In late fall of 2025, new solar-powered traffic cameras began popping up along roadways throughout the East End, raising heated discussions on social media about how the cameras were being used.
After Southold Town received many concerned inquiries from the public, Southold Town Police Chief Steven Grattan issued a public advisory outlining his department’s use of the Flock Safety Camera Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR), which capture still images of license plates and “limited vehicle details (such as make, model, color and distinguishing features) as the vehicles pass the camera’s location on public roadways,” said Mr. Grattan in the advisory.
Pictured Above: One of the most noticeable cameras in Southold Town is on the Main Road just west of Wells Road in Peconic.
The Southold Town Board agreed at its Dec. 16 meeting to put a public informational bulletin about the cameras on its website (It can be found on the town’s homepage under the Quick Links section, or at this direct link), in response to residents’ questions about the purposes of the cameras and what data they are collecting.
Chief Grattan said the town has used Flock ALPR cameras for about three years, and that both the original cameras and several of those recently installed were donated to the town by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. The town police department has also recently purchased its own cameras using a state Law Enforcement Technology (LETECH) grant, he said.
Last August, the Suffolk County Legislature approved increasing the number of county Flock Safety Cameras in areas that don’t require local or state legislative approval from 25 to 60 cameras, funded through a $542,500 LETECH grant from the state. Sixteen other cameras were planned to be installed along New York State rights-of-way, including along state Route 114 in Sag Harbor and East Hampton Village and along Route 25 in Riverhead and Southold.
Chief Grattan said cameras in Southold are monitored by town police dispatchers, who receive automatic alerts when the vehicles are involved in missing person, stolen vehicle and stolen license plate cases.
Officers can also add a vehicle belonging to a suspect who fled from a crime in a known vehicle to this “hot list,” he added.
Police can also receive Flock alerts related to their duties, including for Canadian stolen license plates, probation or supervised release alerts, active orders of protection, registered sex offenders, suspended or revoked vehicle registrations, violent gang or terrorist organization alerts or wanted persons, he added.
Chief Grattan said the cameras do not use facial recognition, track individuals, or provide live video or remote surveillance, and are “not used for general surveillance of neighborhoods or for monitoring the daily activities of residents.”
In a 2023 paper, the American Civil Liberties Union outlined numerous concerns about Flock’s business model, saying the company was “blanketing American cities with dangerously powerful and unregulated automatic license plate recognition cameras. While license pate readers have been around for some time, Flock is the first to create a nationwide mass-surveillance system out of its customers’ cameras.”
In the paper, written by Senior Policy Counsel Chad Marlow and Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley, the ACLU said it does “not generally object” to using these cameras “to check license plates against lists of stolen cars, for AMBER Alerts or for toll collection, provided they are deployed and used fairly and subject to proper checks and balances, such as ensuring devices are not disproportionately deployed in low-income and communities of color, and that the “hot lists” they are run against are legitimate and up to date.”
The ACLU raised concerns that automatic license plate reader cameras could be used “to create comprehensive records of everybody’s comings and goings —and that is precisely what ALPR databases like FLOCK’s are doing.”
Chief Grattan said in the Southold bulletin that data from the cameras in Southold can be searched for up to 30 days, after which “all data is automatically deleted and no longer accessible to the department.”
He added that the department “Maintains full control over all data for the cameras we own. Information may be shared with other law enforcement agencies only at our discretion and only for legitimate law enforcement purposes…. Any collaboration with federal agencies is also a local decision.”
“The Flock system cannot be used to search for human characteristics such as race or gender,” he added. “The Southold Town Police Department does not use Flock Safety Cameras for immigration enforcement. Our officers are not authorized to monitor, search or review Flock camera data for the purpose of identifying or investigating immigration violations.”
He added that the town’s Flock system has added policy filters “to further protect community members”… which “automatically prevent searches that appear to be related to immigration or reproductive healthcare matters.” Those filters will be in place for both Southold Town police officers using the system and any partner law enforcement agency granted use of the cameras.
“The Southold Town Police Department uses Flock Safety Cameras as one tool among many to enhance public safety, assist in serious investigations and help locate missing or endangered individuals,” he added. “We remain committed to using this technology responsibly, lawfully and with respect for the privacy and rights of our community.”
The full statement is available here.
At its Jan. 6, 2026, Riverhead Town also approved an agreement with the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department to give the county access to town rights of way to install new Flock Safety Cameras.
“We do have Flock Safety Cameras already, along county and state rights of way,” Riverhead Town Attorney Erik Howard told the Town Board at its Jan. 2 work session. “This gives the county access to our rights of way to install and maintain them.”
He added that the agreement will also give Riverhead Town Police access to data collected by those cameras.
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