by Over the summer, Herkimer County installed license plate-reading cameras from Flock Safety on and around the Herkimer County Community College campus and throughout the Village of Herkimer, but key details about the program, including its full scope and oversight, remain unclear.
Flock Safety is a private company that manufactures automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras used by law enforcement agencies across the country. The cameras photograph every passing vehicle’s plate, along with details like make and color, and check it against databases of stolen vehicles or vehicles linked to crimes. Herkimer County’s use of ALPR cameras shows how more towns across the nation are installing these cameras. This has drawn both support from law enforcement by helping solve crimes and criticism from privacy advocates concerned about mass data collection on people who are never suspected of a crime.
A visual survey confirmed at least three Flock cameras on campus, two by Campus Meadows and one by Wehrum Stadium. It is unknown whether this represents the full extent of coverage in the area, as Herkimer County does not appear to publish camera locations, contract costs, or data-retention policies online, or whether other agencies have access to the data. New York currently has no statewide law limiting how long this data can be stored, leaving retention policies up to individual governments, meaning Herkimer’s own policy, if one exists, has not been made public.
Crowdsourced data from DeFlock and OpenStreetMap documents at least seven additional Flock camera locations across the Village of Herkimer and in the surrounding area. The site calls this a documented floor, not a confirmed total, since the county doesn’t publish locations themselves.
Michael Jory, who is Herkimer County Community College’s Director of Campus Safety and Mayor of the Village of Herkimer, was unavailable for comment on this story.
The student reaction on campus has been largely uneasy. Sophomore and commuter Grace Neville argued the cameras shouldn’t be necessary at all. “Police should be doing their job instead of relying on cameras,” she said, adding that she’d rather feel secure without being watched constantly.
Sophomore and commuter Abby Brand raised a different concern: the risk of a data breach exposing personal information. “Invading privacy,” she said, worried that if “the wrong person gets into the system,” a person’s driving history could be compromised.
Commuter Sam Waltz, who had previously noticed a camera near campus, described his reaction as “a little bit of an invasion of my privacy, a little excessive,” and said the cameras leave him feeling caught between safety and surveillance rather than clearly on one side.
Across all three interviews, no student described the cameras as making them feel safer. Whether that view reflects the broader campus community and whether officials will clarify the program’s goal remains to be seen.