Wednesday, October 14, 2026
By Mark Jurkowitz | Outer Banks Voice on September 8, 2026
During his presentation to the Kitty Hawk Town Council on Tuesday, Sept. 8, Police Chief Michael Palkovics traced the demise of the License Plate Reader (LPR) program in the Town and stressed that at this point, he is not looking restart it.
“With our support running out, equipment failing, and a program that has not accomplished anything, I have no plans to reactivate the LPR,” he said, adding that “we are not asking for funding to restart a program.”
And while lauding LPR technology and characterizing it as a significant law enforcement “tool,” Palkovics said it would be best if the Town now focused on “building a program that is usable and meets our needs and seeing how the legal challenges impact LPRs.”
Because the LPR program in Kitty Hawk is defunct, the tone of the meeting was different from the Sept. 1 meeting when the Dare County Commissioners voted to remove all 14 Flock cameras in the county’s unincorporated areas and the Sept. 2 meeting when the Nags Head Commissioners decided to defer any action on the Town’s 12 Flock cameras.
In tracing the history of the program in Kitty Hawk, Palkovics noted that it started in 2019 with the Kitty Hawk Police purchasing two cameras, bringing the total to 14 with the Dare County Sheriff’s Office serving as the primary administrator of the Town’s program.
“Our goal was to have all entrances and exits in the town covered,” he said. And when Dare County transitioned to Flock cameras several years ago, Palkovics said Kitty Hawk did not join the transition to Flock for fiscal reasons and thus, its coverage dropped from 14 to 2 cameras.
Palkovics reported that the last license plate search conducted by a Kitty Hawk LPR was in February 2026. He added that in July 2026, “we found that the program that had served the Town between 2019 and 2024 was barely hanging on.” One month later, in August, he effectively ended the program by shutting off the one functioning camera that remained.
The four speakers during the public comment session at the Sept. 8 meeting, which included Deflock Dare organizer Andrea O’Donnell, voiced their opposition the LPRs, largely on privacy grounds. But they also praised Chief Palkovic’s informational presentation and thanked the Town Council for its cautious approach to bringing LPRs back to Kitty Hawk.
