Ten automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras will be installed throughout the city as part of a 60-day pilot program starting next month.
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At its March 13 regular meeting, City Council approved a resolution (AR-89-23) authorizing participation in a 60-day ALPR pilot program with Atlanta-based Flock Safety.
The pilot would run from May 15 to July 15, with an option to cancel without cost to the city. The Police Department, which requested to participate in a the pilot “at no cost to the city,” according to the resolution, would have access to Flock’s software and 10 ALPR cameras through the Flock service.
“Upon plate detection, the Flock Service creates images and recordings of suspect vehicles and has the ability to provide notifications to the Police Department,” according to the resolution.
The city administration did not reply to questions sent last month about the impetus behind the pilot and the ACLU’s concerns about Flock’s business model, among other things.
The stationary ALPR cameras will be placed “in all districts” within the city and at the end of the pilot, the Police Department will have the option to continue services for two years for the purchase of maintenance of proprietary software, data storage and use of 10 cameras with Flock Service.
An initial two-year term would begin July 16 at a cost of $31,000 for the first year and $27,500 for the second year, if service were to continue for all 10 cameras. The final contract cost is determined by the number of cameras the Police Department uses after the pilot period ends. During the contract, the Police Department would be responsible for the cost of “any reinstalls of cameras that need to be replaced for various reasons, including relocation, vandalism, theft, and weather” at a cost of no more than $750 per camera.
Evading ALPR cameras is increasingly on the rise, according to StreetsBlog NYC.
The ACLU’s report in March 2022, “Fast-growing Company Flock is Building a new AI-driven Mass-surveillance System,” raised concerns about Flock. “The company has so far focused on selling ALPR cameras to homeowner associations and other private parties, as well as to police departments. But it has done so through a business model that effectively enlists its customers into a giant centralized government surveillance network — and the company is aiming to expand its offerings beyond ALPR to traditional video surveillance, while also expanding its AI machine vision capabilities.”
In 2019, City Council authorized a $90,000 contract to deploy a downtown wireless network and surveillance camera program. More than a decade ago, Rahway was among the towns in New Jersey to pilot red light cameras, which the state ultimately did not renew after a five-year pilot program.
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