The Warwick Police Department (WPD)’s Flock Safety Camera program got off to a late start following approval in October of 2022 due to a little bit of red tape.

However, according to Deputy Chief Michael Lima, nine of the ten Flock cameras throughout the city have been installed since, with the vast majority of those installations happening two months ago.

“The state started requiring permits to be issued because they have to actually put them into the ground at a pole, and there were certain poles that they can only use, so that really slowed us down,” Lima said.

The tenth camera has yet to be installed, with Lima saying that the delay there is due to a water main below where the camera was originally going to be placed.

Flock cameras, produced by Flock Safety, are designed to recognize license plates, as well as passing cars. According to prior reporting, data taken by the cameras is stored and encrypted online, and then deleted after 30 days. The cameras don’t  have facial recognition software capability. They are positioned  take pictures of the backs of cars at traffic lights.

Lima didn’t disclose where the cameras are located, though he said that they are at “strategic locations” throughout the city.

“We’ve kind of staggered them in different locations throughout the city that we thought would get the best coverage of our city,” Lima said.

According to Lima, the WPD has restrictions on how the cameras are used, something that was a big concern of those in opposition of implementing them.

The  cameras are not  used to identify people, for  speed enforcement, or to  provide information to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They also are to remain  stationary and to not  to capture audio.

“We’ve worked, actually with the [City] Council, to adopt the city ordinance that now establishes, basically, the rules and regulations of these cameras,” Lima said.

Unlike Providence, the purchase of the cameras went before the City Council.  . The cameras, according to Lima, are leased by the city at $2,500 each in addition to an original fee of $250. The city currently has a contract with Flock, that will handle repairs and maintenance to the cameras, for two years.

Lima said that the WPD has not had any residents approach them with privacy concerns following the council meeting.

“We had a very open dialogue once we were going through the procurement process,” Lima said. “These cameras, even though they’re taking pictures of all the cars that go by, we’re not searching for the normal people, there has to be a legitimate law enforcement purpose to search for these standard databases. So I do get the concerns- I get that there are civil liberty issues out there.”

According to Lima, due to the delayed  installations, the full impact of the cameras on helping the department solve crimes hasn’t yet been seen.

As the department has gotten more used to the cameras, Lima said that they have started to see results, though. Those include using cameras and data from two different municipalities to find a car belonging to a missing person, who they were able to find safely.

“It was a missing elderly gentleman from Warwick; we had his plate information, we were able to put that information in the Flock, and it actually hit all the way up to the Lowell, Massachusetts area, and then back down to a couple of cameras in Providence,” Lima said. “If we have that plate, we can put that into the Flock, and it’ll hit and it’ll send those alerts out. So we’ll know, hey, he passed this location or, if we’re searching ourselves, okay, we know this car left this area.”

The WPD shares data with 15 other organizations, according to Lima, who said that they make sure that organizations that they share data with have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to follow Warwick’s restrictions on camera use.

In addition to the missing person case, Lima said that the cameras have helped with hit-and-run cases that the department otherwise wouldn’t have been able to solve.

Lima said that while the WPD would like more cameras, any decision on purchasing more cameras would likely wait until the department has seen more results, and would need more consideration on whether the current $2,500 price point would be raised in the future.

He mentioned Cranston, which has 29 cameras, as a potential example to follow due to the cities’ similar sizes, but stressed that that does not necessarily mean Warwick is looking to gain an equal number of cameras.

“Ten cameras sounds like a lot, but Warwick is big,” Lima said. “If we strategically put these cameras in places, you don’t need a camera on every street, and that’s not what we’re looking to do.”

What the WPD is looking to do, according to Lima, is both solve and deter crimes through the Flock cameras. Currently, they’re happy with what they’re seeing, and Lima said that he hopes the cameras’ benefits will “really start multiplying.”

“These cameras are another tool that we have, a resource that we have, that we’re able to solve crimes that wouldn’t otherwise be solvable,” Lima said. “Hopefully, it’s a deterrent as well.”