By Jonathon Wheeler
Watertown Daily Times, N.Y.
WATERTOWN, N.Y. — City police got the green light on Monday to pursue a state technology grant that could result in the department purchasing drones and a roadway intelligence platform.
The state Department of Criminal Justice Services has $75 million available for police agencies across New York. The Watertown Police Department could receive up to $250,000 because of the size of the department.
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“The purpose of the money is to help agencies acquire the technologies that are available because there’s a lot of really great technology out there that can help law enforcement agencies,” Police Chief Cristin Lyon said.
The City Council unanimously agreed to allow the department to apply for the grant.
Lyon said that the roadway intelligence platform would help manage traffic safety issues. It would give police real-time and historical data on speed, traffic congestion, and volume on city streets.
Lyon said this would help officers with neighborhood speed complaints; help inform police on targeted enforcement assets like speed trailers and speed signs; or whether or not they want to place an officer at a specific area to watch for speeders.
“We receive complaints all the time about speed problems and it helps us separate public perception from reality,” she said.
Lyon said that this would not be a camera and would not be Flock Safety equipment, which has caused concerns across the country. Flock’s automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, have been installed by law enforcement agencies across the U.S. and have drawn bipartisan scrutiny from lawmakers and residents over privacy.
“We have no intention of going to any stationary camera or Flock-type cameras,” she said.
The roadway intelligence platform would use data from smartphones to feed back the information, similar to how GPS systems on phones can determine traffic in an area already.
Lyon said it would not record any data about an individual.
“This isn’t a system where if you’re speeding down a road we’re going to know it’s you speeding, this is just something to give us data,” she said. “(It’s) basically in place of doing like a speed study… This doesn’t have individual, private data.”
Lyon said it would not be capturing license plates of cars.
The police department will be vetting companies and looking into any potential privacy concerns in addition to building “a strong policy” to make sure the department is not violating any privacy rights.
Lyon said the department is not associated with Flock cameras and are not getting any Flock cameras.
“That ship has sailed,” she said. “We don’t want to be associated with a company like that or anything that is going to generate a lot of public concern or outcry. We respect the privacy rights of our community.”
City Councilman Robert O. Kimball said he has no objections to the road system, as long as the data remains anonymous.
Kimball said during Monday night’s council meeting that he believes Watertown motorists have “become more horrible than ever.”
“It just seems like traffic speeds are up and care about traffic laws has gone down,” he said. “We’ve heard complaints about speeding by the schools. We’ve heard complaints about speeding over on Richards (Drive) and on Barben (Avenue) and many places in town and somehow we have to encourage people to do better as drivers.”
The drones would help in many different situations, Lyon said, including assessing a scene before police arrive and covering a large, difficult or dark terrain. Some drones have thermal imaging, which would help spot missing people or someone who is hiding from police.
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