By the time New Bedford city councilors learned their police had installed license plate cameras from Flock Safety — two years after the fact — the system had already been abused.
Two officers had searched records of their ex-romantic partners hundreds of times. Other police departments from around the country had searched the New Bedford database without needing warrants and with few checks on whether any of them were justified or properly done. The cameras had been up for two years with no notification, much less debate among the public.
Residents and some city officials were livid.
“This technology has been running rampant without safeguards for the past two years,” New Bedford City Councilor Shane Burgo said at a Sept. 24 council meeting, where he presented an ordinance that would require police to obtain warrants for all searches and restrict record-sharing with other law enforcement. In the interim, the ordinance would ban all such cameras until guardrails are in place.
Similar backlashes against the technology have unfolded across the country in recent months, in part because of abuses by police officers similar to those in New Bedford, but also because in many cases they were installed under wraps, with little public notification.
At a time of burgeoning concerns over artificial intelligence run amok and the seemingly unstoppable advance of new technologies, license plate readers have become the line in the sand for many residents concerned about their privacy rights and government overreach.
But in their rush to contain the surveillance technology, policymakers in New Bedford and elsewhere are discovering that once police get a taste of it, it is much harder to reverse.
“You want to throw public safety away? You go right ahead in the 21st century. I’m not about to,” New Bedford Councilor Brian Gomes told Burgo at the council meeting, as sporadic heckles could be heard from the audience. “You put this in place, you know what you’re doing? … We’re handcuffing the Police Department. We’re handcuffing the people of this city. We’re handcuffing public safety.”
Indeed, in the face of pleas from their police chiefs that the cameras are useful crime-fighting tools, many municipalities are not getting rid of the license plate readers altogether but rather are taking a breather, or, in some cases, simply switching vendors. The surveillance is still in place, at times with much similar conditions, only just without the Flock name that has become so poisonous in the current political environment.
In Boston, the Police Department ended its pilot with Flock last year, but records showed it quietly launched two pilots with Flock competitors, Axon and Motorola. Salem also intends to switch vendors, after reports found the city’s data was included in nationwide immigration-related queries; city officials have said they will first address concerns about the technology before picking a new vendor.
And in New Bedford, police temporarily stopped using the 20 Flock cameras installed in the city until sufficient safeguards are in place. Police Chief Jason Thody recommended termination for the two officers who allegedly tracked their ex-girlfriends, although the incidents remain under investigation.
Some 40 communities in Massachusetts have so far paused or stopped using Flock in the last year, according to a Globe tally. That patchwork response effectively creates a geographic checkerboard where motorists may not be tracked within their own town but clocked into a database as soon as they run an errand in another community. Even in cases where municipalities have retained the cameras, one may have strict guardrails and frequent audits of their use, while another might freely allow its data to be shared nationwide.
The patchwork also somewhat undermines a key selling point of the technology, that by linking all those individual cameras into one big network, police can track a suspect more effectively over a larger area.
“It’s going to be very inconsistent if each and every city council, police department, mayor, first selectman … tries to figure this out just for their own community,” Thody, the New Bedford police chief, said in an interview. “Here we are doing something just for New Bedford, and yet right next door, somebody could have a totally different standard.”
Law enforcement leaders are wrestling with granular questions such as how long they should keep records of the travels of their residents, what other agencies can access that data, and how often queries by their officers should be audited, said Michael Bradley, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association.
“Sometimes ... the technology gets out in front of the policy,” Bradley said.
The Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents all 351 municipalities, hasn’t offered guidance to towns on Flock because no one has asked for it, said executive director Adam Chapdelaine. The group will consider how to support towns navigating the issue, he said.
Thody, the New Bedford chief, called on the Legislature or state agencies responsible for training and certifying police to regulate law enforcement uses of the technology statewide.
While any response at the state level doesn’t appear imminent, some lawmakers are drafting legislation.
Representative Adam Scanlon, a North Attleborough Democrat, and Representative Marcus Vaughn, a Wrentham Republican, announced in September they are writing a submission for the next legislative session to standardize statewide requirements for searches, along with data-retention and data-sharing restrictions.
“We need to ensure that everybody has the same protections in place, and no less than the other,” Scanlon said.
At the national level, congressional representatives recently held a hearing about the license plate-reading cameras and invited executives from Flock, Axon, and Motorola. None attended.
In the face of a fast-developing backlash, Flock in August announced changes to its system, including an automatic auditing tool to flag patterns of misuse. The company will also require officers to enter the case number of an authorized investigation for any search, and would allow departments to prohibit certain kinds of searches by other agencies, such as for immigration purposes.
“We support thoughtful, bipartisan legislation that puts strong privacy, transparency, and accountability guardrails in place while preserving law enforcement’s ability to use technology responsibly to keep people safe,” a Flock spokesperson said in a statement.
Axon and Motorola did not respond to a request for comment.
With movement seemingly unlikely to happen fast from the top down, local organizers at the ground level are pushing for change. Nick LeBlanc, a New Bedford resident and teacher, has become a key activist there since he spotted a camera posted near his front door in July.
LeBlanc, 37, sifted through troves of documents from the city and was the one who first informed the City Council of the existence of the cameras.
The topic has since snowballed into a large bipartisan response, mostly against the cameras.
The New Bedford City Council meeting on Sept. 24 was fiery at times, as people gathered outside in protest of Flock, clutching signs including one saying “the NBPD can’t be trusted with Flock.” Inside, a person was removed in handcuffs for repeatedly interrupting.
In introducing his proposal, Councilor Burgo urged Mayor Jon Mitchell to allow the ordinance to pass. He later told the Globe he expects Mitchell will veto the measure, which could kill it or push an attempt to override it until mid-November, right before the Flock contract expires.
LeBlanc has no plans to ease up on the pressure, and hopes other towns and cities are following what happens in New Bedford.
“There’s a hope,” he said, “that maybe by pushing back on our own City Council and pushing back on our mayor and pushing back on our chief, you can sort of set the tone for other communities.”
Yogev Toby can be reached at yogev.toby@globe.com.