FLOCK SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS BANNED BY UPSTATE NEW YORK TOWN
SARANAC LAKE JOINS GROWING REBELLION AGAINST MASS SURVEILLANCE
Second floor meeting room of the Saranac Lake Village board before it voted to ban FLOCK surveillance cameras. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK Mar. 10, 2026
Residents of an upstate New York town nestled in the heart of the Adirondack mountains banned FLOCK surveillance cameras in a dramatic vote Monday evening.
"It was a surprise to everybody essentially," the Saranac Lake Village Trustee who proposed the ban, Aurora White, told The Free Lance News on Tuesday. "Based on their data practices, FLOCK is not a company that we wanted to do business with."
The vote banning the cameras by the Saranac Lake Village Board is part of a growing national rebellion against Orwellian, Big Brother-style digital surveillance. FLOCK sells not just license plate readers that track the movement of vehicles, but facial recognition cameras powered by artificial intelligence that track the movement of people.
Six of each of both types of FLOCK cameras were set to be installed in Saranac Lake, White said, at a cost $32,000 per year.
Ithaca voted to ban FLOCK cameras Mar. 1. Last week, residents of the small Hudson Valley town of Pine Plains erupted in rage when the mayor secretly agreed to have them installed.
Flagstaff, Ariz., Cambridge, Mass., Eugene, Ore. and Santa Cruz, Calif. are among at least 30 additional towns and small cities that have either deactivated their FLOCK cameras or canceled their contracts with the FLOCK corporation since the beginning of 2025, National Public Radio reported Feb. 13. Many of the bans have been enacted in the last three months.
White is one of four Village Trustees in Saranac Lake. She sponsored three separate local laws or "resolutions" in the last minutes of Monday evening's meeting that terminated the Village's existing contract with FLOCK and banned future surveillance cameras without explicit approval from the board.
"I wanted to make sure they were cut off all together," White said. "Not just with FLOCK cameras but all surveillance technology, anything that's monitoring our residents."
The Board also ordered a complete autopsy on the village's FLOCK crisis that details who approved the cameras and when.
White and other critics charge Mayor Jimmy Williams had the cameras secretly installed and presented to the public as a fait accompli, rather than openly proposing it to debate as a potential public safety measure.
That the cameras were approved and installed "without a conversation at a board meeting was disturbing," White said.
White's surprise resolutions passed by a 4-1 vote, with Trustees Kelly Brunette, Matthew Scollin and Sean P. Ryan voting for them. Only Mayor Williams voted against them.
Brunette is running against Williams to replace him as mayor in a local election scheduled for Mar. 18. Williams is a Republican, Brunette is running as a Democrat and "Affordability Civility and Transparency" or ACT party candidate.
The mayor did not respond to an emailed invitation to comment.
Brunette originally proposed a bill to be voted on at Monday evening's meeting that would have only paused use of FLOCK cameras that the Saranac Lake Police Department first announced had been installed in a Feb. 19 Facebook post.
"The Saranac Lake Police Department is proud to announce the installation of Flock Safety Cameras throughout the Village,” the announcement said. "These advanced camera systems are designed to assist law enforcement in real time by identifying vehicles connected to criminal activity, locating missing persons, and strengthening investigations—while respecting privacy and civil liberties."
Community reaction was swift and damning.
One resident, Brian Kaempf, quoted Benjamin Franklin in a comment on the police department's Facebook post: "'Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.'"
John Thompson, a Vermont native who graduated from Paul Smith's College and has lived in Saranac Lake for five years, said the installation of the cameras and the police department's after-the-fact Facebook post, "within my group of friends and acquaintances, it was a betrayal."
Of course, he said, he wanted criminals held accountable. But, he added, "We want accountability from within our community, not from outside it."
Like many communities around the Nation, the re-election of Republican Donald J. Trump as President ignited the flame of rebellion against centralized governance from Washington, DC. Critics compare Pres. Trump's rule to Facism. They argue it's autocratic instead of democratic.
In many of these communities, immigration is the issue that has dominated local political conversations and turned ordinary Americans into activists. So too in Saranac Lake—a village of about 5,000 people that is roughly 10 miles west of its better known cousin, winter sports Mecca Lake Placid.
Saranac Lake residents were already organized around defending immigrants when their police department dropped the FLOCK news.
On that day, Feb. 19, the Village Board was poised to vote four days later on Feb. 23 whether to limit the department from cooperating and assisting Federal law enforcement—especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
That local bill banning cooperation was sponsored by Village Trustee Matthew Scollin.
Scollin had supported a less strict restriction that would have limited but not eliminated cooperation with ICE. But after federal law enforcement officers killed two Americans in Minnesota—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—Scollin favored a total ban.
He is not running for re-election in next Wednesday's village election and did not respond to an emailed invitation to comment.
Margot Gold has lived in Saranac Lake with her partner Steve Erman for 44 years. Gold helped organize local opposition to the FLOCK cameras. She said many of the same people involved in immigration activism were concerned with the FLOCK cameras. But more people came out in opposition to FLOCK.
"Many factions that were brought together," Gold said.
Monday night's meeting was held on the second floor of the Saranac Lake municipal building. About 65 people crammed the small meeting room and lined the hallway outside. The generally older crowd was sprinkled with young. Trustee White made a motion for the meeting to be moved to a bigger space on the building's first floor, but Mayor Williams shot it down.
Thompson, the Vermont transplant, said when he arrived and saw the original proposal that only temporarily paused the cameras he was disappointed.
"When I read the proposal outside the room I think it fell short," he said.
No one but White, the Village Trustee, knew what she was about to do.
Not even Brunette, who originally proposed the bill to suspend use of the FLOCK cameras, which White's proposed amendments were attached to. White explained she didn't have time.
"I was doing research on FLOCK right up until before the meeting," White revealed. "I wrote up these three amendments then."
The board had to wade through several contentions issues even before it got to the FLOCK vote. The biggest was spirited debate over whether to lease a building that previously housed the police department to the Adirondack Park Agency. Many people spoke against it; many for. It passed.
The meeting began at 5:00 PM but debate on FLOCK did not start until after 7:00 PM.
11 people spoke about the FLOCK cameras. Not a single one said they supported them.
"That's a big NO for me," Rich Shapiro said. "I can't emphasize how bad this is."
"Who are we protecting ourselves from?," was one of Vincenzo Impastato's questions for the board.
Echoing what Thompson said about him and friends considering it a "betrayal," Doug Haney said "There's been a breach of trust with our leadership."
"These cameras should never have gone up," David Lynch said. "I hope you move to terminate the contract."
A man who called himself "Forest" brought pizza. While denouncing the cameras to the board during the public comment period Forest also announced the pizza outside was for everyone. He sat with a small group of rugged Adirondack trailworker friends in the back of the room.
After the members of the public shared their views, Mayor Williams took about eight minutes explaining himself.
"Times are changing quicker than anybody can keep track of," Williams's mea culpa began. "Nobody was trying to Big Brother anyone. It happened in a very normal string of events with our departments."
White replied to Williams and "took issue" with his "timelines."
She said the "installation of these FLOCK cameras are a failure on multiple levels." Referring to the Police Department's revelatory Feb. 19 Facebook post, White added "Not just that the public heard about it online."
Then, suddenly, White proposed the three amendments. Spectators audibly gasped in surprise.
The board voted on them moments later. The mayor went down alone. Residents cheered in support.
"To see that proposed in front of our eyes," Thompson recalled the breathless moment he'd witnessed 24 hours before, "and then a vote right there almost immediately, it felt like the way democracy is supposed to work."
"That was some of the best drama I've seen all year," Thompson added. "It was pretty surprising."
Gold, the community organizer, said "It was amazing. I surely did not anticipate that. It was wonderful."
She pointed out that, in less than a month, the town had banned its police department from cooperating with ICE and banned FLOCK cameras. It was, she said, a Liberty loving two-fer few if any American towns had accomplished, anywhere.
"Saranac Lake is pretty unusual," Gold said proudly. "There's not many places that have done both of these."
Flock did not respond to an emailed invitation to respond to being banned as a threat to public safety by the board.
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