CARMEL – Putnam County law enforcement officials have assured the public that license plate reader (LPR) technology has always been and will continue under local control.
Sheriff Brian Hess and Undersheriff James Menton testified before members of the county legislature’s Protective Services Committee Wednesday in the wake of reports on national media related to the Flock Safety camera that is being used in many communities across the United States.
News reports have raised serious concerns about commercially operated camera networks that store footage in a private company’s cloud, make it searchable by thousands of agencies nationwide, and allow searches for purposes residents never agreed to.
The Flock system is also used by Newburgh City Police and residents are opposed to it.
Sheriff Hess said Putnam County deliberately chose not to join any commercial camera network. He said the county’s data is stored on a government server in Westchester controlled by regional law enforcement, is never sold or shared with private companies, and is not accessible through a nationwide search network. Historical data may be searched only as part of an active criminal investigation.
The sheriff said, “There is no facial recognition, no identification of drivers or passengers, and no monitoring of ordinary residents. These are not speed cameras and they do not issue tickets. A plate that matches no alert list simply passes through.”
According to data provided by the sheriff’s department, from January 1 through mid-August, the county’s 21 active fixed LPR sites generated 808 investigative alerts on 250 distinct vehicles of interest, 25 alerts per week as well as 184 stolen vehicles. Additionally, the cameras found 27 known burglary crew vehicles tied to residential burglaries across the region, many connected to New York City, as well as 22 vehicles linked to organized retail theft rings, typically out-of-state criminal organizations that travel to Putnam specifically to steal from local stores.
Hess provided several specific cases in which the cameras aided in solving major crimes. “The technology helped identify a homicide suspect who confessed to murder, intercepted a violent suspect entering the county to harm a family member, solved an armed robbery that had no witnesses and no video, corroborated evidence in several child sex crime cases, caught the person who sabotaged the county’s 911 center, captured a suspect wanted in a New York City shooting, dismantled multi-state fraud rings now under federal investigation, and located a number of missing and suicidal people before it was too late,” he said.
Several residents addressed the committee consisting of Tommy Regan, Toni Addonizio and Nancy Montgomery questioning privacy concerns associated with the readers.
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