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Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt denies that a Flock Safety camera outside Fredonia Village Hall was put up without the village's knowledge or consent.
"With all due respect to the (Fredonia Board of) Trustees, it is factually incorrect to assert that the camera at Village Hall was installed without the village's knowledge or consent," Schmidt told the OBSERVER in a statement last week.
"Contrary to what has been represented, we obtained the village's written authorization prior to undertaking any work. This fact should not be in dispute, and underlies my need to better understand the respective rights and responsibilities of all involved before taking any action or a position in response to passage of the resolution."
Village trustees approved a resolution Monday requesting the deactivation of Flock cameras in Fredonia. The District Attorney’s Office placed the license plate reader cameras as an anti-crime measure.
Schmidt said the resolution only applies to the equipment near Village Hall, at the intersection of Temple and Church streets. "All other Flock equipment (in Fredonia), which consists only of license plate readers, are located on private properties and were installed with the owners' consent," he said.
Schmidt added: "I want to be clear in voicing my respect and appreciation for the Fredonia Board of Trustees, Mayor Michael Ferguson, and all concerned residents who are engaged in this issue, whether they oppose or support my installation of a camera and license plate readers in and around the village. As I have stated countless times now, my acquiring and installing this equipment was in the works for months before Flock Safety and associated concerns of government overreach in its surveillance efforts became a hot button national issue."
Schmidt asserted that "Everything I do as DA is motivated by a desire to keep our community and its residents safe, and to quickly catch, arrest and convict those who choose to harm people and property."
Chautauqua County’s top prosecutor went on to "assure the public that we have neither the means nor the desire to peer into their bedroom windows or otherwise intrude upon their privacies. All monitoring conducted by our equipment is restricted to the public roadways and major thoroughfares traversing our county, and only after a crime has been committed."
Schmidt closed his statement with the opinion that it would be "stupid and shortsighted to not employ whatever cost-effective means are available to us to carry out government's job of keeping the public safe."
He added, "In the few months it’s been deployed, Flock's equipment has already aided multiple criminal investigations and led to the arrest of violent felons."