Update, Aug. 7: The Institute for Justice reports that Scarsdale Village has canceled its contract with Flock Safety in response to community opposition. Local activist Josh Frankel tells Media Nation: “Local journalism + grassroots advocacy for the win.”
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Among the more harmful effects of the local news crisis is that it empowers elected officials to engage in dubious behavior without anyone keeping an eye on them. But what happens when important public business is moved out of view of the watchdog?
That’s what happened in the wealthy suburb of Scarsdale Village, New York, where the board of trustees surreptitiously approved a $2.1 million contract in April that places the community under surveillance in the name of public safety.
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The story was laid out over the weekend in Drop Site, an investigative newsletter founded by Intercept veterans Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill and Nausicaa Renner. According to reporter Ka (Jessica) Burbank, the trustees used vaguely worded language about “public safety equipment” on an advance agenda and then went into executive (closed) session to approve a contract with a company known as Flock Safety.
As resident Josh Frankel told Burbank, “I don’t think that anybody who looked at the agenda in advance would have thought that public safety equipment involved live cameras, license plate readers, drone technology, basically a mass surveillance system.” Frankel added that “maybe you’re thinking public safety equipment is a traffic light, a crosswalk, a yield sign, something along those lines, but not mass surveillance.”
Flock Safety, a $7.5 billion company, has a presence in 5,000 communities in 49 states as well as a reputation for secretive dealings with local officials. “Flock’s technology has been used to assist with everything from ICE investigations in Illinois to abortion investigations in Texas,” Burbank writes. Flock’s website says: “Protect your community, business or school 24/7 with coverage that never sleeps.”
The story is long and detailed, but there’s a wrinkle that I want to call your attention to. Because even though the legacy newspaper, the Scarsdale Inquirer, closed in 2024, the community is served by an independent journalist, Joanne Wallenstein, who runs a 26-year-old digital news project called Scarsdale 10583. And she was very much there when the Flock deal was struck behind closed doors. Burbank writes that Wallenstein “has produced countless articles since April 8th, covering her own correspondence with the board, press releases, and board meetings.” Wallenstein is quoted as saying:
Village officials blamed the lack of notice on the demise of the Scarsdale Inquirer. However, Scarsdale 10583 has been covering the news and published weekly since 2009. In this case, the reason no one knew about the Flock contract was because no advance notice was given. The resolution was not included in the agenda and there was no public hearing. It had nothing to do with the loss of the local newspaper.
The story was also covered by local television in June as well as by a website called Scarsdale Insider, although the latter has not published new material of any kind since June 24.
This is often the way it works. A local news outlet covers something suspicious and keeps hammering away at it. With repetition, it draws the attention of larger media organizations such as a television newscast and, in this case, a small but nevertheless national project like Drop Site. Finally, it breaks through to the mainstream.
So good for Joanne Wallenstein and Scarsdale 10583. Without her, this story might never have seen the light of day.