Local Flock Cameras

 

Installation Date

• Status: None recorded. No formal installation date exists because no deployment agreement or purchase requisition has been enacted by the Marlinton Town Council.
  
  

Legal Processes for Municipal Deployment in West Virginia

For a municipality like Marlinton to install ALPR systems, the process follows distinct administrative and jurisdictional layers:

• Council Approval & Appropriations: The Mayor and Town Council must approve any contract or multi-year software-as-a-service (SaaS) agreement with a vendor (such as Flock Safety) in an open public meeting, accompanied by an appropriation from municipal general funds or a state/federal law enforcement grant.
  
  
• Right-of-Way & Permitting: Because major thoroughfares through Marlinton (such as US Route 219 and WV Route 39) are state-maintained highways, mounting cameras on state right-of-way utility poles or signposts requires an Encroachment Permit (MM-109) from the West Virginia Department of Transportation / Division of Highways (WVDOH). If installed strictly on town-owned utility poles or streetlights, approval from the town utility/public works authority is required.
  
  
• State Surveillance Regulations: West Virginia does not currently have a blanket statutory ban on ALPRs, though legislative proposals (such as the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act) have been debated in the legislature to restrict warrantless mass automated scanning and regulate data sharing.
  
  

Location & Property Rights

• If cameras were deployed in the municipality, standard Flock deployments utilize:
  
  
  • Public Rights-of-Way: Installed on existing utility/traffic infrastructure via municipal or WVDOH encroachment agreements.
    
    
  • Private Commercial Property: Private businesses or HOAs can enter direct private contracts with Flock Safety, placing cameras on private property with feeds optionally shared with local law enforcement.
    
    

System Custody & Data Oversight

In jurisdictions where Flock Safety operates under municipal contract:

• Local Agency Custodian: The contracting agency (e.g., Marlinton Police Department or Pocahontas County Sheriff's Office) serves as the primary system administrator and data custodian under CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Services) standards.
  
  
• Vendor & Cloud Storage: Flock Safety manages the hardware and hosts the encrypted data in an AWS GovCloud environment.
  
  
• Retention & Audit: Standard default retention for unflagged reads is 30 days, after which data is hard-deleted automatically unless preserved as evidence in an active criminal investigation. Authorized users must enter an active case number or articulable reason to query the database, creating an auditable access log.