2 Lynn police officers placed on leave over Flock camera searches

Our Take

Credit to Boston 25 News for digging into this one, because it's exactly the kind of story Flock Safety and local police departments would rather you didn't notice. An internal audit catching two officers allegedly misusing the ALPR system isn't a bug in the surveillance dragnet — it's a feature finally working as intended, for once. The real question is how many other queries, in Lynn and in the thousands of other departments running Flock, never get audited at all.

Flock's whole pitch rests on "it's just for solving crimes," but a database that logs every car's movements, searchable by any officer with a login, is an open invitation to abuse: tracking an ex, checking up on a neighbor, running plates for personal reasons that have nothing to do with a warrant. Paid leave for two officers is a start, but it's a reactive patch on a system that was never built with real guardrails. Audits only catch what gets flagged, and most agencies don't publish audit logs for public review.

This is why transparency and local pushback matter more than vague promises about "policy." If your town has these cameras, you deserve to know who's watching the watchers. Check our camera map to see what's near you, and head to take action if you want to push your city council for real oversight instead of taking a vendor's word for it.