A deep dive into Fall River’s use of Flock license-plate cameras finds similar problems that have surfaced in New Bedford and elsewhere: lack of oversight as police officers used the technology thousands of times since 2021 while entering vague or nonsensical reasons for their searches. The findings come amid national scrutiny and backlash over Flock use by police departments, with citizens raising privacy, misconduct, oversight and accountability concerns.
Officers don’t need reasonable suspicion or probable cause to search, and when they document their reasons for querying the system, they often don’t input much detail.
