Alamo City Looks to Expand Camera Network

Alamo city officials, including city council members and the police chief, have expressed an interest in expanding the number of cameras in the city in the name of safety.

Alamo’s Interim Police Chief Roy Adams utilizes three Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras provided by Flock Safety. These solar-powered cameras utilize artificial intelligence to capture and record images of passing vehicles’ license plates and other noteworthy features.

“It’s just a camera, but it’s a sophisticated camera,” said Adams.

Flock Safety’s ALPR cameras have become the subject of controversy concerning issues of privacy and misuse. 

However, Adams’ stance is much of the controversy is based on misinformation about what the ALPR cameras do. He pointed to figures such as congressional candidate Matt Day of Bibb County, who posted a video onto social media criticizing the implementation of Flock cameras in Macon.

“People are using it to run campaigns with untruths, and a lot of people are misinformed,” said Adams. “They go with that misinformation.”

For Adams, the ALPR cameras are simply another kind of camera to assist in deterring and capturing criminals. He referred to several recent crimes in the area involving drugs and gun violence which he believes Flock cameras could have helped resolve sooner.

“We had a shooting right over here because they had a party,” said Adams. “They started shooting, and see, if I had a Flock camera up there, man, it wouldn’t have taken so long. They [are] still investigating it.”

He likened the cameras to the tag readers installed in police cars.

“The Flock camera is the same thing as that tag reader,” said Adams. “It’s just on a pole.”

The city currently uses three ALPR cameras, but Adams hopes to receive a federal grant offered by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to increase that number by seven. The grant would also provide funding for several other supplies for the police department.

Should the funding for the cameras be received, Adams aims to place them along the city’s major highways and in a nearby park.

The city is not just looking for the police department to purchase cameras. City Council Member Laura Brownley, head of the city’s newly created neighborhood watch committee, and Adams encouraged residents to purchase their own cameras during the council’s monthly meeting on July 27.

“I’ve been trying to, throughout the program, telling everybody: everybody needs cameras now in the house,” said Adams during the meeting.

To encourage attendance to the committee’s meetings, the city has begun offering door prizes to attendees – cameras for residents to install. As opposed to door cameras which only capture select footage near a home’s entrance, these solar-powered cameras capture continuous footage of a wider area, such as a yard or street.

Adams’ ultimate goal is for “everybody to put a camera outside [their] house so they can watch their house.”

When asked by a resident if a camera pointed towards their home by a neighbor was a breach of privacy, he said no since, according to him, there was no reasonable expectation of privacy on the outside of their home.

“Anything that can be seen with the naked eye is considered public property,” said Adams. “I could see you, I can record you. That’s been ruled down by the Supreme Court.”

Adams’ advice for residents who would like to maintain their privacy as more cameras enter their community?

“Don’t commit any crimes,” said Adams. “Then you’ll be private, because everybody every day is being surveillanced. You are being surveillanced.”