Executive Summary
On October 6, 2026, the Quincy City Council Oversight Committee held a public hearing and committee meeting on Council Order 2026-104 regarding the City of Quincy's use of Flock Safety Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology. Over a dozen members of the public expressed uniform concern and opposition, citing mass surveillance, civil liberties violations, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Police Chief Mark Kennedy, accompanied by command staff, Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey, ACLU Policy Counsel Gideon Epstein, Northeastern University Professor Matthew Ross, systems engineer Brian Hurley, and student researcher Maxfield Capron provided extensive presentations. The committee extensively examined Flock's data security, recent policy reforms reducing data retention to 14 days and severing external data sharing, auditing procedures, and potential municipal regulations, before adjourning without taking a vote on the order.
City of Quincy's use of Flock technology, public hearing (Council Order 2026-104)
- Committee Chair David Jacobs called the public hearing to order at 6:00 p.m., noting that the committee was hearing testimony and gathering information, and would take no formal motions or votes on the council order during the meeting.
- Multiple members of the public provided testimony opposing the use of Flock Safety ALPR technology:
- A public commenter raised concerns about federal immigration enforcement querying Quincy's data, First Amendment surveillance during public rallies, and Massachusetts' Protect Act, remarking, "This is an issue that I think the mayor would prefer just go away. It's not going to go away, Mayor Koch, until the flock cameras do."
- A public commenter with 25 years of experience in biotech information technology contrasted truly closed campus systems with the Flock ALPR network, noting that Flock cameras transmit over wireless cellular networks to cloud storage on Amazon Web Services, raising inherent cybersecurity and trust concerns.
- A public commenter, citing Commonwealth v. McCarthy (485 Mass. 493), argued that warrantless dragnet surveillance using roughly 50 cameras poses a severe legal risk of having criminal prosecutions dismissed in court.
- Multiple public commenters highlighted nationwide contract cancellations, concerns about improper procurement funds, lack of prior City Council oversight, potential stalker risks if cameras are hacked, data harvesting impacts, and the high carbon footprint of corporate data centers.
- A public commenter referenced privacy breaches reported in Dunwoody, Georgia, where cameras were allegedly viewed for corporate marketing demonstrations, stating, "I urge the Quincy City Council and Mayor Koch to cancel any and all current and future ALPR contracts with Flock Safety... and protect the privacy of us Quincy residents."
- A public commenter noted that Boston Police Department had its data restrictions bypassed within three days by Flock corporate controls, arguing that Quincy should ban the technology entirely.
- Additional public commenters condemned corporate surveillance structures, cited a recent federal court ruling in Florida limiting warrantless ALPR tracking under the Fourth Amendment, voiced fears regarding children on school buses equipped with tracking technology (via BusPatrol/Axon), and pointed to a study indicating that "pulling 30 days of historical travel history from Flock Safety databases without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment."
- The committee voted by consensus to extend public testimony by 15 minutes to allow remaining signed-in residents to speak. The chair declared: "The ayes have it."
Opening and roll call of the Oversight Committee meeting
- The Oversight Committee was called to order, the Open Meeting Law disclosure was read into the record, and a roll call was conducted.
- Committee Members Present: Noel DiBona, Walter Hubley, Anne Mahoney, Maggie McKee, Deborah Riley, Virginia Ryan, Ziqiang Yuan, and Chair David Jacobs.
- The committee briefly recessed the Oversight Committee meeting to complete the remaining speakers of the public hearing, then reconvened the Oversight Committee session for guest presentations.
Presentations on Flock Safety technology and ALPR deployment
- Quincy Police Department Presentation (Chief Mark Kennedy, Captain Ward, Lieutenant Faherty):
- Chief Kennedy reviewed the department's 15-year history using ALPRs, beginning around 2011 with trunk-mounted mobile cameras and transitioning to fixed Flock Safety units in 2020.
- The department currently operates 50 Flock cameras: 49 ALPR cameras and one Condor live-streaming CCTV camera located on Ricciuti Drive to combat illegal dumping.
- A formal ALPR department policy was issued on January 15, 2026, followed by officer training on March 13, 2026. Following community concerns raised in summer 2026, QPD shut off all nationwide sharing and outside agency access on August 6, 2026, and recently reduced its data retention period from 30 days to 14 days.
- Access is restricted to 48 authorized users (detectives, accident investigators, supervisors, and crime analysts) utilizing two-factor authentication. Searches mandate drop-down fields specifying the criminal offense and reason, alongside a mandatory CAD case number.
- In the prior 30 days, 689,431 vehicle captures were recorded across Quincy, with detectives conducting only 76 searches; 99.99% of captures are never viewed and are purged automatically.
- The annual cost is approximately $3,000 per camera (roughly $150,000 total), with 75% subsidized by federal Homeland Security Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grants, leaving approximately $50,000 paid from city funds.
- Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey:
- Emphasized that ALPR data serves only as an investigative clue or lead, not standalone proof of guilt, and improper use carries severe criminal penalties including loss of public pension.
- Highlighted successful case resolutions enabled by ALPR, including an MBTA violent assault tracked to Wollaston, a gang-related homicide tracking suspects between apartment complexes, and tracing the suspect in the shooting of an MIT professor in Brookline.
- ACLU of Massachusetts Presentation (Gideon Epstein, Policy Counsel):
- Reported that over 80 Massachusetts police departments contract with Flock Safety, which defaults to nationwide data sharing and extended data retention.
- Referenced audit records from across the country demonstrating vague search reasons (e.g., "investigation" or "wanted") and noted DHS estimates that ALPR machines carry an approximate 7% error rate.
- Highlighted evolving legal standards, including Commonwealth v. McCarthy and recent federal court rulings in Oklahoma determining that querying extensive historical location data without a warrant constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.
- Urged the City Council to enact a comprehensive municipal ban on ALPR and facial recognition technologies, and to pass a surveillance oversight ordinance requiring democratic council approval before deploying new policing tools.
- Academic Analysis (Professor Matthew Ross, Northeastern University):
- Provided an economic cost-benefit analysis, noting that rigorous independent academic scholarship on Flock's crime-deterrence benefits remains scarce.
- Identified only one rigorous peer-reviewed study (by Ian Adams and Mortgos), which demonstrated modest reductions of roughly 10% in motor vehicle thefts and 5% in low-level property crimes, with no empirical evidence proving reductions in violent offenses.
- Warned that while hardware deployment appears inexpensive, long-term costs may emerge if companies aggregate or monetize location metadata, and cautioned that intrusive surveillance can severely degrade community cooperation with law enforcement.
- Systems Engineering Review (Brian Hurley, Systems Engineer):
- Analyzed Flock's customer agreement, citing Section 1.2 and Section 4.2, where the agency grants Flock a "non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable worldwide royalty-free fully paid license to use, reproduce, modify, and distribute" aggregated data.
- Pointed out that Section 4 lacks defined standards or explicit processes for data redaction and anonymization, creating major privacy vulnerabilities when data is used for marketing or machine learning model training.
- Independent Civic Data Analysis (Maxfield Capron):
- Presented a three-year independent data analysis covering January 1, 2023, through September 6, 2026, compiled from MuckRock public records releases and direct public records requests.
- Identified audit log discrepancies between duplicate data exports for January 2026 (610,226 total network searches versus 601,599 in a subsequent release; and 682 QPD searches versus 653).
- Reported that between January 2023 and February 2025, zero QPD searches logged an associated case number, and only 1.7% did so the following month.
- Highlighted historic hot list and search entries containing inappropriate, vulgar, or unvetted text entries without case numbers.
Committee discussion, council questioning, and adjournment
- Committee members questioned presenters regarding network safeguards, contract commitments, and policy oversight:
- In response to Councilor Hubley, Chief Kennedy clarified that ALPR cameras are positioned strictly on major thoroughfares and ingress/egress corridors rather than residential neighborhoods, and that Captain Mike Miller performs monthly manual audits alongside Flock's automated AI flag system.
- In response to Councilor McKee, Chief Kennedy confirmed that Flock ALPR systems operate completely independently from the city's Genetec CCTV network. Gideon Epstein emphasized that Fourth Amendment concerns persist regardless of whether systems are locally hosted if dragnet location tracking is conducted without a warrant.
- Councilor Ash and Chief Kennedy discussed officer discretion and verified that QPD policies incorporate the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police Association guidelines specifying criminal penalties for misuse.
- Councilor Yuan urged an immediate termination of the contract with Flock and requested that any future ALPR deployment be subjected to robust public discussion and mandatory City Council approval.
- Councilor Riley suggested implementing explicit review periods prior to automated contract renewals, ongoing cost-benefit analyses, and stricter verification of vendor terms of service.
- Councilor Ryan asked about discrepancies between 62 reported cameras in records requests versus the 50 confirmed by Chief Kennedy, and inquired about hot list audit schedules.
- Council President Mahoney raised concerns regarding a delayed vulnerability notice issued by Flock on September 22, 2026 (relating to a mapping vulnerability dating to late 2025), questioning Flock's corporate transparency regarding data breaches and the legal mechanics of camera leases.
- Following discussions regarding pending financial and legal questions, a motion to adjourn the Oversight Committee meeting was made by Councilor Walter Hubley and seconded by Councilor Deborah Riley at 10:30 p.m.
- The chair briefly reopened and adjourned the public hearing, noting no further speakers remained.