Flock Safety Surveillance in East Hampton

At a meeting of the East Hampton Village Board a few weeks ago, it was announced that the village had purchased a surveillance camera system that will video every car coming into or going out of the village at all its entrances and exits, 24 hours a day. A perpetrator, for example, would get photographed making a high-speed getaway. Another perp known for bad intentions would be captured on film coming in. The cameras, mounted high up on poles, would record it all.

This announcement sent ripples of objection through the community. The company providing the system, Flock Safety, will store the video for a time and have it available for the authorities. Isn’t this kind of in-your-face surveillance violating citizens’ rights to privacy? The system will identify not only the vehicles, but also the make and model and color of them along with the license plate number. It even reads bumper stickers.

It’s been noted that the police already have a license plate reader computer system. It takes photos as the cops drive along, instantly checks the records in Albany for insurance coverage, and allows the police to issue tickets on the spot when things aren’t on the up and up. But that is just a useful view of existing data. That is nowhere near this intrusive level of surveillance.

Well, let me tell you what happened to me and my wife. This was 15 years ago, on a cold winter day in January. About 4 p.m. we stopped at Citarella on Main Street to pick up a few groceries, parking our Tahoe directly in front of the store, legally. But when we went through the checkout and came out with our shopping bags, we saw that police cars with flashing lights were parked in front of, alongside and in the back of our car, blocking access to it. In the Tahoe’s driver’s seat, peering out manfully, was our sheepdog Wags, noting this incredible activity. We’d only been in Citeralla for five minutes.

“Don’t go near the car!” an officer barked.

Was the Tahoe in danger? Going to explode?

“I have to get my dog out,” I shouted.

“Just get back!!”

“I have to get my dog!!”

“Touch it and you’ll be under arrest.”

An officer nearby tried to defuse the situation.

“There’s been a lapse in your insurance,” he said. “We’re impounding your vehicle.”

A lapse? There’s been no lapse.

But it turned out that three years earlier, I’d traded in an old Land Rover for the Tahoe. Somewhere in the paperwork shuffle, there had been a seven-day gap where my vehicle was uninsured. That week had long since passed, but the record remained. And that was all they needed. For those seven days, I’d been driving without insurance. They got me.

A tow truck arrived. After further shouting, we were allowed to remove Wags. Moments later, the Tahoe was raised up onto a hook and hauled off. Then the officers — perhaps satisfied they’d rid East Hampton of its most nefarious criminal — drove off, leaving us freezing cold on the sidewalk, clutching bags of produce and our bewildered sheepdog, with no idea of how to get home.

As luck would have it, however, someone we knew soon came out of Citarella and, after we explained what had happened, gave us a ride home to our house on Three Mile Harbor Road.

What followed was a three-week bureaucratic nightmare involving about $150 in fines, $200 in towing fees, $350 in impound charges, $105 for Enterprise to rent us a car, and the ultimate insult — an article in the local paper reporting on my grand act of recklessness. Oh, and the insurance company? In a rare show of goodwill, they credited me $26 for the seven uninsured days from three years prior. What a deal.

There’s always been surveillance in our towns. Before license plate computer readers, we had a police officer named Manny Quinn in East Hampton. Every day he’d be sitting in his police car parked on a different road watching the traffic. But he wasn’t a real police officer. He was a showroom mannequin, dressed in a uniform by our police department to look like a police officer. Just his being there, however, slowed down the traffic.

He was out there rain or shine for 10 years. But in the 11th year he got kidnapped. Twice. Once he was later found sitting on the hood of a car in a parking lot, and the second time, just a piece of him — his arm — arrived in a paper bag at the police station along with a note that said, “Send us money or you’ll get another piece of Manny next week.”

That turned out to be a high school prank. But it effectively ended Manny’s tenure as a police officer. Enough.

I’ve heard that there’s a company competitive with Flock Safety and its surveillance cameras. It’s opened a branch in New Jersey and has an advanced system involving drones now working in some towns there. When the cameras identify a suspected perp’s car, a drone is sent out to follow it. It putters along 10 feet above the car so the driver can’t swat at it to get it down as he drives along. It even follows the perp after he ditches the car. Then they get him. Such is progress.

There’s also a plan to put the surveillance cameras of the new Flock Safety system on the underside of the drawbridge which is soon to be built at the Shinnecock Canal. The drawbridge rises and blocks the inbound lane when Hamptons traffic is full then comes down to let cars in when traffic is normal again

Also going back a bit — does anybody remember the huge billboard alongside of the eastbound lane of County Road 39 near the college? The billboard featured a police car with three officers kneeling down by the side door facing the oncoming traffic and pointing radar guns at everybody. “Obey!” it said. “Speed limit 45 mph.”

Teens would go up there toting water pistols and wearing ski masks to stand in front of the sign, some with guns pointed, others with hands up, facing one another alongside the three two-dimensional police officers crouching on the billboard.

Dan’s Papers published the photographs the kids took of these fake criminal encounters from time to time. Until finally the billboard got taken down.

Ah, the good old days, before AI.

Read more of Dan Rattiner’s stories.