North Attleboro Town Council to discuss Flock camera use

Our Take

WPRI 12 News flagged a North Attleboro Town Council meeting where Flock Safety cameras are officially on the agenda. That's worth paying attention to, because this is the moment in the process when a town still has leverage. Once ALPR networks get installed, the conversation almost always shifts from 'should we' to 'how do we manage what we already bought.' A council meeting before procurement is exactly where residents can ask the hard questions: who gets access to the data, how long it's retained, whether it's shared with federal agencies, and what happens when the system misidentifies a car.

We say this in nearly every town that pops up in our feed, because it's true every time: Flock's pitch is always about solving crime, but the infrastructure doesn't know the difference between a stolen car and a woman driving to a clinic in a state where that's now criminalized, or a journalist's source, or an ex-partner's new address. North Attleboro deserves a real public debate, not a rubber-stamp vote buried in a late-night agenda item, and credit to WPRI for putting a camera in the room so residents who couldn't attend can still see how their representatives handle it.

If you're in town, this is the kind of meeting where showing up actually matters. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and if you want to push back before the vote, our take-action page has tools to help you make your case to the council.