Newburgh street camera network needs major upgrade, 21 cameras down

Newburgh’s street-camera network is leaving 21 cameras dark, and 19 of them cannot be repaired. City information technology director Camille Mohamed told the City Council that only 108 of the city’s 129 street cameras are working, a gap that affects crime investigations, emergency response and everyday monitoring of streets in Orange County’s largest city.

Mohamed said the network runs on a mix of fiber, copper wiring and wireless radio communications, and that it needs a true redesign rather than endless patching. He said the city has an interim option that could be done quickly, but not cheaply, a sign that council members may soon have to choose between short-term fixes and a larger capital investment that keeps the system usable for public safety and evidence gathering.

The issue lands at a moment when city hall is already living with the lessons of its recent technology problems. Mohamed told the council in 2024 that moving city data to the cloud had saved about $1.5 million, even as the IT department was operating with five staff members, including himself and an account clerk, plus three contractors. He also said the city had been hit by a cyberattack in June 2024, underscoring how much pressure is on Newburgh’s small technology staff to keep basic services running.

The street-camera network is separate from the far more controversial Flock surveillance system that has drawn its own debate in Newburgh. Atlas of Surveillance listed the Newburgh Police Department as operating 64 Flock Safety automated license plate readers as of September 2025, while a Mid Hudson News report in April said the city had dozens of stationary plate readers and was aiming to install a total of 88. WAMC reported on June 10 that Council Member Omari Shakur had tried three times to bring forward a resolution to cancel the city’s two-year Flock contract, and that Newburgh paid Flock $274,400 in 2024.

That broader surveillance fight has unfolded alongside Newburgh’s reaffirmation of its Safe and Welcoming City policy in 2026, which limits city employees and police from working with federal immigration enforcement except in criminal investigations. For residents, the immediate question is more basic: whether the city will keep paying to modernize a camera backbone that still helps officers and dispatchers, or accept more blind spots while the system falls further behind.

The council has been discussing the issue at City Hall, 83 Broadway, where meetings are livestreamed and archived online. Mohamed said he will include a proposal for a complete upgrade in his 2027 budget proposal later this year, moving the camera network from diagnosis into budget planning.