NORTHAMPTON — The City Council could vote Thursday night on a plan to upgrade the Northampton Police Department’s dashboard cameras through a five-year contract with Motorola Solutions, a company that provides equipment and associated IT services to law enforcement agencies around the world.
The council has listed the measure introduced by Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra as part of its consent agenda, a collection of orders that have already passed their first readings and will collectively receive a single vote near the beginning of the 7 p.m. virtual meeting. Councilors have the power to remove items from the consent agenda and discuss them individually.
Antonio Pagan, the city’s chief information officer, told the City Council on Jan. 20 that the current dashcam system, in use for more than eight years, is “really unreliable.”
“The current system has caused a lot of problems to the Police Department where, in some cases, they haven’t been able to reproduce the video evidence that they need,” Pagan said. “Evidence management is a major issue that we have.”
Local activists have expressed concern over Motorola Solutions’ history of contracting with the federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency and providing security services for Israel in the Palestinian territories, as well as the camera system’s reliance on artificial intelligence and cloud-based software, its ability to scan license plates and its facial recognition technology.
Northampton banned the use of facial recognition by any city department in 2019. Sciarra sponsored the ban when she was on the City Council and said Wednesday that the city will not opt in to the plate reader or facial recognition capabilities.
The contract order does not mention dashboard cameras or the Police Department; it only refers to “replacement equipment and software support” for the IT Services Department — which manages all of the city’s technology purchases — and entering a five-year contract with Motorola Solutions.
Pagan told the City Council that the company agreed to take $49,000 upfront and $21,000 for each remaining year of the contract.
David Kris, a community activist who ran for City Council last year, said Wednesday that the contract order was “very opaque,” and he decried a “worrisome” lack of community involvement.
“This is the type of action that greatly erodes trust in local government,” Kris said. “For lack of a better word, it’s scary, to be honest. … It’s more than just a normal dashcam.”
Sciarra said that “the order should have been clearer … and I’ll make sure they are in the future.” She said Pagan has been asked to come to Thursday’s council meeting, along with Police Chief Jody Kasper, in case councilors want to discuss the plan.
In a Facebook post, the activist group Northampton Abolition Now referred to the system as “harmful police surveillance technology” and urged its supporters to attend Thursday’s council meeting online.
“More technology in the hands of police does not protect us, and it actively harms our community, especially BIPOC, low-income, and houseless community members,” the post reads.
Sciarra said she has “been made aware” of the controversies and asked Pagan to be prepared to talk about cloud-based security and “what the contract says about our data.”
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.