Scarsdale In the News this Week

Scarsdale received national attention this week due to the detention of a 20 year-old resident by ICE and news about the Village’s contract with Flock Safety that has since be cancelled. See links and excerpts to some of these stories below:

From NBC News:
A Purdue University student and daughter of a prominent New York priest who was detained during a visa hearing last week has been released.

Yeonsoo Go, 20, reunited with her family Monday night in downtown Manhattan. It comes after Go, who was handcuffed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents upon leaving her visa hearing, spent several days in a facility in Louisiana, according to the ICE database.

Go came to the U.S. in 2021 on a religious dependent visa for children or spouses of religious workers temporarily in the country, Marissa Joseph, Go’s attorney, told NBC News. Go, whose visa had been extended until December, was attempting to renew the visa because her mother had changed employers. It isn’t clear why the student was targeted for detention, Joseph said. “I’m just so grateful for the support that I’ve had,” Go told the crowd of supporters after she hugged her family.

ICE did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request to comment on the reasons behind Go’s detention. And the Department of Homeland Security did not provide the family a reason for Go’s release, Joseph said. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin previously described Go in a statement as an “illegal alien” who had overstayed her visa that expired more than two years ago.

Go, who lives in Scarsdale, New York, with her mother, Kyrie Kim, came to the U.S. for Kim’s work. Kim, who became the first woman ordained in the Seoul Diocese of the Anglican Church of Korea, had been invited to develop the Episcopal church’s connection to Asian communities, said Mary Rothwell Davis, an attorney for the Episcopal Diocese of New York, where Go’s mother is a reverend.

Read more here:

Flock Contract:

Dropsite News
Scarsdale Village in the state of New York is the wealthiest suburb in the U.S., but it now finds itself on the frontline of the fight against mass surveillance. Average household income in the New York hamlet is $569,000 and typical home value is $1.4 million. Town meetings typically revolve around discussions of tree placement and after school programs. But, since the village’s board of trustees surreptitiously voted on April 8 to adopt a $2.1 million contract with Flock to “aid public safety,” mass surveillance has been the main subject of public comment.

After residents found out about the contract that had already been inked, they began showing up to speak their mind at the next Village Board on April 22. The issue has become the main topic of contention in subsequent meetings since. One of the more poignant public comment speeches came from a former NSA employee and Scarsdale resident, Charles Seife, at the June 10 village board meeting. “The system that Scarsdale wishes to implement is extremely dangerous.… The records are kept for several weeks. At the very least, they allow retroactive surveillance,” Seife said, adding, “These systems are immensely popular with politicians and law enforcement, even though they do real and palpable damage to the citizenry.”|

Flock is a $7.5 billion surveillance technology company, operating in over 5,000 communities across 49 states. Flock has a proven playbook to expand through securing local government contracts, often behind closed doors.

See more here:

Dan Kennedy Media Nation
In a village without a newspaper, a small digital outlet is keeping tabs and asking questions

Among the more harmful effects of the local news crisis is that it empowers elected officials to engage in dubious behavior without anyone keeping an eye on them. But what happens when important public business is moved out of view of the watchdog?

That’s what happened in the wealthy suburb of Scarsdale Village, New York, where the board of trustees surreptitiously approved a $2.1 million contract in April that places the community under surveillance in the name of public safety.

The story was laid out over the weekend in Drop Site, an investigative newsletter founded by Intercept veterans Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill and Nausicaa Renner. According to reporter Ka (Jessica) Burbank, the trustees used vaguely worded language about “public safety equipment” on an advance agenda and then went into executive (closed) session to approve a contract with a company known as Flock Safety.

As resident Josh Frankel told Burbank, “I don’t think that anybody who looked at the agenda in advance would have thought that public safety equipment involved live cameras, license plate readers, drone technology, basically a mass surveillance system.” Frankel added that “maybe you’re thinking public safety equipment is a traffic light, a crosswalk, a yield sign, something along those lines, but not mass surveillance.”

Flock Safety, a $7.5 billion company, has a presence in 5,000 communities in 49 states as well as a reputation for secretive dealings with local officials. “Flock’s technology has been used to assist with everything from ICE investigations in Illinois to abortion investigations in Texas,” Burbank writes. Flock’s website says: “Protect your community, business or school 24/7 with coverage that never sleeps.”

The story is long and detailed, but there’s a wrinkle that I want to call your attention to. Because even though the legacy newspaper, the Scarsdale Inquirer, closed in 2024, the community is served by an independent journalist, Joanne Wallenstein, who runs a 26-year-old digital news project called Scarsdale 10583. And she was very much there when the Flock deal was struck behind closed doors. Burbank writes that Wallenstein “has produced countless articles since April 8th, covering her own correspondence with the board, press releases, and board meetings.” Wallenstein is quoted as saying: "Village officials blamed the lack of notice on the demise of the Scarsdale Inquirer. However, Scarsdale 10583 has been covering the news and published weekly since 2009. In this case, the reason no one knew about the Flock contract was because no advance notice was given. The resolution was not included in the agenda and there was no public hearing. It had nothing to do with the loss of the local newspaper."

The story was also covered by local television in June as well as by a website called Scarsdale Insider, although the latter has not published new material of any kind since June 24.

See more here:

Institute for Justice
Public Interest Law Firm Applauds Westchester County Village for Ending License Plate Reader Contract

(August 6, 2025) ARLINGTON, Va.—Today, the Institute for Justice (IJ) applauds the village of Scarsdale, New York for terminating its contract with the automated license plate reader (ALPR) company Flock Safety. The decision comes after more than 400 members of the community signed a petition urging the city to end the contract.
“I am very grateful to the over 450 Scarsdale residents who signed the petition,” said Mayra Kirkendall-Rodriguez, one of the Scarsdale residents who spearheaded the petition. “Matters as important as surveillance technology should always be placed on municipal agendas and publicized so that residents have an opportunity to provide their views.”

“The village made the right call in canceling the Flock contract and I respect that,” said Scarsdale resident Josh Frankel, who was also closely involved with the petition. “Should this issue arise again, I’d hope the board will seek public input beforehand.”

Thousands of communities around the United States have partnered with private companies to install ALPR cameras on their roads. Unlike red-light cameras or speed cameras that are triggered by specific violations, these cameras photograph every vehicle that drives by and can use artificial intelligence to create a profile with identifying information that then gets stored in a massive database. Once that happens, officials can search the database for any vehicle they wish, all without a warrant. And departments around the country are automatically sharing data with each other, making it simple for police anywhere to track drivers’ movements. All of this arbitrary discretion threatens people’s privacy, security, and freedom of movement by creating an atmosphere where everyone knows they are being watched and tracked whenever they hit the road.

The Guardian reported earlier this year that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers had accessed ALPR data in Westchester County, the county Scarsdale is located in, even though the county has laws limited cooperation with the federal government.

IJ—which has a federal lawsuit against the city of Norfolk, Virginia over its use of more than 170 ALPR cameras—learned about the issue in Scarsdale after Mayra and Josh reached out to express their concerns with the village’s ALPR contract.

“The village’s decision to cancel its contract with Flock shows the importance of grassroots activism,” said IJ Special Projects Coordinator Tom Solomon. “Residents of Scarsdale made it clear they did not want to be subjected to unconstitutional, warrantless, and frankly unnecessary surveillance. We’re thrilled that Mayra, Josh and all other Scarsdale residents will now be free from this warrantless surveillance, and we applaud the village for listening.”

In addition to the ongoing lawsuit in Norfolk, IJ recently convinced officials in an Arkansas city to remove an ALPR camera that was placed directly in front of an innocent family’s home. Every time a vehicle drove by that family’s home, the camera snapped a picture which included the family’s front yard and driveway. The camera also captured every time the family left the house or arrived home.