However, residents and city officials still raised concerns about the use of the data collected from the cameras.
Walsh spoke to the Public Safety and General Government Committee on April 23 to discuss the city's current use of its 11 license plate cameras, from the public safety technology company Flock Safety, to crack down on vehicular crimes. He said majority of the cameras are along Route 1 and Route 136 near East Avenue, and the Rowayton and Cranbury neighborhoods.
"The whole implementation of this program was to deter crime, public safety, and it has shown effective, in many cases, to do such that," Walsh said.
He said the cameras were installed in 2023. Since then, he said the number of stolen cars in Norwalk has dropped by 45%.
"We've had probably well over 15 to 16 cases ... where we've gotten hits on stolen cars traveling into Norwalk," Walsh said. "And we've been able to at least intervene in crimes and attempting to stop these people from committing more stolen car thefts or burglarizing cars, which is also probably the second most prevalent property crime in the city of Norwalk, is breaking into cars. So currently, today, in three years, we've had 28 stolen cars located by the Flock system."
Resident Iliana Zuniga was the first to speak against the cameras during public comment.
"I want to be clear. I trust fully our chief of police and our police department, and I'm grateful for the work they do everyday. This is not about them," she said. "This is about making sure that when our data is handled by a private company, there are clear and enforceable rules in place to protect it."
Zuniga highlighted the proposed bill in the state legislature to limit the usage of license plate camera data, and mentioned the town of Windsor, whose Town Council voted in February to shut down its Flock cameras due to similar concerns.
"My ask is simple — please take a step back and review this agreement carefully," she said. "And if it doesn't include the proper safeguards, consider adding them, because many of you are newly elected, and this is something you have inherited, and this is a moment to make sure we get it right."
Angelo Bochanis, a Stamford resident, said he works with immigrants' rights organizations both there and in Norwalk, and shared some of the concerns of the immigrants he works with.
"I don't want to speak for them, but you know, a lot of them have talked to me and said that there's a big atmosphere of fear right now," he said. "A lot of people in Norwalk aren't sure what departments are sharing what information with federal authorities, including, but not limited to immigration authorities."
CT Insider previously reported that out-of-state agencies used data from six Connecticut police departments with Flock cameras to enforce federal immigration law.
Bochanis recommended the city cut its contract with Flock altogether.
"I think Norwalk police has an exceptional opportunity to earn more trust among the general public, but especially among immigrant communities, by taking a very vocal stand and saying that we are going to continue the work that we're doing to make sure Norwalk is safe, and we do not need Flock as part of that," Bochanis said. "So I'm urging you all to basically cut all contracts with Flock."
Walsh said the police department already decided last year to limit data sharing from the cameras with out-of-state agencies due to concerns raised from the community.
"We have a dashboard that we control our system with and we made the decision to stop sharing with out-of-state agencies and federal law enforcement," he said. "Even in the state of Connecticut, the only people that we were sharing with was local law enforcement, local police departments, local municipalities, towns and cities within the state of Connecticut. We began that in August of 2025."
Walsh said the department also safeguards the data storage by regulating its officers' own access and usage, undergoing internal audits to ensure the information wasn't being misused.
"Just after the new year, we began an audit system where we have an assigned lieutenant who audits the use of our program to search what our officers are searching on there," he said.
Committee Member Jalin Sead asked who "owns" the data that's stored in Flock's cloud system. Walsh said that was a complicated question.
"While it's there, if we capture something that's part of a criminal investigation, we can download that information and use it in a criminal investigation," he said. "Owns it? I can't answer in regards to ownership. We lease these cameras. It is deleted. so ownership after 30 days is moot because it's gone."
Sead acknowledged the work of the police department and said the public scrutiny for the cameras comes from heightened tensions both locally and nationally with regard to law enforcement activity, especially from previous U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Norwalk.
"There's a lot of benefits to it that I hear," Sead said of the cameras. "And I think that the question in the conversation really is less about the cameras, but more about the data and making sure that there's not overreach."
© 2026 The Hour (Norwalk, Conn.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
