing public concerns and public safety is a delicate balance.
“Let's be honest, we're not going to make everyone happy, we're just trying to balance the needs of the community and the police and in law enforcement,” she said.
