By SCOTT JACKSON
Two dozen residents told city councillors they want Quincy to stop using Flock Safety cameras and join the growing list of communities that have done so. The city’s police chief and the county’s district attorney both voiced their support for the technology.
The City Council’s Oversight Committee met Oct. 6 for a forum on the Flock Safety cameras. The meeting lasted four and a half hours – a public hearing that ran over an hour long followed by testimony from invited guests and questions and answers from councillors. Councillors did not take any action relative to the cameras at the hearing.
Quincy is home to 50 Flock Safety cameras. Of those cameras, 49 are automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) and one is a Condor camera located at Ricciuti Drive to catch illegal dumping, according to Police Chief Mark Kennedy.
The 24 residents who spoke at the public hearing voiced concerns about privacy and surveillance and pointed to issues other communities have had with Flock Safety. Some but not all the residents who spoke on Oct. 6 had also done so during an open forum at the Sept. 8 meeting of the City Council.
Among those who spoke on Oct. 6 was Mark Koch, the son of Richard Koch, a former Quincy city councillor and a retired police chief on Cape Cod. An attorney, Koch questioned why Quincy police do not wear body cameras but the department uses the Flock cameras.
“What they (the cameras) are are constant, warrantless surveillance of citizens. We are in a city where police officers do not have body-worn cameras. Why? We’re in a city where we have cameras pointed at civilians instead. Why?” Koch said.
“Thank you to the City Council for making an event like this happen where we can speak, where we can say, ‘why did all these cameras go up with seemingly no oversight?’ Who decided that for us? Is it the police’s decision to police us? And who is policing them?’”
John Fitzmaurice said he was the senior director of information technology for a biotech company for 25 years and in that role was responsible for operating surveillance systems. Fitzmaurice said those systems were truly closed because they were not connected to the internet and were wired into internal servers, whereas the Flock cameras are connected to the cloud which operates on Amazon Web Service servers.
“The cloud is like a hotel. The guests have been given a room to use and the amenities…and keep their personal belongings in that room. When we exit a hotel room, the room is not secure. Hotel management, maintenance and housekeeping [have] access. You have to trust the hotel staff to not mismanage, misuse, disturb or share your personal belongings,” Fitzmaurice said.
“Likewise, you must trust the Flock and Amazon Web Services will not mismanage, misuse, disturb or share your data. Flock has broken that trust in the past. The Boston Police Department discovered that, despite Flock’s assurances that data from its pilot program would not be shared with any client, Flock shared them with every other client.”
Tyler Anderson said that John Adams “felt very strongly about unreasonable search and seizure.” Adams authored Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure and was a precursor to the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, Anderson noted.
“There is no deal to be made with these people (Flock). They have violated every agreement they’ve had. They go into cities that have cancelled their contracts and put up new ones. They collect more data than they say they do. This is not complicated. This is mass surveillance. There will never be, God willing, a clearer example of this in our entire lifetime,” Anderson said. “We love John Adams, so let’s stop pissing on his grave.”
No residents spoke in favor of Flock cameras at the hearing on Oct. 6.
Kennedy had previously voiced his support for the ALPRs at the Sept. 8 council meeting and, at the beginning of his remarks on Oct. 6, said he stood by those comments.
“I stood before this council on Sept. 8 and I gave my position on the Quincy Police Department’s use of automated license plate reader technology, or ALPR, and why I believe we can use this technology responsibly while also protecting the civil liberties of the people we serve,” Kennedy said. “I stand by everything I said that night.”
The Quincy Police Department has been using ALPRs since around 2011, Kennedy said, when the cameras were mounted onto the department’s police cruisers.
“This was certainly not a secret program. You really couldn’t miss them – they look like black shoe boxes mounted to the rear of a car,” Kennedy said. “And, at the time, there were numerous stories around the country about the growing use of this technology by law enforcement agencies, and our use of it certainly was not intended to be hidden.”
In 2020, the department transitioned from the vehicle-mounted ALPRs to the Flock cameras, which are installed in fixed locations throughout the city. Kennedy – who was named police chief in 2023 – said he did not have much interaction with the system and did not personally use it because he was not assigned to a unit that required it.
After he became chief, Kennedy said he “began to see first-hand how ALPR technology can be used in investigations, and I saw its value.” Kennedy said it was under his watch that the use of Flock cameras expanded to what the city has in place today.
In the fall of 2025, Kennedy read an article published by the ACLU concerning data-sharing associated with ALPR technology. Kennedy said that article “set some alarm bells off” and he realized the department did not have an ALPR policy. By December 2025, the first draft of the policy was finished and staff also met with Flock representatives to “confirm exactly how we were using the system, who owned the data being collected, what controls were available to us, and what safeguards or guardrails were in place.” On Jan. 15, 2026, the department’s first ALPR policy was formally issued, and its ALPR users were trained on it on March 13.
Kennedy said he attended an event at the library over the summer and, while he was not allowed to speak that evening, did speak to several residents after it. The chief said one resident raised concerns that he had previously not heard regarding allegations of unauthorized sharing of data collected by another police department. Following that event, Kennedy had his command staff review the ALPR system and, as a result, on Aug. 6, the department shut off all nationwide sharing and all sharing with outside law-enforcement agencies, local, state and federal.
Following the Sept. 8 City Council meeting, Kennedy said he took an even deeper dive into the department’s use of the technology and made changes as a result. The department changed its data-retention period from 30 to 14 days and began the process of developing a new policy consistent with a model policy from the Massachusetts Major City Police Chiefs Association.
“When I look at this timeline, I don’t see a department that has been ignoring these issues. I see a department that has used this technology for approximately 15 years for investigative purposes and that has increasingly put policies, training, restrictions and oversight around the technology as we have learned more about its capabilities and its potential risks,” Kennedy said.
“I believe in ALPR technology because I’ve seen first-hand what it can do for victims of serious crimes, but I also believe that law enforcement has an obligation to recognize that just because technology can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean we should do it.”
Kennedy gave a demonstration of how the Flock data is searched, using a slide deck prepared before the meeting with screenshots of an actual query. The license plate used in the search belongs to a Quincy Police Department vehicle.
An officer with access to the Flock system – Kennedy said 48 out of 234 officers have such access – first has to login to the system using two-factor authentication, which he said prevents the sharing of passwords. The officer then has to provide the type of crime being investigated, the reason for the search, and a case number, all of which are required fields. The case number used for this search was entered as a test data entry into the department’s computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) system.
The test search was for a two-hour window on Oct. 4. The results showed two entries for the police vehicle that was searched for, one at Burgin Parkway and one at Hannon Parkway, within about two minutes of each other, Kennedy said.
The Flock system does not have access to the Registry of Motor Vehicles database, the chief added. The plate number would have to be run through the RMV’s database to determine who owns the vehicle, he said, and that system is independently audited by the state.
“If I wanted to run Drake Maye’s car to see where he lived, I would be getting a call from somebody, I would probably be getting suspended,” Kennedy said.
Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey was also invited to speak at the hearing. He stated that misuse of the Flock system could lead to a criminal prosecution and an officer could face jail time and lose their pension if they were convicted.
“That’s a pretty big penalty people pay,” he said.
Morrissey pointed to three serious crimes that he said Flock cameras helped solve: the kidnapping of a woman at the Wollaston MBTA station in 2022; a fatal shooting at the Elevation apartment complex in Quincy that same year; and the 2025 fatal shooting of an MIT professor in Brookline, the perpetrator of which also committed a mass shooting at Brown University in Providence.
“I’m sure some changes could be made. I suggest that, having spent some time in the legislature, that it’s also an issue for the legislators to consider as well because that also can provide some guidance and safeguards,” Morrissey said.
“I just hope that you don’t get rid of what I consider one of the more valuable tools to stop violent crimes.”
Also invited to speak at the forum was Gideon Epstein, policy counsel for the ACLU of Massachusetts. Epstein said his team has been engaged in public records requests to police departments across the state, including Quincy.
“We found that this company, Flock Safety, was effectively incentivizing local police departments to engage in widespread, often nation-wide data sharing. We also found that Flock enables its customers to retain license plate reader data for extended periods of time, often 30 days, which allows law enforcement to paint a very vivid picture of ordinary residents’ everyday movements,” he said.
“We also found a number of contract problems. Contract language that gave Flock, the company, and not its customers in law enforcement, the ability to control their own data.”
Epstein said Flock shared Boston’s license plate reader data against the wishes of local officials.
“Even when Boston had better contract language that would have otherwise prevented the sharing of this data, Flock shared its data externally anyway, sharing Boston’s data nationwide,” he said.
While proponents of ALPRs have suggested drivers don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy on public roads, Gideon said the ACLU disagrees with that premise. He pointed to the Supreme Court cases Carpenter v. United States and United States v. Chatrie in which the court ruled that people do retain a reasonable expectation of privacy as they move about in public.
While those cases involved data associated with cellphones, Epstein said other courts have addressed the issue of ALPRs. A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled earlier in October that the use of Flock cameras did constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment and law enforcement would have been required to obtain a warrant. Epstein added that there are conflicting court opinions on the matter.
Epstein also pointed to the 2020 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. McCarthy. Police in that case had used ALPRs on the Bourne and Sagamore bridges to track the defendant’s movements, including historical data and real-time alerts. In that decision, the SJC determined that “while the defendant has a constitutionally protected expectation of privacy in the whole of his public movements, an interest which potentially could be implicated by the widespread use of ALPRs, that interest is not invaded by the limited extent and use of ALPR data in this case.”
Epstein urged the council to ban ALPRs in Quincy and pass an ordinance that would “give the community true control over police surveillance tools.”
“This issue is so much bigger than just one company or one type of technology,” he said. “There is a host of AI-powered surveillance technology already here and it’s a good idea for communities to take stock of local police departments’ use of these technologies and ensure there is a true public process before any possible continued use of any of this technology.”
Matthew Ross, an associate professor of public policy and economics at Northeastern University, was likewise invited to speak at the hearing. Ross told councillors he is neither for nor against Flock cameras. He said Flock could be a “low cost, effective way, to clear more cases for many police departments across the country.”
As of right now, however, the evidence to support the use of Flock cameras is “completely lacking,” he said. Five studies have been conducted to date on Flock, only one of which was rigorous, he said. Two of the other studies were commissioned by the company and other two others involved agencies roughly the size of Quincy’s.
Ross said the one study he described as rigorous “showed small to modest benefits in terms of motor vehicle thefts and low-level property crimes.” There was no evidence Flock has helped solve violent crimes or more serious offenses, though anecdotes that the cameras have been helpful are out there.
As officials weigh the pros and cons of Flock, Ross suggested the use of the company’s cameras could impact how people view the police departments that utilize them.
“I tend to think of policing as really having three inputs. One of them is police officers, manpower. The other one is technology, like Flock. The third, and one of the most important ones, is community cooperation,” Ross said.
“If you are increasing technology, which is improving public safety, you should also be worried at the same time you’re decreasing community cooperation.”
Two Quincy residents were invited as speak as guests as well: Brian Hurley, a systems engineer, and Maxfield Capron, a member of a civic group that has looked into the Quincy Police Department’s use of the Flock cameras.
Hurley, who stated he believes ALPR is unethical, said he had concerns regarding Flock’s customer service agreement.
“It states that Quincy PD will grant a ‘non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid license to use, reproduce, modify, and distribute agency data and non-agency end-user data as part of the aggregate data,” as defined in the agreement, Hurley said.
While the document defines aggregate data, Hurley said it does not describe how that data would be anonymized. Because the steps to anonymize the data are not mentioned in the agreement, Hurley said people can’t be sure if it would be anonymized in an effective manner.
Capron’s group requested data regarding the department’s use of Flock cameras covering the period between Jan. 1, 2023 and Sept. 9, 2026. The group obtained that data in two releases with some overlap at the beginning of 2026 between them.
Capron said the first data release listed 610,226 network searches in January 2026 while the second data release listed 601,599 total searches, including network searches and searches made by Quincy police officers.
“Something here just isn’t adding up,” Capron said.
The report also found reasons for the Flock queries such as “missed connect with white female” and another that used a vulgar term, Capron said. Kennedy, when asked about those searches, said the first search related to a drug investigation where the buyer they were looking for was a female and the vulgar term was actually a person’s nickname.
Kennedy and the other invited guests fielded questions from councillors for more than an hour during the hearing. The police chief had also met individually with councillors the week prior to the meeting.
Referring to Ross’s earlier comments regarding the academic research on Flock, Ward 3 Councillor Walter Hubley asked Kennedy if the department had any mechanism to indicate how many and what type of cases the cameras have assisted with that might not have been resolved without them.
Kennedy said he could not quantify the number – the department is working on a new records system that may be able to do so in the future – but the system is working in Quincy.
“I can tell you it is working in Quincy. These aren’t anecdotes. These are actual people, victims, survivors. We had commercial breaks, home invasion with firearms, burglaries, sexual assaults, kidnapping, two homicides…shootings, another kidnapping and sexual assault,” the police chief said. “We’re using this technology and it’s working for us.”
Hubley also asked why Quincy has the number of Flock cameras it does have, and how the locations are chosen. The police chief said the cameras are not in neighborhoods and are primarily on main roads, largely at points of ingress and egress to the city. Kennedy referred to the test search he showed councillors in which the vehicle was only identified twice in a two-hour window.
“He was obviously in the city for a while, but in two hours he only popped by two cameras, so we’re not tracking you,” Kennedy said.
He added in the previous 30 days, 689,431 vehicles had been logged, and 76 searches were conducted.
Ward 5 Councillor Maggie McKee asked Kennedy to summarize how officers’ use of the Flock system is audited, based on a conversation they had ahead of the meeting.
There are two systems to audit the searches, Kennedy said. Flock has its own auditing system that flags things like an officer running the same license plate multiple times, running the same plate more than 30 days apart, running the same plate in association with different case numbers, and searching other databases while never searching the Quincy Police Department’s database. (The chief said Quincy has access to other departments’ networks despite not allowing others to access Quincy’s network.)
A Quincy police captain also does his own audit of the searches every 30 days, Kennedy said; those audits will shift to every 14 days to match how long the data is retained.
McKee also pointed out that the city of Salem was ending its contract with Flock Safety and would instead seek a new vendor that would better protect the community’s data. Kennedy said many communities that have ended contracts with Flock find alternative vendors.
“A lot of municipalities are canceling contracts, but they are not giving up ALPR technology,” the chief said. “There’s a lot of different options out there. I’m not standing up here as a Flock apologist. I’m a firm believer in the technology. I inherited Flock.”
Later on in the meeting, McKee said a number of people had brought the point about body cameras up to her and asked the chief for his position on them. Kennedy said he is in favor of body cameras and brought the issue up in contract talks with police unions, but it didn’t fly.
“I would be a proponent of body cameras. I know it’s an expense, but I would have no problem with them,” Kennedy said. “It’s more of a union issue unfortunately.”
Ward 1 Councillor David Jacobs, the chairperson of the Oversight Committee, asked Kennedy about the three components Ross said go into policing, manpower, technology and community cooperation, and which one he felt was most important. Kennedy said the Quincy Police Department has been “making deposits in the bank of trust for a very long time,” and he was asking for the community to trust him.
Kennedy added that he did not go into the meeting expecting to change anyone’s mind and the right thing to do isn’t always popular.
“You want to talk about John Adams. I’ll tell you when he represented the soldiers in the Boston Massacre, he did what he thought was right, even when it wasn’t popular,” Kennedy said. “I understand I’m a man on an island up here. I’m passionate about this technology because I’ve seen what it can do.”
Jacobs also inquired about the cost of operating the Flock cameras in Quincy. Kennedy said the cost is about $3,000 per camera per year, $150,000 in total. Seventy-five percent of those costs are paid for by federal grants.
Several councillors at the hearing asked if the Flock network is connected to other cameras networks in the city, like traditional surveillance cameras or the traffic cameras used at different intersections. Kennedy said those systems are separate from the Flock one.
Councillors likewise asked if other law enforcement agencies can obtain access to Quincy’s Flock network. Kennedy said those agencies would have to request the information in writing and, if the request were approved, a Quincy officer would search the database rather than giving an outside agency direct access. That applies to local, state and federal law enforcement, the chief said, noting state law prohibits police departments like Quincy from using local resources on civil immigration enforcement.
McKee asked Epstein, the ACLU attorney, if the legal issues associated with ALPR would be any different if Quincy were to operate its own internal system rather than one like the Flock network. Epstein said there may be some marginal benefits from moving away from a third-party vendor, but the ACLU would still have serious concerns about the technology.
Councillor Ziqiang Susan Yuan said she wanted her colleagues to end Quincy’s ties with Flock and then begin a public process to determine if the city should find another vendor for ALPR cameras.
“What’s the rationale of keep doing business with, keep spending taxpayer money, and keep subjecting our residents’ private information to a company which has been repeatedly reported to breach trust?” she said. “I want to ask my colleagues, why are we still doing that.”
McKee said she was at the meeting to learn and listen and would then process all the information and do more research. “I find myself more on the fence than I would have expected to be,” she said.
“I do think we’re generally a very safe city, we’ve been able to manage without this, but if I think about my son getting kidnapped, then I think would I want faster access to information,” McKee said. “I think there’s reasons to consider this. I think there’s a lot of downsides as well.”
Hubley said councillors were elected to be thorough and not rush into decisions.
“This is what we ran on doing. We ran on being thorough, we ran asking all the questions, we ran on not rushing things through, so we are having a series of meetings to go through the process,” Hubley said. “This is the legislative process. It’s slow and sometimes bumpy and sometimes you get impatient with it.”
