Three Flock Safety license plate readers were destroyed overnight in Troy, their poles cut in half. Mayor Carmella Mantello and Police Chief Dan DeWolf issued a joint statement calling it “the latest in a disturbing pattern of vandalism that has targeted city property, including panhandling signage, City vehicles, City Hall itself, and even private businesses.”
The statement is not wrong as a description of events. It is a gift.
Three days earlier, on July 23, DeWolf publicly described the findings of an internal review of the Flock cameras. The May 19 agreement between the Administration and the Council required annual audits and established a 60-day collaborative period. That period expired July 18. No formal audit document was released. DeWolf’s public accounting, five days past the deadline: the cameras are “very useful.” He presented no case counts, no arrest rates, no crimes solved, and no measurable outcomes of any kind. Asked to characterize what the cameras provide to investigators, the police chief offered this: “You’re able to use those clues to maybe come up with a suspect, maybe not come up with a suspect. But without it, we’d have nothing.”
Troy pays $78,000 per year for 26 Flock cameras. That is $3,000 per camera, annually, with no documented return on record. When the audit dropped publicly, Council President Sue Steele told WAMC she and other Council members had not yet seen its results.
The Troy City Council spent the first half of 2026 doing the work the audit failed to do. In March, the Council attempted to end the Flock contract outright. Mantello declared a public safety emergency to keep the cameras running. The Council and the city auditor filed suit. Both sides reached a partial agreement in May: restrictions on immigration enforcement use and a requirement for annual audits. Council member McKee, chair of the Public Safety Committee, introduced a local law requiring deletion of camera data within 48 hours. The Council paused action on that legislation May 27 while it requested data from the police on how frequently crimes are reported more than 48 hours after they occur.
That request produced “maybe come up with a suspect, maybe not.”
Three destroyed poles change none of the underlying questions. The Flock contract was executed through an emergency declaration that bypassed the Council. The McKee legislation is still pending. The lawsuit is unresolved.
What changed is the story. Mantello now holds a joint statement with her police chief, a pattern-of-vandalism narrative, and a visible opposition to point to. DeFlock Troy, the group pushing for camera removal, acknowledged Friday that the mayor’s emergency declaration has prevented the Council from terminating the contract. That is an accurate and important point. It will not be the sentence anyone clips from their statement.
This publication does not support the destruction of city property. It does not believe property destruction advances the goal of placing the Flock contract under democratic accountability. The Council was the mechanism for that accountability. It was using it.
The sixty-day collaborative period, established by the May 19 agreement, expired July 18, 2026. The cameras were cut five days later. The police chief’s public defense of a $78,000 annual surveillance contract: “maybe come up with a suspect, maybe not.”