ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday to authorize a professional service contract with IPVM in the amount of $10,000 to provide research on Flock safety technology.<\/p>\n
The Flock Group Inc.\u00a0is a privately held manufacturer and operator of surveillance hardware and software, specifically automated license plate recognition, mass video surveillance, gunfire locator systems and supporting software to integrate data gathered by the technology.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Jeremy Binder said he recommended the contract with Bethlehem-based IPVM.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis organization focuses on doing independent reviews in the surveillance industry,\u201d Binder said. \u201cThat is their sole focus. They provide a very unbiased technical approach to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, it would be focusing on how the city can understand what it is that we have deployed and what the risks that are out there and how we can properly craft some policy going forward,\u201d he said. \u201cThere has been a lot of feedback from the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is a good next step in creating that policy for us to be able to look at and then for all of us to be able to evaluate,\u201d Binder said. \u201cBut I do want to make sure it’s very clear this is coming out of council’s budget. Since the public has come to us with this, we’re taking this initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Resident Lewis Arthur Shupe said a newly-published investigation which examined a Flock camera found an encryption key stored on the device and access to substantial amounts of information.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe examination reportedly revealed approximately 1.6 million images,\u201d Shupe said. \u201cThe need for an independent examination is almost academic at this point. I’m sure [IPVM] is a good company, but why waste the $10,000 when the hackers of the world will do it for free?\u201d<\/p>\n
Frank Kane, managing director, said Flock cameras was one of the first issues he dealt when he started his job in April.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur police department uses Flock technology and solves crimes because of Flock technology, but we are not comfortable as the administration, and I think you are not comfortable with that,\u201d Kane said.\u00a0\u201cWe’re anxious to hear how our technology is used once it leaves our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council President Santo Napoli said the opportunity is a good oversight for council to better understand the technology.<\/p>\n
$6.5M transfer<\/p>\n
In other business, council voted to adopt an ordinance to amend the 2026 risk fund by transferring $6.5 million from the general fund unappropriated balance.<\/p>\n
The transfer of the funds is needed for the payment of healthcare claims, drug prescription benefits and other employee medical costs for the remainder of the year, as well as for insurance costs.<\/p>\n
The city is a self-insured employer.<\/p>\n
Frank Kane, managing director, said the transfer is needed to cover a recent large claim.<\/p>\n
Binder said historically, the city made a transfer for the same purpose for $6.5 million in 2024 and $9.3 million in 2025<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are routinely in the last couple years falling short with respect to the healthcare costs,\u201d Binder said.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt is a concern if we are frequently having to do these large transfers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kane said at the beginning of the year, the city assumes it will spend $35 million on employee healthcare, which he said is an industry standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don’t start the year with your whole budget, so as money comes in\u00a0\u00a0we schedule a transfer of about $2.4 million every month into the fund. But we also have a minimum; we also operate under the policy that we need to retain two months of spending. We had a big claim that caused us to vary from that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council voted Wednesday to authorize a professional service contract with IPVM in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2748,153,155,154,16397,119773,119774,65151,119770,118007,119769,119771,39642,119772,119768,14932],"class_list":["post-287917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allentown-city-council","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-encryption","tag-flock-group","tag-flock-surveillance","tag-frank-kane","tag-gunfire-locator-systems","tag-healthcare-claims","tag-healthcare-costs","tag-insurance-costs","tag-jeremy-binder","tag-lewis-arthur-shupe","tag-safety-technology","tag-santo-napoli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}