GREENFIELD — Responding to concerns that the city’s four Flock Safety cameras could be used for invasive surveillance, Mayor Ginny Desorgher assured city councilors at Wednesday’s meeting that the cameras are being used solely to track vehicles during criminal investigations.
Precinct 2 City Councilor Rachel Gordon, voicing constituents’ concerns that the cameras would use facial recognition software or report data to federal agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), asked Desorgher what purpose they serve.
“There are four Flock cameras, and there’s not an option that we use or that we’re paying for that does facial recognition,” Desorgher responded. “The data that we capture is owned by us and is not shared with any of the feds.”
The mayor explained that residents often confuse traffic light sensors with cameras, which they are not. She clarified that the city has installed security cameras in multiple municipally owned buildings and high-crime areas such as Energy Park.
The mayor added that the city is considering installing security cameras atop Poet’s Seat Tower amid persistent, and expensive, instances of vandalism and graffiti. City Council last year voted 8-2 in favor of using $50,000 to sandblast graffiti there. At the time, Precinct 7 Councilor William “Wid” Perry, who voted against the spending alongside At-Large Councilor Penny Ricketts, suggested the city use the $50,000 to instead purchase and install security cameras at the tower to prevent future instances of vandalism, noting that $50,000 “is a lot of money for something that can be prevented so easily.”
“All of you passed something for $50,000 for us to sandblast up there. I did take a walk up there just this week, because I received an email from a former city councilor about what it looked like. I went up there and I thought, ‘Well, they’ve colored it all in, pretty much,'” Desorgher said. “To actually be spending money, to be sandblasting that or doing something else, would be a waste of taxpayer money and city money in general, because it’s going to happen again.”
Police Chief Todd Dodge, in an interview Thursday, echoed Desorgher’s remarks, adding that since the Police Department lacks the ability to patrol Poet’s Seat Tower as often as it should, he predicts that once the tower is cleaned it will be vandalized again shortly thereafter should a camera not be installed.
Dodge also cleared up misunderstandings about the city’s Flock Safety cameras, two of which he said were installed roughly two years ago. The other two were installed last year after use of the devices proved to be essential in the capture of Taaniel Herberger-Brown, who is accused of murdering a man in his Chapman Street apartment.
The chief also credited the cameras to law enforcement’s ability to track the suspects in the theft of more than $100,000 from the Greenfield Savings Bank Money Tree ATM to Boston Logan International Airport, where they abandoned their vehicle. Dodge said the technology has been incredibly useful in finding stolen vehicles and missing persons.
“They’re near entranceways or exits in and out of the city,” Dodge said. “Generally speaking, if someone commits a significant crime, they’re fleeing the city or town in which it was committed, so we tried to get them in sort of the corners where people would be coming in and out of the city.”
To further reassure the public, Dodge explained that while the Greenfield Police Department might share data collected from Flock Safety cameras with neighboring police in the event of an investigation, it does not share data with the federal government, and neither does Flock Safety as a company. He added that all the city’s camera footage, including data captured from Flock Safety cameras, expires after 30 days.
“[Flock Safety has] an automatic license plate reader system, or an ALPR. The reason for that system is entirely due to follow-up investigations. Nobody monitors them on a regular basis, but you can program them to send you alerts for things like stolen vehicles or warrants, things of that nature,” Dodge said. “It seems to be a rising fear around the community that we’re installing or have any interest in facial recognition or retinal scanning. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”