City Council criticizes Flock, advances motions to restrict or remove the surveillance tech

Our Take

Credit to the New Bedford Light for actually showing up to council meetings and documenting what elected officials do when they stop treating ALPR contracts as a rubber-stamp line item. A city council telling a police department to cover up or remove cameras while questions get answered is a rare sight — usually the gear goes in quietly, nobody reads the data-sharing agreement, and by the time residents notice the poles, the vendor already has a renewal clause locked in.

What makes this notable isn't that New Bedford suddenly discovered surveillance is controversial. It's that council members are drawing a line between 'we were told this was for stolen cars' and the reality of a networked system that logs every plate, every car, every resident, with retention and sharing policies that are entirely up to the vendor and whoever the department shares access with. That gap between the sales pitch and the actual capability is exactly why these fights are happening in city halls across the country right now.

If you want to see whether your own city already has Flock or similar ALPR hardware installed, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a council to notice on its own, our take-action guide has the steps for pushing the issue yourself.