The resolution Newburgh city lawmakers passed to end the use of automated license plate readers included a 2-week grace period to stop the practice. As that timeframe ends Monday, Lower Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Elias Guerra spoke with residents in the wake of the decision and has more on what's to come.
Trina Mann, a City of Newburgh resident is happy that Flock Safety's automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, will no longer be used in her city.
"It’s just creepy," she said. "You’re all in people’s business and stuff. You don’t know what they can be getting from your license plate. ... They need to get rid of it, for real."
Many people in Newburgh are happy to hear their lawmakers are working to end their contract for the surveillance technology that has become a topic of debate from town halls to the halls of Congress.
Two weeks ago, the Newburgh City Council passed a resolution to end the city’s use of the technology, by way of cutting off the funds for the city’s contract with Flock.
While Newburgh police could not be reached to confirm the cameras are no longer in use, the city said it will discontinue routine use of the ALPR cameras by today.
Another Newburgh resident, who said they go by Chubaba Michael, said they don’t feel the Flock cameras have actually kept the city any safer.
Kimora Moody said she’s OK with surveillance cameras in theory, as long as they’re used to keep people safe. But she did not like the idea of immigrant enforcement agencies like ICE having access to the data from the cameras.
“They were good in some aspects but then once ICE came along — of course they know how to get to the cameras — so I would say, as long as we can stay safe, that would be a good thing,” Moody said.
Newburgh Police Chief Brandon Rola released a report this summer that said Newburgh’s Flock data was accessed thousands of times by outside law enforcement agencies between October 2024 and January 2026.
The report also showed that some searches listed reasons for that search with terms like “ICE,” “immigration” and “HSI,” which is short for Homeland Security Investigations. Rola said at the time that he closed off access to the city’s Flock data shortly thereafter.
Flock audit logs, available on the city’s website, also show Newburgh’s Flock data was included in a 2025 search by police in Texas for a “female” who “had an abortion.”
Newburgh Councilmember Tamika Stewart said, in the wake of the passage of the resolution, she has also recommended a local law be put forth requiring a public hearing on any future considerations of using surveillance technology in the city. Stewart said it’s important to learn from what happened with Flock, so that the city does not have to go through this same issue again.
“Technology is only going to grow and at the rate speed that it's going now, AI being unregulated is also going to continue," Steward said. "So if the public — I believe that the public should have a say in the technology that the city is going to use.”
