by Geoff Fox
Hancock Mayor Roland Lanehart Jr. said he, Town Manager Mike Faith, and Police Chief Rich Miller recently had a Zoom meeting with Flock Safety in regards to the town’s camera system.
“As everyone knows, most of our cameras around town don’t work,” the mayor said. “Right now, I think we have one that works.”
With Flock’s camera system, Lanehart said the company would do license plate readers and sends out Amber Alerts.
He used an example of a robbery at Food Lion and someone saw a blue car, the police department could punch in “blue car” and the system would pull up the license plate of every blue car that drove by in a fixed time frame.
There’s also fixed cameras where they don’t pan or tilt, Lanehart said.
Both camera systems are run on solar energy and the company supplies the cameras, solar panels, and post. The cost per post for the cameras is $750, but the company installs it. The camera itself costs $3,000 per camera, per year, per camera.
“So there’s no maintenance or no upkeep from us on those,” Lanehart said.
The pole cost would be a one-time fee, however, as Breakall-Smith pointed out, the cameras would be a rental cost for the town.
That cost could possibly come from the revenue generated from the RedSpeed cameras by Hancock Midddle-Senior High School and Hancock Elementary.
Last year, the town generated about $55,000 from the speed cameras by the schools.
If that revenue were to go down, the town could decide to do away with a camera or two.
Faith wasn’t sure if there were any escalators in the contract, as he hadn’t seen a contract yet. He did said say there had been a price increase about three years ago.
If the town were to decide to go with Flock’s cameras, the company would come to Hancock and install the cameras free of charge and give a 60-day trial.
Lanehart added at the end of the trial period if Miller or Sgt. Shawn Faith wouldn’t like the cameras, Flock would come and remove the cameras at no charge.
The cameras would be installed on existing poles, Lanehart said.
With the current cameras, there has been a combination of issues over the years, with age being part of the problem, Faith said. Some don’t have the correct level security.
Lanehart added the current cameras are “line of sight,” meaning they rely on being able to communicate with each other. He said a pole was recently moved and blocked the line of sight for one of the cameras.
Before it was torn down last year, there were antennas on the chimney at Town Hall. The antennas were put back up, but the cameras quit working.
“The system is so outdated,” Faith said.
Sgt. Shawn Faith said he was listening to a road rage incident in the Hagerstown area where police were following the instigating vehicle was followed via camera all through Hagerstown and found where it was headed.
Hagerstown has Flock cameras. Lanehart said if there was an incident like a shooting in Hagerstown, their cameras would instantly notify Hancock and their cameras if the suspect is heading this way.
It would work the same way should something happen in Hancock and the person was fleeing toward Hagerstown.
Lanehart said what would need to be decided is how many cameras the town would want to do on a trial basis. He said Miller recommended starting with four or six cameras.