Dutchess Pulls Its Flock Cameras After Residents Push Back
By June Mercer | Local News | Stanfordville
Dutchess County ordered its 65 county-operated Flock Safety automated license plate reader cameras taken offline on Friday, September 25, after District Attorney Anthony Parisi and Sheriff Kirk Imperati withdrew their support for the program. The cameras went dark the same day. Physical removal could take up to 30 days, Parisi told The New Pine Plains Herald.
The reversal came two days after a standing-room public forum on September 23 in Pleasant Valley, co-hosted by Parisi, Imperati, and Dutchess County Legislator Eric Alexander of District 25. The forum was the visible endpoint of weeks of organized public opposition that had spread from town meetings in Milan and Pine Plains to county-level attention.
The county’s decision covers only the 65 cameras it owned and operated. Flock cameras belonging to individual towns, villages, cities, or their police departments are not affected. Each municipality decides for itself.
What the cameras do
Flock Safety is the country’s largest brand of automated license plate reader, according to The Miscellany News. The cameras record the license plate number of every vehicle that passes, along with the vehicle’s color, make, model, and other identifying features. They do not capture faces. The county’s own program materials specified no facial recognition capability.
The data collected fed into ARTCIC, the county’s real-time crime intelligence center run jointly by the DA’s office and the Sheriff’s Office. The county funded ARTCIC starting in November 2024 with a $200,000 initial county allocation and a $1.2 million Department of Justice grant. The 2026 county budget included $94,500 specifically for the Flock camera network.
Supporters of the program pointed to concrete uses: tracking stolen vehicles, locating missing people, and supporting investigations of serious crimes. Law enforcement officials argued the cameras gave investigators a tool they previously lacked, particularly in a county where rural roads offer few witnesses.
Why residents objected
The objections that filled the Pleasant Valley forum centered on three overlapping concerns: privacy, the breadth of surveillance, and, most consistently, who decided where cameras went and under what rules.
In Milan, that last question had a specific form. Two Flock cameras near Route 199 and Tribune Lane were installed in June 2025 and operated under a lease with the Sheriff’s Office. When the cameras became a public issue, the town found itself in an awkward position: Milan officials said the town had not been asked to approve the installation, according to The New Pine Plains Herald. The cameras were on town roads, recording Milan residents, under an arrangement the town board had never reviewed.
That gap between county action and local consent became a recurring theme. Residents at the Pleasant Valley forum asked pointed questions about oversight: who approved a given camera’s location, who could access the data it collected, how long that data was retained, and what policies governed the answers. According to WAMC, Sheriff Imperati told attendees after the forum that he would take their concerns into consideration. Two days later, he and Parisi announced they were withdrawing support for the contract.
The county decision, and what it does not cover
Parisi instructed Flock Safety to terminate service for cameras operated through the DA’s office on the morning of September 25, according to The New Pine Plains Herald. The cameras went offline that day. The company will remove the physical hardware over the following 30 days.
The key boundary is that the county’s decision applies only to the 65 cameras the county owned and managed. It does not reach Flock cameras operated by any city, town, village, or municipal police department. Those entities make their own calls.
That distinction matters in a county where towns have been moving in different directions. Some had not engaged with the issue at all before September 25. Others had already built local frameworks.
What towns have been doing
Pine Plains moved first, about six months ago. The Pine Plains Town Board adopted local oversight rules for Flock cameras and related surveillance technology, establishing a review framework for any agreement involving the equipment before it could be used in the town. Pine Plains is now weighing a further step: a permitting approach that would extend oversight to surveillance equipment installed on private and commercial property, not just public infrastructure.
Milan followed on September 21, four days before the county acted. The Milan Town Board voted unanimously to prohibit town departments and officials from purchasing, managing, installing, or operating automated license plate readers until the board adopts formal governing policies. Any agreement involving the technology must be reviewed and approved by the Town Board, according to The New Pine Plains Herald. The vote was a direct response to the situation with the two cameras near Route 199 and Tribune Lane, which had been installed without the board’s knowledge or sign-off. The resolution also covers “related networked public safety technology,” a phrase The New Pine Plains Herald noted was intentionally broader than just Flock cameras.
Hyde Park took a different path. On September 14, eleven days before the county’s announcement, the Hyde Park Town Board amended a state law-enforcement technology grant application to remove the Flock Safety camera items, then approved the amended application. According to Citizen Portal, the grant package had included patrol vehicle equipment, radar and speed units, drones, AED replacements, flotation devices, and other public safety items. The board removed the Flock items after debate about privacy and public input. Hyde Park officials said they planned additional public engagement on surveillance technology before reconsidering any camera program.
What happens next
The county’s 65 cameras will be physically removed over the next 30 days. ARTCIC, the county’s real-time crime intelligence center, continues to operate; it was funded separately from the camera network and the DOJ grant remains in place.
For the towns, the picture is unsettled and varies by municipality. Milan and Pine Plains have formal oversight frameworks. Hyde Park removed Flock from a grant application and signaled it wants more public input before going further. Other Dutchess towns have not yet acted publicly on the question, and some have their own Flock cameras or vendor relationships that the county’s decision did not reach.
The question that drove six weeks of public meetings, from Pine Plains to Milan to Pleasant Valley, has not so much been answered at the county level as returned to the towns. Each municipality is working that out for itself.
How to check what is still watching
The county’s cameras are off, but the decision did not cover cameras run by individual towns, villages or police departments, and those remain a live question. Two free public tools let residents see what is mapped near them.
DeFlock is a crowdsourced map of plate reader cameras built on OpenStreetMap data. Volunteers add cameras they spot in public, and anyone can browse the map without an account. FlockHopper goes a step further: it uses the same community camera data to show mapped cameras and generate a route around them, with Android and iOS apps and CarPlay and Android Auto support, and no account needed.
Both tools carry the same honest limit. They only know about cameras the community has mapped, so an unmapped camera will not appear. For Dutchess readers, the Milan cameras near Route 199 and Tribune Lane are the local reminder: the practical question is no longer whether the county is watching, but which cameras near your own roads are still on, and who put them there.
June Mercer covers Dutchess County for RFTUV, based in Stanfordville.
Sources and further reading
Dutchess Orders Flock Cameras Removed, Says County Network Will Go Offline Friday – The New Pine Plains Herald
Dutchess County DA, Sheriff Withdraw Support for Flock Contract – WAMC
Milan Follows Pine Plains With New Oversight Rules for Flock Cameras – The New Pine Plains Herald
Public Outcry Reverses Flock Camera Initiative in Dutchess County – The Miscellany News
Hyde Park Board Approves Law-Enforcement Technology Grant After Removing Flock S – Citizen Portal
DeFlock – crowdsourced ALPR camera map (OpenStreetMap data)
FlockHopper – camera-aware routing using DeFlock community data
