Flock license plate reader vandalized near Fredonia
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A Flock license plate reader has been vandalized.
According to District Attorney Jason Schmidt, an LPR that sits on private property on Route 20 at the intersection of Christy Road in the town of Pomfret was defaced with spray paint, rendering it useless.
He called it "an act of vandalism apparently applauded by some residents who oppose the (Flock) program."
There are seven Flock license plate readers in Fredonia and Pomfret, one Flock camera on village hall property and one more in the city of Dunkirk on public property.
Since they were installed earlier this year, a number of local residents and officials have been calling on Schmidt to remove them.
In September, at the county legislature's Public Safety Committee meeting, Schmidt said he was open to relocating the one near village hall but it still remains. "I am still open to relocating it but didn't receive any follow-up to my offer so I haven't yet taken any steps in that direction," Schmidt told The Post-Journal/OBSERVER Wednesday.
FLOCK INSISTS DATA WON'T BE SOLD
Earlier on Wednesday, Schmidt had emailed a number of local and county officials regarding the public safety program.
"I write as a follow-up to the meetings and communications over the last two months concerning Flock Safety, to specifically report back on the issue of who owns the data collected by Flock's equipment which was raised by many of you and your constituents," Schmidt wrote. "I contacted Flock Safety after the September 9th Pomfret Town Board meeting to obtain clarity on this since those of you who reviewed the contract documents expressed concern that the applicable language does not adequately protect the County from the threat that Flock Safety may sell or misuse the data (an issue which was not of national or local attention when we formed our relationship with Flock)."
Schmidt's email also included information that was forwarded from a Flock representative, which is as follows:
"Flock’s standard Terms and Conditions, which are incorporated by reference into your agreement, already address this directly. The operative language (Customer Data ownership and license section) reads:
“As between Flock and Customer, all right, title, and interest in and to Customer Data belong to and are retained by Customer. Customer hereby grants to Flock a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to (a) use and disclose Customer Data to provide the Flock Services; and (b) use Customer Data to support and improve Flock’s products and services.
"In plain terms: your office owns 100% of the data captured by your devices. The license you grant Flock is narrow -- it only allows us to operate the platform (storage, search, alerts, etc.) on your behalf. Flock does not own, and will never sell, your data."
SCHMIDT REITERATES SUPPORT
Schmidt told the local officials in the email that he still supports the program.
"I want to reiterate my position that we stay the course with Flock Safety until further evaluation upon completion of the one-year contract period, and my willingness to host a group of concerned community representatives to join us periodically as we monitor access and use of our data with the software auditing tools built into Flock's platform," he wrote.
Schmidt added that the Flock program has already been useful for his office and he doesn't want to see more vandalized. "Like it or not, in the relatively brief period of their deployment here, Flock's equipment has already aided multiple local police investigations. Persons vandalizing and/or disabling these units are not serving our community; they are committing criminal acts which diminish local police effectiveness, help those who commit local crimes to remain undetected, and incur expense to the County for the intentional acts they have committed," he wrote.
At this point, Schmidt told The Post-Journal/OBSERVER that it is unknown what will happen to the damaged Flock LPR. "I want to wait until I hear back from the County Law Department concerning the county's rights and responsibilities under the contract before making any decisions concerning repairing or replacing the equipment. I want to minimize as best as I can any additional expense to the county," he said.