As Boston and other Massachusetts cities and towns race to end the use of Flock license plate readers, some local police departments are urging that the camera system remain in place.
Police chiefs in North Attleboro, Norwood and Quincy are all coming forward to support the network of automated cameras that record license plates and other vehicle information. They describe the system as a vital investigative tool.
But the debate over whether to maintain or disband the program is boiling over across Massachusetts.
More than 30 Bay State municipalities have rejected the continued use of the AI-powered cameras, according to the ACLU of Massachusetts. Their complaints are fueled by civil liberties concerns, nationwide data-sharing fears, and documented instances of police misuse.
Proponents
North Attleboro Police Chief Richard McQuade says while he understands concerns over “privacy, data security, government power and the protection of civil liberties,” he argues that there is rampant “misinformation” surrounding Flock.
“Let me be perfectly clear about this system: It is not a surveillance tool,” McQuade told the Town Council earlier this week. “The North Attleboro Police Department does not use this system to watch the residents of North Attleboro … We do not use it to build case files on law-abiding citizens.”
Six officers of the 77-member department in the Bristol County town of roughly 31,000 have access to Flock, which McQuade describes as an “investigative tool” in tracking down missing people and criminal suspects.
The town has frozen the installation of any new cameras to the seven-camera system that the department operates through a $21,000 annual contract.
McQuade pointed out that the retention window for captured license plate images is seven days. In August, 107 vehicles tied to a criminal investigation were searched out of 2.1 million that drove through North Attleboro, he added.
“Those plates that were not searched have been deleted from our system,” the chief said. “Only criminals or those who wish to shield them should have a fear of this tool.”
Yet McQuade also highlighted the exact feature that troubles privacy advocates: “The whole purpose of the technology is sharing.”
Norwood Police Chief Chris Padden is echoing North Attleboro’s support of the system, saying his department implemented Flock after a “particularly bad year of some violent crimes” and finding previous cameras to be “very reactive.”
Padden highlighted in an interview with WBZ that on the same night he urged the Select Board to maintain the system last week, the Norfolk County department received a “Flock ping for a missing 17-year-old girl from Rhode Island.”
“We knew she was in town because we had gotten a hit,” Padden told the station, “and Cranston had put it out. We were able to recover her that night. We never would have been able to do that without Flock.”
Quincy Police Chief Mark Kennedy also sees value in maintaining Flock, as the system has helped solve violent crimes by assisting in the capture of suspects, he told city councilors earlier this month. The City Council has tabled action on whether to cancel its contract with Flock, moving the issue to an oversight committee for further debate.
High-profile win
The Waltham Police Department credited Flock for helping solve the whereabouts of a 48-year-old Portuguese national accused of shooting two Brown University students to death and injuring nine others at the Providence campus last December.
Claudio Neves-Valente was also accused of shooting and murdering Nuno Loureiro at the MIT professor’s Brookline home the night of Dec. 15, two days after the Brown shooting.
A multiday manhunt ensued to track Neves-Valente down across multiple states.
Waltham PD said its detectives “identified critical information” that helped move the multistate investigation forward and “contributed to locating the suspect’s vehicle in Salem, New Hampshire.”
Authorities found the suspect dead in a Salem storage facility the evening of Dec. 18.
“Authorities learned early in the investigation that the suspect had been operating a rental vehicle with Florida license plates,” the Waltham Police Department stated in a Facebook post on Christmas Eve. “Using Waltham’s Flock Safety camera system, Waltham Detectives were able to identify a Maine plate the suspect used to cover the Florida plates. There was no active registration attached to this Maine plate.”
“This information helped map the suspect’s route from Brookline into Waltham and north toward Interstate 95,” the department continued, “which aligned with intelligence identifying a storage unit rented in Salem, New Hampshire. The vehicle was later located at that facility, where the suspect was ultimately found.”
Detractors
Other agencies see the technology differently. The number of local departments disbanding the program is growing rapidly.
The movement began in earnest last December, when the Cambridge City Council voted to pause the cameras to vet the technology for data privacy and security concerns. Flock subsequently installed two new cameras, prompting the city to end its contract.
So far in September, at least seven communities have taken action to end the use of Flock locally, including Wilmington, Boylston, Waltham, Stoughton, Barre, Barnstable and Acushnet.
That’s according to the ACLU of Massachusetts, which is monitoring a map and list of towns and cities doing away with the cameras. Roughly 16 cities and towns — Dartmouth, Easton and Douglas, to name a few — announced in August that they’d be ditching Flock.
“Flock’s dragnet surveillance technology and nationwide data sharing model put our civil liberties and privacy at risk,” the ACLU states. “And Massachusetts residents across the state are fighting back.”
Boston dumped its Flock camera program after learning that data collected was not shared exclusively with Boston Police as they believed, but was accessible to outside law enforcement nationwide.
According to an annual surveillance report that Mayor Michelle Wu’s office filed Monday, BPD became aware of the data breach within three days of starting a trial of the 45-camera system. The trial ran from April 1, 2025, to Sept. 4, 2025, the report states.
Known cases of misuse
Some local police officers are in hot water because of misconduct with the system.
In Stow, Jason Rogers resigned from the police department last month after an internal investigation revealed he used the cameras and the state’s Criminal Justice Information Services database to monitor his former romantic partner.
The New Bedford Police Department placed Emily Pacheco on administrative leave after an internal audit found she illegally tracked her ex-girlfriend’s license plate over 650 times, the New Bedford Light reported.
New Bedford Police Chief Jason Thody has officially recommended Pacheco’s termination and referred the case to the District Attorney for possible criminal charges.
Similar allegations surround Revere Police officer Michael Tiso, who received a three-day suspension without pay last month for reportedly using Flock to track an ex-girlfriend.
The controversial system has also been the subject of lawsuits in the state courts.
Suffolk Superior Court ruled earlier this month that the Massachusetts State Police must publicly disclose the locations of automated license plate readers and database search logs. A judge found that MSP failed to explain why the records should be hidden under exemptions for critical infrastructure or active criminal investigations.
National backlash
This localized friction mirrors a growing national backlash. Across the country and up and down ballots, candidates from both parties are increasingly on the attack over Flock cameras and unregulated data collection.
In response to these sweeping concerns, State Reps Adam Scanlon, D-North Attleboro, and Marcus Vaughan, R-Wrentham, are leading a bipartisan push at the State House to establish statewide standards for camera systems.
Measures under the proposed legislation include enforcing a time limit for how long license plates can be retained in databases, defining who can access the records, and preventing data from being cross-shared or accessed by outside agencies or third-party networks.
“Massachusetts has a long tradition of protecting individual liberty and privacy,” Scanlon stated in a June Facebook post, “and we should carefully weigh whether the benefits of these systems justify the risks they pose to fundamental constitutional freedoms.”
“For that reason,” he added, “I believe Massachusetts should either ban Flock cameras outright or impose significant restrictions on their use.”
Flock’s response
In response to a Herald inquiry on the loss of contracts in Massachusetts, a Flock company spokesperson said that “new city partnerships have outpaced nonrenewals by approximately 10 to one,” so far this year.
“That does not mean every community will make the same decision,” the spokesperson said in a statement, “and we understand that public safety technology deserves thoughtful public discussion and community engagement.”
The cameras sold by Atlanta-based Flock Safety, which the company has said are running in 6,000 communities in every state except for Alaska, have become a new campaign issue that candidates and strategists see as part of a backlash against powerful technology companies, connected to broader debates over the future of artificial intelligence and the associated boom in data center construction.
A Flock spokeswoman has emphasized the company’s claims about the power of its technology, saying it helped “solve approximately one million crimes and helped reunite roughly 10,000 missing people with their families.”
“We ask anyone weighing in on this issue to engage with the facts and the record: the crimes solved, the families reunited, the safeguards already in place, and what our technology actually does,” said MoMo Zhou, the company’s vice president of communications. “We ask them to work with the communities using this technology to decide what rules should govern it and not to spread misinformation or ban a critical public safety tool outright that is helping to make communities safer.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
