Police surveillance and privacy

On the heels of the release of a new report, the Police Accountability Board was dealt yet another blow to its operations.

Last Friday, state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled against restoring the board’s investigative powers. The PAB brought the appeal after the Rochester Police union, the Locust Club, won its suit against the oversight board in April 2025. The upheld decision strips the board of many of its disciplinary and investigative powers, including the ability to publish reports with disciplinary recommendations.

As they have handled court losses in the past, PAB leadership stressed that they are disappointed but still feel they can impact change by presenting policy recommendations.

“While the lawsuits have tried to limit or even extinguish what we do, it hasn’t. I think it’s just strengthened our resolve, it’s ignited some more creativity, but that has not stopped the work,” said PAB executive director Lesli Myers-Small in a recent video.

“People are wondering, ‘Okay, well, what are you doing at the Police Accountability Board?’ We are still able to get out and to educate the community,” she continued. “We’re still able to create policies and review the general orders. We’re still able to do oversight investigations. We’re still able to look at patterns and trends.”

One example of examining patterns and trends is the board’s latest draft proposal, “Surveillance Technology and Privacy Impact Assessments: A Proposal for Change,” released last week.

PAB proposals for change are formal recommendations to revise policies and practices that impact the Rochester Police Department. The RPD chief is required to respond to these proposals, stating whether or not the department will accept the changes and giving a timeline for implementation if so, and the reasons they are not feasible if not.

Previous PAB proposals have covered data transparency, protests and mass gatherings, and police misconduct.

This time, the board wants the RPD to make changes to its surveillance tactics and technology. This includes blue light cameras, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), body-worn cameras, Ring cameras, and KingFish cellular transceivers.

The proposal is a draft, and the PAB is now seeking community input through an online survey.

“This work isn’t done until we hear from the community, because you are the most important voice here,” PAB oversight manager Sarah Jenks said at a recent presentation of the proposal. Jenks authored the draft.

When asked for comment on the topic, RPD Captain Gregory Bello declined to answer specific questions, saying that the department will comment on the final PAB proposal.

“I’m hoping corrections are made before it’s finalized, as there is subjective and non-factual data within it,” he said. “Until it’s finished and sent to us, I’m not in a position to comment or go fact-checking someone else’s draft report.”

Surveillance technologies

“Surveillance Technology and Privacy Impact Assessments” focuses on the RPD’s collection of personally identifiable information, including name, birth date, personal activity and location, biometric data such as fingerprints or facial recognition, and more. 

The board primarily examined RPD’s use of blue light cameras, UAVs, body-worn cameras, and Ring cameras, all of which are currently still in use by the department.

The report also discusses KingFish cellular transceivers, which can remotely track and intercept cellular phone communications. The New York Civil Liberties Union reported on the RPD’s use of these devices in 2016, finding that the department used them on many occasions, including four times without a warrant.

An RPD liaison told the PAB in February 2025 that KingFish transceivers are no longer in use.

The report recommends that the RPD implement privacy impact assessment templates for several surveillance technologies. The templates would be based on guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice and are intended to mitigate privacy risks.

“It’s important to everyone in the community because, even if you haven’t committed a crime, you could be giving up your information through (these technologies),” Jenks said.

In addition, the PAB recommends that the department complete the PIA for the body-worn camera program and digital evidence management system, as required by city ordinance; complete and submit to City Council a PIA for any future legislation or grant application related to the collection and/or storage of personally identifiable information; and publish all PIAs on the RPD Open Data Portal.

PAB reports that the department has yet to institute the mandated PIA for its $3.8 million, 2022 body-worn camera system overhaul. According to the enacted city ordinance, the installation of the system included the implementation of a PIA, which has not yet been completed.

Funding trends suggest surveillance technology will continue to get attention. In October 2025, Gov. Kathy Hochul visited Rochester, touring the RPD command room where the blue light cameras are monitored.

She also highlighted state law enforcement technology grants totaling $24 million to modernize equipment across Monroe County agencies. It was the largest amount of LETECH funding received by a single county in New York, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and RPD received the largest amounts by agency. 

Camera upgrades

RPD was granted $10 million for new camera upgrades and other state-of-the-art technology. The sheriff’s office received $11.7 million, with the remainder split among the police departments of East Rochester, Greece, Brighton, Gates, Ogden, Brockport and Irondequoit.

“That’s how you fight crime. You fund the police at record levels, you equip them with the best technology,” Hochul said at the announcement. “By investing critical funds for technology enhancements for police departments statewide, we’re ensuring law enforcement has the tools they need to fight crime and protect every corner of the state.”

“This investment is second to none. With the governor’s support and (state Division of Criminal Justice Services) trust, we’re turning our vision into reality, making Monroe County the most technologically advanced public safety community in New York State,” added Sheriff Todd Baxter. “Through the addition of MCSO body-worn cameras, in-car cameras, license plate readers, and drones as first responders, we are putting our deputies and officers on the cutting edge of modern policing.”

Blue light cameras are surveillance cameras with 24/7 monitoring and flashing blue lights, giving them their name. Many are installed near busy intersections or other high-activity areas.

The overhaul and upgrade of the blue light camera system was helped by $8 million from the RPD LETECH grant. The overhaul installed multiple cameras per location, improved the image resolution, and incorporated 360 degree coverage, the report states.

While the RPD’s online data portal (last updated in 2017) lists 145 blue light cameras, the PAB report lists 157. Both sources are in agreement that the highest concentration of cameras is in Center City and the Crescent neighborhoods of Rochester’s northeast, northwest, and southwest.

However, the PAB treated Center City census tracts as outliers because of their atypical residential character and excluded them from its analysis. The report questions the RPD’s claim that camera locations are chosen based on crime data, comparing their positioning to three-year crime averages from 2023 to 2025.

Filtering the PAB’s dataset by crime type shows that the Crescent neighborhoods have higher violent crime levels compared to the rest of the city. Center City, which was excluded from the PAB’s analysis, is the site of many public events and nighttime attractions and has high reports of both violent and property crime.

Conversely, crime reports in the southeast part of the city are primarily driven by property crime, particularly motor vehicle thefts in recent years. In addition, some of those southeast areas with no blue light cameras are actually covered by their own security resources.

Patrol beat 285, for example, accounted for 5.7 percent of all crime in the city from 2023 to 2025, the third-highest rate in the city. However, 59 percent of incidents were reported at the Strong Memorial Hospital parking garage, within the University of Rochester, or at apartments in URochester’s College Town area at Crittenden Drive, the Rochester Highlands, or Westfall Heights.

URochester has its own Department of Public Safety with 150 full-time staff and 650 security cameras, which is much more than the listed total for RPD. URochester’s DPS and RPD have a close working relationship but the extent of their information sharing is unclear.

The PAB report also states that the cameras are disproportionately placed in communities of color. It concludes that “the concentration of blue light cameras is almost three times greater in census tracts with predominantly black or Hispanic populations than in predominantly white census tracts.”

The Beacon’s analysis of the most recent American Community Survey census data found that predominantly white census tracts accounted for about 30 percent of the total city population and 20 percent of all blue light cameras. Most of those cameras were within Center City.

However, certain non-white neighborhoods have very few blue light cameras. Northland-Lyceum and Homestead Heights in the city’s northeast, and United Neighbors Together in the southwest have no cameras. The EMMA neighborhood has a single camera, while Maplewood has two.

Beyond camera placement strategy, some at the PAB panel discussion questioned the importance of the blue light cameras.

“(The blue light camera system) doesn’t help anyone. It takes too much manpower to operate and disconnects from the community. It is the laziest way of policing,” former Baltimore police officer Sean Smith said at a panel discussion hosted by the PAB. “Foot patrols and neighborhood officers, that all detracts from them.”

RPD Chief David Smith has said that efforts have been made to improve this aspect of policing. Officers are now required to carry out at least two 15-minute walking sessions per patrol, per the latest initiatives by RPD patrol commanders.

The RPD website says the cameras decrease criminal activity and grant “an extra set of eyes on our streets.” Hochul commended the RPD blue light camera system during her visit, crediting it as part of the overall decrease in crime in the city.

When it comes to cybersecurity, the PAB report mentions that the city of Rochester Department of Information Technology manages the storage of the footage in Genetec Clearance. City IT retains the blue light camera footage for 180 days.

Presence of drones

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been used by RPD for years as security cameras at festivals or protests, and in missing-person searches.

Their use has increased in recent years. The PAB reports that the number of UAV missions increased from 13 in 2019 to 73 in 2024. 

The first mention of the RPD “Drones as First Responders” program came in April 2025, the report notes, with a City Council ordinance approving overtime payments. The 30-day pilot program sent drones to 911 calls to gather information and assess danger for officers.

The PAB’s primary concern with drones is whether their operation can maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy. They believe the RPD’s operations have been unclear and require a PIA to assess the program.

“I’m all about policy and procedures so if it is a pilot, I said, then just show us the policy. They said, ‘We don’t have one,’” said former City Councilmember Kim Smith at the PAB-hosted panel, reflecting on the drone program’s implementation during summer 2025. “And so we asked, ‘Can we hold this in committee until you attach a policy procedure to this?’ They said, ‘No, because there’s an urgency.’ Why is there an urgency? ‘Because we’re already doing it.’”

“If I’m on my front porch, that’s a little murky; it is my home, but it’s also outside in public. If a drone is on its way to a scene and flies by me doing dishes at my kitchen sink, that has an expectation of privacy,” Jenks explained. “The issue there is, are private areas no longer private?”

At the time it was launched, Smith said that the program helped quicken response times and eased the department’s understaffing issues. The RPD did not confirm whether the drone first responder program was still in place. Its latest UAV policies, released in May 2025, make no mention of a first responder deployment.

According to RPD policies, without a warrant, operators are not allowed to “intentionally record or transmit images” where a person has “a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Recordings will be retained for a period of time, based on the criminal offense.

The sheriff’s office started its own drone program with its $11.7 million LETECH grant. Those funds went toward creating a regional investigative operations center, equipped with a UAV program, that was rolled out to the public in November 2025.

“One of our concerns is if Big Brother is watching, right? That’s a concern of mine personally. I’m a citizen of America, I love our Constitution, but I don’t like Big Brother watching me, unless there’s a cause or reason to be watching me,” Baxter said in a video on RIOC transparency. “So with that, we’re very cautious about all this information we’re gathering.”

When it comes to drones, Baxter said that the camera is intentionally facing forward until it reaches the scene of the crime, and his office will publish drone flight patterns every night. As of this story’s publication, the sheriff’s office website had no publicly available data on its drone flights or policies.

The PAB has indicated that its next report will be even more focused on drones, given the unique new privacy concerns they present.

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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