Dutchess County turned off its 65 Flock Safety license plate readers in September after months of public scrutiny. Six weeks later, the county hasn’t decided whether to keep using the company’s broader surveillance software, and records show searches tied to the county’s Flock account after the shutdown.
“As for moving forward, no decisions have yet been made on Flock OS and its future remains uncertain at this time,” Capt. John Watterson of the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Nov. 5 email to the Herald, when asked whether the software was still in use.
Flock is best known for cameras that photograph passing vehicles and record their license plates. It also sells Flock OS, software that centralizes data from a broad network of devices and lets investigators view video from government and privately owned cameras, including cameras Flock didn’t make. Dutchess County has used both.
At an Amenia Town Board meeting in August, Chief Deputy Stephen Reverri said the software works differently from the county’s automated license plate readers.
“FlockOS isn’t ALPRs, it’s more camera sharing. It’s more ingestion of different cameras throughout Dutchess County, mostly county cameras, allowing us to see them in one pane of glass,” Reverri said.
As of Nov. 5, the county’s Flock transparency portal, a public page that reports the county’s Flock activity, listed 20 searches over the last 30 days by the county’s Analysis and Real-Time Crime Intelligence Center. The 65 license plate readers no longer appeared on the portal. It still showed 435 “other cameras.”
A second source points the same way. Have I Been Flocked, a website that collects Flock search logs, lists 15 searches by the Sheriff’s Office after the Sept. 25 shutdown. The most recent was on Oct. 9.
The Herald first asked county officials about the searches on Oct. 15, emailing District Attorney Anthony Parisi, Sheriff Kirk Imperati, Watterson, and Executive Assistant District Attorney Sinead M. McLoughlin.
“Is the county still using the technology? If not, why the searches after the public announcement?” the Herald asked.
The Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office replied the next morning. Their answers addressed only the license plate readers.
“The County’s license plate reader (LPR) cameras were deactivated on September 25, 2026. I can also confirm that the Dutchess County District Attorney’s Office has not conducted any LPR searches using the County’s system since its deactivation,” McLoughlin wrote.
Watterson said the readers the county owns or leases had been deactivated. He said the Sheriff’s Office wasn’t aware of any searches using the license plate readers since.
Neither official said whether investigators were still using Flock OS or could still reach the hundreds of other cameras on the portal.
On Nov. 5, the Herald asked again whether the county was still using Flock OS. Watterson replied that no decision had been made about the software’s future.
The distinction matters because of how the intelligence center works. It’s a joint operation of the Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office that pulls together data from hundreds of cameras across the county to support criminal investigations and coordinate police responses. As the Herald previously reported, its network has included cameras owned by private property owners.
At the August meeting in Amenia, Reverri also described the network’s broader goal.
“We want to surround Dutchess County to make sure Dutchess County is safe,” he said.