AGAWAM, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - An Agawam City Council meeting drew strong opinions Monday night as neighbors and councilors pressed police about license plate recognition cameras.

Residents showed up to voice privacy concerns while others spoke in support of the Flock cameras as a tool for police.

Police also used the meeting as a chance to answer questions about what the camera do and don’t do.

“What I really hope is that residents and our councilors have an open mind, listen to the questions and the answers and decide what’s best for Agawam,” said Agawam City Council President Anthony Russo.

In the city, questions have been growing for weeks: Who’s being recorded? Who can search the data? What rules are in place when it comes to license plate recognition cameras?

Monday, Agawam police faced city councilors and residents looking for answers.

“Flock doesn’t video record people driving in their vehicles, it doesn’t record people on their bicycles,” said Police Chief Eric Gillis. “It takes still images of vehicles that are passing by and a image of the plate, that’s it. It’s not audio recording everybody, it’s not tracking everybody, we’re not tracking everybody.”

Here’s how it works:

The camera take still photos of passing vehicles, capture the license plate and use software to read it along with details like the car’s color, make and model. Those reads are stored in a searchable database so police can look up a specific plate or vehicle description and see when and where it was seen.

Departments can set rules for who has access, what can be searched, missing persons and investigations where supporters say that benefit outweighs privacy concerns.

“If someone in your family was the victim of a crime, wouldn’t you want our police department to have every advantage possible to help solve that crime?” said Bill Schwartz, director of the Real Time Information Center. “My answer is yes and I sleep better knowing that the chief of police and the town of Agawam have license plate reader technology.”

However, others say they see it as surveillance and want the cameras taken down.

“I did not vote for the big brother cameras,” said resident Patti-Ann Dombrowski. “It is an invasion of my privacy and my right to free travel, I would like them removed.”

Ultimately, the city council has no say in whether the cameras stay up or are taken down and no vote on the matter was made during Monday’s meeting.

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