North Attleboro town council to discuss Flock camera usage
The short version: North Attleboro's town council is finally putting Flock camera usage on the public agenda, and residents should show up and speak up.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: WPRI is flagging a real opportunity here. Too many towns roll out Flock Safety ALPR systems through quiet administrative approvals or police department purchase orders, with zero public debate until the cameras are already bolted to poles. North Attleboro putting this on a town council agenda, in a public meeting, with a date and time anyone can show up to, is exactly how these decisions are supposed to work. It shouldn't be the exception.
What happens in that room on Monday matters beyond North Attleboro. Every town that holds a real public hearing on Flock usage sets a template for how the next town over handles it, and every town that skips that step normalizes surveillance infrastructure going in without consent. Residents should be asking the basic questions reporters often don't have airtime for: who can access the data, how long is it retained, is it shared with ICE or out-of-state agencies, and what's the actual evidence this reduces crime versus just logging everyone's movements by default.
If you're in North Attleboro or anywhere near it, check whether your streets are already wired into this network on our camera map, and if you want to push back before the next town's cameras go up without a hearing like this one, our take-action page has the tools to do it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WPRI, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.