Charlestown Beach Camera Stolen, Town Says. It's not a Flock camera
Adriana
Vossari, RI & Local Government News
Charlestown loses a public feed of beach and water
conditions that also supported coastal research, and the town has not said what
replacement will cost or who pays.
A public beach camera installed on Charlestown Town Beach
was stolen on Thursday, the town reported in an official statement that went
well beyond the usual language of a municipal theft notice.
The camera was a live-feed unit installed for the University
of Rhode Island's Ocean-CREST project, short for Oceanfront Observatory for
Coastal Resilience, Engineering, Science & Technology. It fed a public view
of beach and water conditions and supported coastal research and education. It
replaced an earlier camera that was destroyed when its mounting pole snapped
during a severe storm, according to the town.
The town's notice, headlined "Newly Installed Public Beach Camera Stolen in Disgraceful Act Against the Community," said officials were "outraged." It described the theft as not a harmless prank but "a selfish, destructive, and criminal act that deprived the public of a resource funded, installed, and maintained for everyone's benefit."
The statement added that whoever took the camera "did not
steal from an anonymous government agency," but from "Charlestown residents,
beachgoers, students, educators, coastal researchers, and every member of the
public."
Much of the statement is devoted not to the theft itself but
to a rumor. The town said claims had circulated that the equipment was a Flock
camera — an automated license plate reader — and called those claims
"completely false" and evidence of "a basic failure to
understand, or even verify, what had actually been installed." A
"minimal amount of effort," the statement said, would have confirmed
the camera's purpose was public viewing and coastal education, "not
vehicle tracking or law enforcement surveillance."
The town did not say who spread those claims, how widely they circulated, or whether they had anything to do with the theft. The motive remains unknown, and the town has not said whether police have identified a suspect.
Two different kinds of camera
The distinction the town is drawing matters, because Rhode
Island has spent the summer arguing about surveillance cameras.
Flock Safety devices photograph passing vehicles and store
the images in a searchable database, typically for about a month. They read
license plates. The Charlestown camera was a fixed-view CR63-E with a built-in
LTE modem, an internal battery, 4K resolution and the option of solar or
hard-wired power, according to reporting by The Westerly Sun on the project's
approval. Because the camera cannot pan or tilt, town and university officials
told the council that beachgoers would not face privacy concerns.
The installation was approved in public. Rhode Island Sea Grant coastal resilience specialist Casey Tremper and URI associate professor of ocean engineering Reza Hashemi presented the re-installation request to the Charlestown Town Council in November, and the council voted to allow it, with activities coordinated through the town administrator.
URI covered the
equipment; the town handled installation. The feed was made publicly accessible
through the Web Camera Coastal Observation System, and the town maintains a live beach camera page.
A hostile season for cameras
The theft landed at the peak of a statewide backlash against license plate readers. The South Kingstown Town Council voted unanimously on July 27 to cancel its Flock Safety contract and remove the cameras. Narragansett's council did the same on Aug. 3.
The ACLU of Rhode Island, which
has campaigned against the technology, counts
at least 295 Flock cameras in the state and notes the exact figure is
unknown because some police departments have been difficult to get information
from.
Those objections are about warrantless records of drivers'
movements — a debate with no bearing on a fixed camera pointed at the surf. But
the sequence is close enough in time that the town's statement reads as an
attempt to break the association, sharply.
What the notice does not address is cost. The town has not
disclosed what the stolen camera was worth, who pays to replace it, or what
security measures might protect a third unit. It also has not said whether a
replacement is planned.