The Syracuse Police Department is seeking the Common Council’s blessing for its plan to switch license plate reader providers.  The council is set to host police department officials in a Friday public safety committee meeting on the potential switch.  City councilors Jimmy Monto and Core y Williams in November initiated the process of severing the city’s ties with Flock Safety, the scandal-laden surveillance technology manufacturer that Syracuse first contracted with in 2024.  The company repeatedly misled the city and other clients about the nature of its relationship with the federal government. Citing Flock’s failures to safeguard Syracuse’s data, councilors are considering pivoting to Flock’s rival, Axon Enterprise, to provide the city’s license plate readers and storage of the data they collect.  The council’s new Public Safety Committee Chair Donna Moore plans to ask the department about the city’s policy governing SPD’s use of license plate readers, including the length of the retention period for data collected by the AI-powered car scanners, she said. Moore also said she would ask the department why it has not yet appeared to fulfill some of the commitments it agreed to when asking for the technology, such as publicizing relevant policies and publishing regular reports outlining license plate reader use. Moore is “not a big fan” of license plate readers but said that the police department maintains that the tools are valuable in solving crimes, she said. “It’s not something that I love in my own life, but I think when I talk to my constituents who are concerned about their houses not getting robbed, their cars not getting stolen, the cameras have dropped those numbers significantly, because police have been able to catch people on the cameras.” Though Moore expressed reservations about license plate readers, she pointed to the Syracuse Police Department’s established engagement with Axon. Axon already provides the Syracuse Police Department with body-worn cameras, tasers, and SWAT drones. The department has also tried for more than a year to institute a “drone as first responder” program through Axon, and purchased the necessary hardware, but has failed to gain council approval since Central Current’s reporting revealed the city had sidestepped its own review process for powerful surveillance technologies.  The drone as first responder program would allow the police department to send autonomous drones to respond to 911 calls, but SPD has yet to earn the council’s blessing to purchase Axon software necessary to implement the program. A longstanding provider of policing technology, Axon has deeper ties to the federal government than Flock, which has consistently stated it has no active contract with federal agencies. Axon is also testing the waters of integrating facial recognition on body-worn cameras at the same time as the Trump administration is increasingly using biometric scans to facilitate its deportation operations. Axon has a division called the Department of Homeland Security Program and Strategy, which, from 2021 to 2024, was headed by Ronald Vitiello — a former chief of the U.S. Border Patrol and Acting Director of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Vitiello left Axon at the start of 2025 to become a senior advisor at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of Border Patrol. Despite earning millions in active contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Axon hasn’t faced the same level of public scrutiny as Flock. Unlike Flock, Axon has not been found to be facilitating the flow of data from localities to federal immigration agencies. The plan to change license plate providers came after months of investigative reporting from Central Current revealed the consequences of the Syracuse Police Department’s failure to safeguard the data its Flock readers collected. A mistake by the Syracuse Police Department opened up Syracuse’s license plate reader database to thousands of Flock’s other customers, resulting in almost 4.4 million searches of sensitive data on Syracuse drivers’ movements — including more than 2,000 “immigration-related” searches, according to the police department.  Central Current in September uncovered that, through a secret arrangement between Flock and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Flock had allowed federal immigration agents to access its network of police databases, which included Syracuse at that time. SPD’s data appeared in 175 “CBP-related” searches from March to May of last year, according to the department. As city legislators began to scrutinize the city’s Flock contract and explore alternatives to that company, Central Current obtained a copy of the city’s Flock contract and revealed to residents that, through minute contract terms, Flock established the perpetual right to use Syracuse’s data for the company’s own purposes. Moore told Central Current Wednesday that she has already had extensive conversations with the police department to ensure that the Axon contract does not include similar language that would allow Axon to harvest Syracuse’s data. “The only way that ICE or the federal government could get our information is with a subpoena. So I asked them to put the wording into our contract that if a subpoena is requested, that we’re notified immediately. So if that should happen, we will be notified.” Moore said the police department assured her that, absent a subpoena, it would not comply with federal requests for information.  The Syracuse Common Council’s rebuke of Flock Safety follows recent calls from local activists and immigration advocates for the discontinuing of contracts with companies found to profit or facilitate President Donald Trump’s deportation operations.  Earlier this month, the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, along with partner organizations, sent Common Council President Rita Paniagua a proposed resolution that would prevent the city from renewing such contracts.   Genevieve Garcia Kendrick, a member of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, had hoped to see their resolution proposal appear on the council’s agenda by the end of January, but the council has yet to introduce the resolution to its agenda. Kendrick on Thursday wrote in a statement to Central Current that switching from Flock to Axon does not inherently resolve the underlying concerns about the collection, retention, and potential sharing of Syracuse residents’ personal data.  “Both companies operate within the same broader surveillance ecosystem. Axon, like Flock, collects and stores sensitive data that can include location information, biometric data, and footage of individuals who are not suspected of any crime,” Kendrick said. “The core issue is not simply which vendor is used, but what policies govern how data is accessed, retained, shared, and audited.” Councilor Chol Majok, though, said on Jan. 21 that didn’t mean the council wasn’t considering the resolution. Comparing the “MELT” resolution to the council’s recent New York For All Act resolution, Majok thinks DSA’s resolution proposal could potentially become actionable legislation. But, Majok added, that may require some negotiation with his colleagues. “I don’t want us to just pass a resolution to pass a resolution, when we have the ability to maybe give it some teeth,” Majok said. “That’s what I’m looking at. Give it some teeth so it can bite.” The post Syracuse police to pitch lawmakers on switching license plate reader provider appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less