u/RocklandRes

Six days ago Chief Hyman released a public statement about license plate reader technology. He talked about constitutional balance, community values, and knowing when to exercise restraint.

It sounds good. Here's what he didn't mention.

He didn't mention the $601,713 Skydio drone contract signed by Supervisor Specht with no public vote and no competitive bid.

He didn't mention Axon Fusus, the AI platform approved in February that pulls drone feeds, license plate data, and camera networks into one real time dashboard with facial recognition and automated alerts.

He didn't mention the DCJS grant that legally requires the department to share license plate reads, camera feeds, and drone data with the state Crime Analysis Center Network as a condition of receiving the money.

He didn't mention that 791 drone flights have been logged since March, 764 of them with no case file and no stated purpose.

He didn't mention where any of the money came from, when any of it was voted on, what the actual policy is, or what oversight exists.

A statement about surveillance technology that doesn't describe the surveillance technology isn't transparency. It's the appearance of transparency.

We are not asking whether to move forward. We are asking what the system is in the first place and whether it is appropriate to implement.

If there is anything positive from his statement that I would quote him on it would be this: "Technology should never be adopted simply because it is available. It must serve a legitimate public-safety purpose, reflect the expectations of our community, and be balanced against the constitutional protections we are sworn to uphold."

Even then, "balanced" seems like an...intentional choice of verbage, the constitution is upheld, or it is violated, there is no "balance".

If he cares about the constitution being upheld (not balanced) he'd advocate for a state level equivalent of the proposed: Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act (H.R. 7816). There is currently no balance, just what appears to be overreach in the legal claim of 3rd parties collecting the data. And this all refers to alprs, the drone program is much more concerning than stationary cameras.

More to come.

For anyone who saw my last post, I kept digging after pulling the flight data.

The drone numbers were only the beginning.

In February, the Town Board approved integrating Axon Fusus into Ramapo PD.

Fusus isn't drone software. It's a platform designed to pull together camera feeds, drones, license plate readers, facial recognition and other connected systems into one interface, with automated alerts and real-time monitoring.

So now I'm looking at what else is connected to that system.

Rockland County already has a $3.7 million countywide license plate reader system, with roughly $2.9 million spent. Ramapo PD has access to the county system.

Then there's the $1M+ Chaverim camera/LPR network operating privately in the same area.

So you have the Ramapo drone program, county LPRs, private LPR/camera infrastructure, body cameras, and now Fusus.

That's a pretty substantial surveillance stack for a town of this size.

And the public records don't make it particularly easy to see how much all of this costs.

The 2026 bond package was $18.1 million. Buried inside it is $663,150 for "Various Capital Improvements, Equipment and Computers for Police Department."

That's the drone money.

The interesting part is that the drone program had already been operating for about 15 months when the Town adopted that bond.

The same bond package also contains $1.1 million for police body cameras.

Then on June 10, the Town approved another $4.28 million purchase from SHI International for the police department.

EDIT: Thank you to U/mathologies for pointing out that the purchase approval was not on June 10th, The Town Board never approved $4.28M for SHI. The only SHI action on the record is two Microsoft Cloud subscription renewals totaling $146K on June 24, 2026 (Resolutions 2026-277 and 2026-278). The $4.28M figure comes from a CivicIQ pre-RFP signal. a procurement tracking estimate, not an executed contract. We have FOIL'd the Town Clerk for any SHI proposal/quote documents; if a $4.28M line-item breakdown exists, it's not in the public agenda, packet, or minutes.

But SHI does sell and provide infrastructure for surveillance manufacturers, and I want to see the actual line-item breakdown.

Because the true numbers appear to be officiated and it seem the town spends a good bit on line items like "equipment and computers."

And there's more.

Ramapo PD received $177,000 in NYS LETECH technology funding in 2024. There's another $75 million statewide LETECH program for 2026–27, with applications due September 2.

I don't know yet whether Ramapo is applying. I'm going to find out.

I also went back through the Town's audited financial statements.

What's interesting is that you won't find Fusus, Skydio, Axon or SHI sitting there as nice, obvious line items. Equipment spending is aggregated into broader categories.

So again: the money is there. The public records just don't give you a nice clean "surveillance program" line to point at.

That's becoming a pattern.

I filed additional FOIL requests for:

• the Fusus contract and pricing
• the SHI $4.28M line-item breakdown
• the agreements governing access to the county LPR system
• surveillance system policies
• data retention and access
• related contracts and communications

The original FOIL request from my last post is now 55+ days out with no records produced.

And that's where this gets interesting.

The drone flights were one thing.

Now I'm trying to figure out what the Town has actually built around them.

More to come.

Ramapo PD has been flying drones over OUR neighborhood 6-7 times a day with no case file, no warrant, and no legal framework. Here's what I found when I looked into it.

I'm a Rockland County resident. I got fed up and started digging into the Ramapo PD drone program. What I found is pretty hard to ignore.

Using their own public data — they published it themselves on a transparency dashboard — I pulled every single flight log. Here's what it shows:

732 flights between March 31 and July 21, 2026.

700 of them (95.6%) have no case file. No incident. No suspect. No reason.

594 flights (81.1%) flew within 500 feet of schools, synagogues, and government buildings — which is illegal under Rockland County Chapter 234 passed in 2015

247 flights happened between 10PM and 6AM

The department's own Facebook page says the program "is not in response to any specific threat or incident"

They literally told you. No threat. No incident. Just drones over your neighborhood around the clock.

How did they pay for it?

A $663,150 bond titled "equipment and computers." Zero mention of drones. The program had already been flying for 15 months before they even voted to pay for it.

The same Supervisor who co-owns this program — Michael Specht — was the deputy town attorney for Christopher St. Lawrence for 20 years. St. Lawrence went to federal prison for bond fraud. Same playbook. Different program.

I filed a FOIL request for the contracts, the use policy, the FAA waiver, and the flight logs on June 4th.

Town Clerk Jeff Posner told me I had to create an account on a private third-party portal to get public records. I refused — that's not what the law requires. They've now issued two extensions with word-for-word identical boilerplate language. 51 days past the statutory deadline. Zero records produced.

Complaints have been filed with the NY Attorney General, NY State Comptroller, NYCLU, and the NY Committee on Open Government.

Rules for thee but not for me.

They passed a law in 2015 saying drones can't fly over your synagogue or your kid's school. Then they flew drones over 1,263 houses of worship and dozens of schools 594 times — with no case file, no warrant, no reason — and hid the cost in a bond that said "equipment and computers."

The data is all public. I pulled it from their own dashboard. If you want to look yourself:

cloud.skydio.com/dashboard/ramapopd

Happy to answer questions or share the full dataset with anyone who wants it.

Edit: This is not, and will not be the only post I make regarding this issue as well as other (alleged) corruption and illegal acts from our elected and appointed officials. There will be more regarding them, as well as the private entities they single source contract with. As well as anyone else who are (potentially) in their pockets. Stand-by for more.

Edit 2: A commenter correctly pointed out that Rockland County Chapter 234 includes a government agency exemption for law enforcement. That's accurate and I should have caught it. I'm correcting that.

What doesn't change: the exemption requires law enforcement to operate "in accordance with accepted Fourth Amendment jurisprudence." 764 of 791 flights have no case file. 651 have no case file AND no description at all. The department's own Facebook page says this program "is not in response to any specific threat or incident."

Also worth noting as of today's data — 17 flights are explicitly labeled "Business District Initiative & House of Worship Detail" with no case file and no warrant. They are not accidentally flying over houses of worship. They are deliberately targeting them as a stated operational purpose with zero legal documentation.

That is not Fourth Amendment compliance. Thanks to U/Lag1724 for the correction.