A device that sits atop this pole at Broad Street and Harding Road was wrongly listed on a crowdsourced web page as a Flock camera. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
The traffic devices atop the pole at Broad and Harding.
“We don’t have any flock cameras in Red Bank, we’re not planning on putting any Flock cameras and we don’t support Flock cameras,” Mayor Billy Portman said. “So I just want to publicly state that because we’re heard a lot of concerns about it.”
Deputy Mayor Kate Triggiano followed up with criticism of the controversial cameras along with Borough Counsel Greg Cannon, who laid out the concerns that officials and citizens have over the nationwide network of AI-employing cameras.
See the full discussion of the issue in the video below, which starts with the Mayor’s comments:
Questions and complaints to borough officials (and redbankgreen) began after the web site DeFlock.org which lists and maps locations of licene plate reading cameras, listed on at the corner of Broad Street and Harding. The web site uses crowd-sourced information submitted by the public.
The devices atop the pole at that intersection are timing devices for the traffic lights, Portman and Borough Manager Jim Gant said.
As of Tuesday, the map at DeFlock.org no longer lists any ALPR cameras in Red Bank. It continues to list several in nearby towns, including several cameras in Little Silver, one of which sits on the Red Bank border on Branch Avenue.
The cameras have triggered a large, unusually bipartisan backlash across the US in recent months.
The cameras have spared fears of unconstitutional tracking of citizens by law enforcement and private companies. Fears have been further feared by several high profile cases of law enforcement officers using the cameras to track romantic partners or ex-partners.
Fifty cities and counties have canceled or deactivated automated license plate-recognition (ALPR) cameras of the type manufactured by Flock Safety and other firms, also known as Flock cameras, Politico found.
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331.
