What to know about New Bedford Police and Flock before the City Council meeting
The short version: New Bedford's Flock program is suspended after an officer allegedly used it to stalk an ex, and the city council still won't say who's investigating or whether the public will ever see results.
Our Take
Give credit to the New Bedford Light for doing the unglamorous work that actually holds power accountable: showing up, asking direct questions, and reporting back when officials stonewall. Their reporting on an officer allegedly using Flock cameras to track an ex-girlfriend is exactly the nightmare scenario critics of ALPR networks have warned about for years — these systems don't just watch strangers, they hand intimate surveillance power to anyone with a login and a grudge.
What's most telling here isn't the misuse itself, it's the silence afterward. No answers on who's conducting the "systemwide review," no word on how many officers are under scrutiny, no commitment to a public report. That's the pattern with Flock deployments nationwide: cities buy the system on a promise of solving crime, then treat the accountability structure — audits, logs, oversight — as an afterthought, if it exists at all. A city council vote to "refer to subcommittee" is often where scrutiny goes to die quietly.
New Bedford residents showing up to protest before a procedural vote is the right instinct. This is the moment when public pressure actually matters, before the cameras quietly come back online with the same lack of guardrails. If your town has Flock cameras and you don't know who can access that data or why, check our map and see what's already watching your streets — then use our take-action resources to start asking your own council the questions New Bedford's still won't answer.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of NEW BEDFORD LIGHT New Bedford, Massachusetts, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.