New Bedford, Massachusetts police officer accused of using Flock cameras to track ex-girlfriend

Our Take

CBS Boston is reporting that a New Bedford, Massachusetts police officer stands accused of using the department's Flock Safety camera network to track an ex-girlfriend's movements. If true, this is exactly the nightmare scenario that privacy advocates have been shouting about since these cameras started multiplying on street corners nationwide: a tool sold to departments as a crime-fighting force multiplier becomes a personal surveillance weapon the moment someone with a login decides to misuse it.

Flock and police departments love to tout audit logs and "access controls" as the fail-safe against exactly this kind of abuse. But an audit trail only matters if someone is actually watching it, and most departments have shown little appetite for policing their own policing. This isn't a hypothetical edge case anymore — it's a recurring pattern. Officers and dispatchers across the country have been caught running plates for personal reasons, from petty curiosity to outright stalking, and the public usually only finds out when it blows up into a criminal case like this one.

Every camera added to a Flock network is another data point that can be turned against the very public it's supposed to protect, regardless of whether the person pulling the data wears a badge. Check our camera map to see what's watching your community, and visit take action to push your local officials for real transparency and accountability before the next abuse case makes headlines.