Troy's City Council made New York history Thursday, passing Local Law 3 to become the first municipality in the state to regulate how police use automated license plate reader cameras. The law slashes how long Troy police can store data captured by the city's 26 Flock Safety cameras from 30 days down to just 72 hours, and it requires judicial authorization before that data can be shared with outside agencies. Mayor Carmella Mantello has already announced she intends to veto it.
The vote caps a months-long standoff between Troy's City Council and the mayor's office over who controls the city's surveillance network, according to NEWS10 ABC. Councilwoman Noreen McKee, who proposed Local Law 3, pointed to the city's own crime data to justify the new 72-hour storage window. Troy police and the council monitored crimes tied to the cameras over a 60-day period and found 30 crimes overall, with 29 of them occurring within a 48-hour window and one occurring within the 72-hour window, numbers McKee cited as evidence the shorter retention period would not hamper investigations.
The law also limits camera searches to investigations involving or related to a felony and restricts data sharing without explicit judicial authorization. The New York Civil Liberties Union praised Local Law 3 as the strongest local law regulating the technology anywhere in the state. NYCLU's Daniel Schwarz said that “all New Yorkers deserve to move and live freely without Big Brother always watching them.” According to the NYCLU, agencies across the country searched Troy's camera data more than 12 million times between 2024 and 2026, a figure the group cited while arguing current state law does nothing to limit who can access the data, how agencies share it, or how long companies retain it.
Mayor Says She'll Veto the New Rules
Mantello has said she plans to veto the regulations, maintaining that Troy's Flock camera data is not shared with federal agencies. Her promised veto sets up another round in a fight that has already spilled into court: in April, the council directed the city auditor to block payments on the Flock Safety contract, prompting Mantello to issue an emergency declaration to keep the cameras funded and triggering a lawsuit from the council, according to Police1.
That clash traces back to March, when five newly inaugurated Democratic council members tabled a vote on the contract's renewal, saying they had not been given adequate time to evaluate the agreement before its automatic April 1 renewal, as reported by WAMC. The council members also raised questions about the city's data-sharing policies at the time. In May, Mantello and Council President Sue Steele had already announced administrative policy updates barring the cameras' use for federal immigration enforcement or First Amendment monitoring and limiting data sharing to in-state agencies, alongside a requirement for annual reporting to city leaders.
What the Troy Police Audit Found
A 60-day internal audit by the Troy Police Department, separate from the council's crime-timeline review, found officers conducted 826 queries of Flock camera data across 81 criminal cases. Access was limited to higher-ranking officers, roughly half the department, and the queries were reviewed by a police captain, the station's report found. The debate over the cameras has not stayed confined to city hall meetings. Public resistance escalated in July when police arrested a 25-year-old resident for using a saw to cut down a Flock camera, after three other cameras had already been felled across the city earlier that same week; the suspect was charged with criminal mischief.
Troy's 26-camera network costs the city $78,000 a year, per the earlier WAMC account. Amendments added to Local Law 3 in September expanded permissible data sharing to include requests from the Rensselaer County District Attorney, while requiring complete deletion of retained camera data once prosecutions and appeals conclude, according to Tully Rinckey. Those same amendments extended the base retention window from 48 to 72 hours.
State Lawmakers Have Tried and Failed Before
State lawmakers have proposed automated license plate reader regulations unsuccessfully since at least 2015, but Troy's council could now set a precedent other New York municipalities follow. Several bills are pending in Albany that mirror pieces of Troy's approach. State Sen. Michelle Hinchey's S9890 would require police to delete surveillance data within 48 hours, ban the sale of location data, block out-of-state access without judicial approval, and allow citizens to sue for unlawful camera use, while also requiring agencies to post annual public reports showing camera locations and the number of plates captured. “America is not a surveillance state,” Hinchey said, warning that unregulated technology lets bad actors surveil people without a warrant.
Other proposals would add further guardrails. State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez's S10419 would require New York to develop minimum use standards and training requirements for police officers, while State Sen. Jeremy Cooney's S10227 would establish statewide rules and training policies for non-government and private entities using the technology.
A National Reckoning With Flock Cameras
Troy's fight is unfolding against a broader national retreat from unrestricted plate-reader surveillance. Facing mounting municipal pushback, Flock Safety itself updated its national guidelines in September, recommending a seven-day data retention window, down from 30 days, and rolling out automated audit features meant to flag abnormal search patterns, as Hoodline reported. More than 50 U.S. communities deactivated or reviewed their Flock contracts in 2026, including Monroe, which shut down all 23 of its license-plate cameras entirely.
Federal lawmakers are moving in a similar direction. Bipartisan legislation introduced in September, dubbed the No FLOCK Act by Reps. Krishnamoorthi and Cloud, would strip federal highway funding from states that fail to establish statutory privacy and data-sharing restrictions on the cameras. In October, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Jeff Merkley unveiled a joint bill seeking to restrict federal law enforcement access to license-plate-reader data, underscoring how Troy's local clash echoes a widening national debate over who gets to watch, and for how long.
