For anyone concerned about the City of New Bedford’s installation of Flock cameras, please consider attending this public forum:
City of New Bedford – Ward 1 July Meeting
📅 Tuesday, July 28
🕕 6:00 p.m.
📍 Pulaski Elementary School
New Bedford Police Chief Jason Thody will discuss the city’s Flock camera program, and there will be an open mic for residents to ask questions and share their concerns. All city residents are welcome.
Local NB resident Nick LeBlanc recently asked:
“Hey, City of New Bedford. Why was a Flock camera installed in front of my house on Rockdale Avenue without any notification? Is this the type of thing we should be expecting? How many more are going up across the city? Where are they? What will be done with the information they collect? How will the privacy of citizens be respected? Is New Bedford adopting AI this fluidly? It seems awfully expensive, doesn’t it?”
LeBlanc also shared data on his Substack raising additional questions about how New Bedford’s Flock camera data has been accessed. According to his analysis:
- Outside law enforcement agencies searched New Bedford’s Flock data 2,976,131 times.
- Those searches came from 4,485 different agencies.
- Massachusetts agencies accounted for only about 4% of the searches (roughly 120,000), while 96% came from agencies outside the state.
- The Houston Police Department conducted 87,952 searches, Dallas Police 67,645, and Texas agencies collectively performed about 343,000 searches—nearly three times the total from all Massachusetts agencies combined.
- Agencies in Georgia, Virginia, Florida, and Illinois each searched New Bedford’s data more often than all Massachusetts agencies combined.
- Federal agencies also appeared in the logs, including the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations (ICE), the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the GSA Office of Inspector General, and police at two Air Force bases.
- LeBlanc notes that Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations searched the database even though the City of New Bedford had told residents that no federal agency could access it.
Whether you support or oppose the use of Flock cameras, this meeting is an opportunity to hear directly from city officials, ask questions, and learn more about how the system is being used.
