Dozens of residents filled Newport City Hall on Monday to learn more about the cameras they have seen pop up around the city in the last three months — Flock cameras.
“It’s going to show the license plate and the location,” Newport Police Department Captain Kevin Drohan told the crowd at the Board of Commissioners meeting. “That’s it. It takes a snapshot.”
Flock cameras, developed by for-profit company Flock Safety, have been installed in cities nationwide to scan license plate numbers and register other vehicle information. Since February, the Newport Police Department has been using the technology through a free trial. Currently, there are 34 Flock cameras in the city, installed near highway exits, commercial neighborhoods and residential areas. City officials say they only use the information when they believe it could help solve or prevent a crime — not for routine traffic violations.
Multiple Greater Cincinnati cities also have Flock Safety technology installed; Newport neighbor Bellevue, Kentucky, signed a two-year contract with the company in 2025.
Details and doubts about data storage
At the meeting Monday, many Newport residents were concerned about the company’s data storage. The cameras upload snapshots directly onto Flock’s cloud while granting access to law enforcement or other authorized individuals — but Flock Safety says data is deleted after a certain period of time, depending on the individual contract with the city.
“Thirty days is the retention through Flock,” Drohan said. “Only do we keep it longer if it's connected to a crime or a criminal offense that we need to testify to.”
But since Flock Safety is a for-profit company, some residents are concerned about the possibility of Flock sharing the data with immigration enforcement or using it to track those receiving reproductive care, such as abortions.
“Flock does offer facial recognition software,” City Manager John Hayden said. “This is not facial recognition software that we subscribe to, and we don't have plans to do that.”
Even so, West Side resident Kyle Randall was concerned. He said even if the city doesn’t opt in to receive facial recognition information, it is still collected.
“There’s always going to be an open question or doubt about who has access to our data when there is a third party involved,” Randall said.
Chief of Police Christopher Fangman said the city tried developing its own automated license plate recognition cameras years ago, but did not have the technological capability to do so.
“The secret sauce is the speed of the vehicles,” Fangman said. “If they get above a certain speed, [our] camera was not picking it up.”
Hayden said Newport is abiding by city policy and state requirements. The city does not pull information for anyone unless there is reasonable suspicion and a case has been opened, and has opted to not automatically share the data with the federal government.
“Of course we would comply with any request of court orders,” Hayden said. “We would do that for anybody, but we’re not just going to share those things.”
Kentucky legislators passed a bill this year regulating automatic license plate cameras, including their permitted uses, data retention times, open records policies and compliance violations.
Still, residents are concerned that at the end of the day, Flock Safety administers the data.
The cameras will continue to operate in Newport until the city decides whether to sign a contract. If they do, officials say they would cover the $3,000 per camera annual fee with forfeiture money, which the city gets from turning drugs or other illegal materials to the federal government.
Multiple city commissioners, including Mayor Tom Guidugli, said they were hesitant about Flock cameras in the beginning, but now support using them due to their ability to pull information quickly in the early hours of a criminal investigation.
“That is that golden hour,” Guidugli said. “That's when the best work can be done to ensure that we're catching this first, these criminals.”
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