A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
By Andy Gardner
AKWESASNE. The tribal police chief says a project to place 14 cameras on public roads around the southern side of the territory says it is to “enhance criminal investigations” and aid in investigating traffic collisions.
Matt Rourke, chief of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police, spoke with Indian Time and says the project is not aimed at surveillance of the general public, or to hand out more speeding tickets.
“We believe as tribal police … we are our first line of defense, our own Native police departments. We’re protecting our own people,” the chief said. “That’s small, community policing oriented goals. We’re from this community, and we want to keep everybody safe.”
“It’s not just surveillance that someone would have around their house. We want to be transparent with people,” he said. He pointed to public surveillance cameras that police in neighboring communities like Massena use to monitor certain public places, and busy downtown intersections where vehicles sometimes collide.
“It’s to help figure out crimes, car accidents, stolen property, help enhance investigations of those crimes,” Rourke said. “We’re not doing it to issue speeding tickets. If there was a serious car accident, the majority we’re trying is for intersections. It would help support the case, look at what was the pre-event to that.”
He hopes the cameras may also dissuade some from committing international offenses on the territory. “It’s also a deterrent, because we’re up here on the border,” he said.
Another benefit, according to Rourke, would be that tribal police wouldn’t have to rely on security footage from stores along the corridors where the new cameras will be placed. He says he wants “to work with those businesses so they can concentrate on what they’re there for.” Business owners or employees who turn over the footage also may become witnesses in the case to verify the authenticity of the footage.
The chief says he wants cameras near the electronic billboard in Raquette Point; Western Door on state Route 37; at Bear’s Den and McGee Road; at the Frogtown Road intersection; at the Hogansburg Four Corners; at the intersection of State Routes 37 and 37C; at Number 9/Cook Road and State Route 37; at State Route 37 and 95; at State Route 37 and Tarbell Road; past Eastern Door along State Route 37; near Beaver Meadow Road and Route 37; and near the senior housing facility.
That camera will be near the senior homes “for their comfort. It’s a vulnerable area. I promised them there would be one in that general area, right next to their driveway.”
Chief Rourke says he is concerned that the public may feel the cameras are an effort to spy on lawful everyday comings and goings. He says that’s not the case.
“I know there’s some controversy when people start calling it surveillance. Am I going to be watched every single day?” Chief Rourke said. “You’re on camera a couple hundred times a day, no matter where you go to.”
And speaking of court cases, he said that an arrest based just on video footage may not stand up in court.
“You have to go out and find prior information … It’s easily thrown out. That’s all you’ve got is just this little video? Where’s all your statements and these other things,” he said. “It’s not giving out huge identifiers. These cameras aren’t the only thing that can convict a person.”
He argues that the cameras, in many cases, won’t pick up much beyond “the identity of a car, sometimes the plate if it’s angled right.”
“You just can see there are one or two people inside. It’s not identifying,” the chief said.
He said that physical placement of the cameras “sometimes [is] luck of the draw.” That’s because it has to be on a pole with a power source, and they’re not all designed that way.
“We have to have a power source. That’s one of the things … we reviewed with National Grid,” he said.
He said they are also being cautious to not have the cameras facing into private property.
“We want to stay away, people had concerns it’s going to be looking in my house,” he said. “We see the benefits of it. Security and privacy is what we’re looking for. We’re going to look at where these cameras are pointed and make sure it’s not looking into anybody’s windows.”
The footage will be stored in-house at the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police Department, and subject to Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests from the public.
“We control our information here. We have internal controls,” Rourke said. “All of our video would be stored here with policy, on our server.”
And he says they won’t freely hand the footage over to outside law enforcement agencies.
“If there was any outside agencies looking at that, I really stressed … you’d have to put in a formal request,” the chief said. “The St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police Department would be involved in that case.”
He says there are also in-house benefits to the cameras. One of those is accountability for officers working out in the field.
“If someone complained … it’s also an internal control,” Rourke said. “We want to make sure we’re abiding … make sure my officers are responding appropriately.”
Their dispatcher would also be able to see things like collisions at busy intersections and determine the level of support needed to respond to the call.
“It could be a fender bender or a major incident where the fire department has to go out. Do we have to go there at a high rate of speed with lights and sirens on?” Rourke said. “That was our concern before. We want to make sure all first responders are out there safely.”
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