Outside law enforcement agencies continued to include the City of Newburgh’s license plate reader network in searches after police tried to restrict outside access, prompting the department to tighten controls over who could search data collected by the city’s Flock Safety cameras. 

 

Police Chief Brandon Rola disclosed the outside searches while presenting the department’s review of Flock audit records to the City Council Thursday. Rola said he believed he had restricted access in December 2025 to Newburgh police and a state crime analysis center but learned the following month that additional sharing settings within Flock’s platform remained enabled.

 

The findings come as the council debates how to end the city’s relationship with Flock altogether. Draft resolutions before the council lay out different paths for discontinuing the company’s automated license plate reader service while considering what investigative technology could replace it. 

 

Rola said restricting outside access required changing settings across multiple parts of Flock’s platform, something police did not initially realize. The department learned of the additional settings after Rola contacted a Flock representative in January to determine why other agencies could still include Newburgh’s network in searches. 

 

“There are multiple levels of sharing and multiple platforms and multiple things you have to turn off,” Rola told the council. 

 

Police first attempted to restrict sharing on Dec. 9, 2025, to limit access to Newburgh police and the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Crime Analysis Center, which works with the department as part of a law enforcement technology grant, according to Rola. 

 

The police chief said he checked the system again in January and discovered other agencies could still include Newburgh’s network in searches. After consulting with Flock and changing the additional settings, he said access to the city’s fixed license plate reader network was restricted by Jan. 23 to just Newburgh police and the Crime Analysis Center. 

 

However, audits for February, March, and April continued to show several outside agencies, including the Town of Marlborough and the Village of Westhampton Beach, searching a separate Newburgh network. That led police to discover another access point that had not been shut off. 

 

The searches involved the network associated with Newburgh’s mobile license plate reader, which had its own sharing settings, Rola said. Because the mobile reader had never been deployed, its network contained no license plate data for those agencies to retrieve. Police subsequently restricted access to that network as well. 

 

Newburgh tightened access further on April 14 when Rola removed the Crime Analysis Center’s ability to search the city’s license plate reader data directly. The department continues to work with the center but its analysts must now contact Newburgh police when they need assistance, according to Rola. 

 

“No one, besides City of Newburgh personnel, can run a Flock read within our network for our detections,” Rola emphasized to the council. 

 

Rola continued that he checks the system monthly and most recently confirmed that the restrictions remained in place through August. 

 

The audit records date to October 2024, when Newburgh’s network recorded its first test. The City Council authorized its Flock agreement on July 22, 2024, for 86 fixed license plate readers and one mobile reader known as a Flock Falcon Flex. 

 

Councilmember Omari Shakur requested the Flock audit logs on Aug. 7, Rola said. In response, the department provided council members with audits dating back to the system’s first month of use, along with an Aug. 27 memo explaining the records. Rola said the department plans to release the audits and memo publicly but did not give a date.

 

The audits show when an agency searched Newburgh’s network but not whether the search actually returned information from a city camera or resulted in police action, Rola said. A single investigation can produce multiple audit entries as officers change search details such as the time period, location or vehicle description, he continued. 

 

The audit review is now part of a larger council debate over whether Newburgh should continue doing business with Flock.

 

Shakur said his push to end the city’s relationship with the company should not be seen as criticism of Newburgh police.

 

“This is not about our police,” Shakur said. “They’re doing a good job. They’re doing good work. I want them to find another alternative, but this is about Flock. Flock is a corrupt company and is doing some illegal stuff.”

 

Councilmember Romona Monteverde also supported moving away from Flock, citing concerns about how the company shares information through its system. 

 

“It’s just that Flock is not a good surveillance LPRs because of how they do share data,” Monteverde said. “They have propriety over that and there’s just no control over it. We don’t even know if they’re accessing it now.”

 

One proposal that is before the council would give the city 14 days after adoption to stop routinely using Flock and call for the contract to end as soon as legally possible. The city would preserve records showing how the system was used and who had access to Newburgh’s data. 

 

Another proposal offers a different path for ending the contract through the city budget. Under this proposal, Newburgh would stop funding the service and use a provision in the agreement that allows Newburgh to end the service when money is no longer appropriated for it. 

 

Councilmember Ronald Zorrilla supported that approach, saying that the city should end Flock without putting taxpayers at risk.

 

“We also have a responsibility for our taxpayers who are crying about high taxes, who are worried about our fiscal stability,” Zorilla said. 

 

As the council considers ending the Flock relationship, police are making the case for retaining license plate reader technology in some form.

 

Rola said the technology has helped them investigate hit-and-runs, burglaries, stolen vehicles, an armed home invasion and homicides. It has also allowed officers to end some high-speed pursuits and use license plate readers to help identify vehicles and drivers afterward. The technology has also helped police find people experiencing mental health crises, Rola said. He pointed to one case where police were able to locate a suicidal person near Crystal Lake using license plate readers along with cellphone location information.

 

However, those benefits, the chief explained, come from license plate readers generally, not Flock.

 

Councilmember Robert McLymore said the city needs to determine how police would retain those capabilities if it removes Flock.

 

“What’s the alternative that can help our police department, especially when it comes to crimes and different incidents that may occur, that especially you would need certain technology to assist in those areas?” McLymore asked.