Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part series about police departments’ use of automatic license plate readers in western Massachusetts. Part one investigates how local police are using the technology and how out-of-state agencies are accessing local data. Part two focuses on residents and activists who are resisting license plate readers across the region.
You may have noticed them as you drive down the street: black, oval-shaped devices with a camera lens on the front and a square solar panel overhead.
In recent years, they’ve been popping up on streetlights, utility poles, and elsewhere across the country, including western Massachusetts. They’re automated license plate readers, made by companies like Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions. They function like cameras, capturing images of every vehicle that drives past them and then using AI algorithms to store unique data about them: their license plate, bumper stickers, and other distinguishing features.
Police describe them as a powerful crime-fighting tool — a way to search for the possible location of any vehicle. Because Flock license plate readers, for example, are all connected to the company’s database, law-enforcement departments can search any other department’s devices nationwide for a hit, so long as those departments haven’t restricted access.
But that’s exactly what troubles a growing chorus of privacy advocates, public officials, and everyday people who have voiced concerns about the technology — particularly Flock, which the American Civil Liberties Union has described as building a “dangerous nationwide mass-surveillance infrastructure.”
Because so many police, and private customers, have purchased the devices, they’re now widespread across the country. What that means is that a police department in Texas can search thousands of Flock networks in an effort to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement — including in a western Massachusetts city that has a Flock device.
And that’s exactly what has happened.
This April, when police in Midland, Texas, searched more than 4,800 Flock devices nationwide, the networks they searched included those in Holyoke. The reason the officer wrote when making the search: “Immigration (civil/administrative) — ASSIST ICE.”
That’s according to Flock data that The Shoestring has obtained, using public records requests, from Holyoke and Easthampton, which are two of at least 13 western Massachusetts municipalities that have used the technology this year. Other local police departments that appear in the Flock data are Springfield, West Springfield, Hadley, Ludlow, South Hadley, Greenfield, Agawam, Monson, and Montgomery. The Hampden County Sheriff’s Office and Springfield College Police Department have also made searches of Flock devices, the data show.
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As part of its software, Flock saves every search conducted on its license plate reader system in what’s known as an “audit report.” Each department using Flock software has access to a “network audit,” which logs which other agencies have searched the department’s cameras and why, and an “organization audit,” which saves the camera searches the department itself makes.
“This is part of our commitment to transparency and accountability from the beginning of the design process,” Flock explains on its website. The company did not respond to an interview request for this article.
The Shoestring requested more than five months of that data — from the beginning of this year to early June — from Holyoke, Easthampton, and Springfield. Springfield didn’t respond to the public records request, and The Shoestring has appealed that failure to respond to the state’s supervisor of records.
In Holyoke, police departments from across the country — from Nevada to New York, Texas to Florida — searched the city’s cameras between January and early June of this year, the data show.
During the months The Shoestring scrutinized, Holyoke’s license plate readers were included in more than 3.5 million searches. The reasons those departments searched Holyoke’s cameras included a wide range of alleged crimes. Narcotics, traffic infractions, “wanted person,” and motor vehicle theft topped the list of reasons that police from other states gave when searching those devices.
But other more controversial reasons appear in the department’s network audit, too, including police departments that say they’re assisting ICE. In just the first week of June, police departments from Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas all made immigration-related searches of Holyoke’s cameras, for example. Flock does not have a contract with ICE or Customs and Border Patrol, but that doesn’t prevent police departments working with those agencies from searching on their behalf.
Holyoke’s police chief and mayor did not respond to multiple interview requests for this article.
It’s a scenario that is likely true of other communities in western Massachusetts, too, including those that have passed “sanctuary city” ordinances or similar rules aimed at protecting immigrants.
That’s the case in Easthampton, which passed a “welcoming community” ordinance in 2019 seeking to limit how city officials can interact with ICE.
The Shoestring previously obtained Flock data from Easthampton police dating from January through July of 2025. Among the reasons that other police departments from across the country gave for searching Easthampton’s network during that time were “ICE pick up,” “immigration violation,” and “ICE ERO,” which refers to ICE’s deportation division, Enforcement Removal Operations.
But that was last year. When The Shoestring looked at Easthampton’s Flock data again this year, only Massachusetts-based police departments appeared on the list of agencies searching the cameras.
According to Easthampton Police Chief Chad Alexander, that’s because after he was appointed to lead the department in May 2025, he decided to turn off the software’s out-of-state sharing. According to Flock, those who buy its license plate readers can limit who they share data with.
Several other immigration-related searches still appear in the search data from Easthampton’s devices. In January, for example, New Bedford police wrote as their reason for searching 86 networks, including Easthampton’s, “Immigration (civil/administrative).” But that is because of errors that also occur in the data, according to a New Bedford spokesperson.
In a statement, the New Bedford Police Department said that the case in question involved gunshots, but that an officer had made a mistake when selecting a reason in the dropdown menu. A spokesperson said that the department does not “use or share LPR data for the purpose of federal immigration enforcement.”
Easthampton stopped using its Flock devices earlier this year after city councilors cut funding for the company’s software.
The devices aren’t just controversial because of immigration-related reasons.
Civil liberties advocates have raised privacy concerns, citing fears that license plate readers are creating a dragnet surveillance network in which regular people get caught up, despite police having no warrant to surveil them or even a reason to consider investigating them.
A Washington Post investigation earlier this month found that authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers across the country of using license plate readers for unauthorized purposes. Many of them had used the devices to stalk women, the Post found. Following that reporting, Flock announced reforms to its policies, It will now require police to label searches with a criminal case number and has said it will reduce the default setting for how long its software stores license-plate data. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, though, have described those changes as “cosmetic fixes that fail to address the fundamental dangers of this technology.”
Flock’s devices made headlines last year when the news outlet 404 Media discovered that a Texas sheriff’s deputy gave as a reason for searching 83,000 Flock devices “had an abortion, search for female.” Flock called any suggestion that the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office was using its devices to target those seeking reproductive healthcare “unequivocally false.”
“Following this event, Flock conducted an audit of all searches conducted on Flock LPR and found not a single credible case of law enforcement using the system to locate vulnerable women seeking healthcare,” the company wrote last June.
However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained court and police records that it said show that police had initiated a “death investigation” of a “non-viable fetus” and had contacted prosecutors about possibly charging the woman.
Among the 83,000 devices those Texas deputies searched were Hadley’s, according to data The Shoestring obtained last year. And other devices across the region and state were likely included, too. Hadley police did not respond to a request for comment.
Sometimes, the reasons why an out-of-state police department searched Flock cameras is entirely unclear. For example, the FBI appears thousands of times in Holyoke’s network audit, but nearly all of the searches have listed as their reason “Other – Not Applicable.”
Local police are also, of course, using the devices and its database themselves.
In the 159 days of logs that The Shoestring obtained, Easthampton police made 735 data queries — more than four a day. In Holyoke, the number was much higher: more than 40 searches a day.
And in a few cases — a hit-and-run and a domestic violence offense — Easthampton police wrote that they were using the technology to “assist” Northampton. In 2017, the Northampton City Council sought to restrict the use of surveillance technology, including license plate readers, in its downtown area.
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Another conflict between police departments that get license plate readers and community members is the possibility of the technology having digital vulnerabilities — putting sensitive data at risk — and the lack of public consent when installing the technology.
In Easthampton and Hadley, for example, records The Shoestring obtained show that police purchased Flock’s automated license plate readers using civil asset forfeiture funds — money that police are able to seize, and in most cases keep, when they allege that it’s connected to a crime. Police chiefs can largely spend that money at their own discretion, without oversight from a mayor or city council.
Easthampton police spent $17,350 in forfeiture funds on its two Flock devices, which they previously told The Shoestring were critical in solving crimes like hit-and-runs, break-ins, and a stolen-car case.
However, amid a budget crunch this year, the Easthampton City Council decided to cut $6,000 in funding for the technology’s yearly software costs. Alexander, the police chief, confirmed that the city then ended its contract with Flock and that the devices are no longer in service.
That’s something that’s happening more nationwide, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. On July 16, Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel with the ACLU, told the news program Democracy Now! that over the previous 13 months, nearly 60 municipalities nationwide had either canceled their Flock contracts or said they wouldn’t renew them. The Shoestring was unable to independently verify those numbers.
Easthampton City Councilor Tom Peake told The Shoestring there have “been questions about these cameras and the appropriateness of their use for a long time.” But because police acquired them using money from outside the normal appropriation process, the city never had a chance to debate whether to install them.
Peake said he doesn’t begrudge the police for using those funds, and believes they were operating in good faith with the funding mechanisms at their disposal. But if the city were to ever consider having license plate readers again, the public deserves a voice in that conversation, he added.
“And because of the way those things happened, we never had the opportunity to have that,” Peake said. “There needs to be a more complete conversation about what exactly that means for people, what the checks and balances are on that, who has access to that data.”
In Agawam, City Councilor Christine Rickmon has been pushing back against the city’s use of Flock devices since she was elected last year, looking into the company after a constituent raised concerns with her. She started an informational series on TikTok, where she explains what Flock is and how its technology works. The six-part series has amassed nearly 10,000 views altogether, and some residents cite her videos as the reason they know about the cameras.
Rickmon said that her research raised alarms about issues of digital security, police misuse of the technology, and its overall effectiveness. She started wondering how the city ended up with a multi-year contract with Flock.
Agawam has only started using Flock cameras since February, according to a series of responses that Eric Gillis, the city’s police chief, gave to Rickmon, a copy of which she provided to The Shoestring.
A month prior, the police department had been consulting with Flock employees about the best locations to set up the license plate readers. But community members have a lot of questions about that process. In two City Council meetings earlier this summer, dozens of Agawam residents raised questions about Flock and it’s effectiveness in protecting public safety. They brought up concerns over data, surveillance, and possible digital vulnerabilities.
In September of last year, before Rickmon was elected, the City Council approved accepting a grant from the state Gaming Commission’s Casino Mitigation Fund, which is supposed to support communities in offsetting the impact of costs, like traffic and public safety, related to casinos located nearby. The state awarded Agawam $321,500.
The original application included several project proposals, none of which mentioned Flock cameras. But the city submitted an amended application several months later that did include $57,900 for Flock devices. The city’s police department requested that money to lease the six license plate readers for two years — amounting to nearly 20% of the casino-mitigation money the city received from the state.
The subscription for each camera is $3,000 yearly, and each camera itself costs about $4,000. The proposed use of the cameras, according to the contract, would be to monitor traffic and collect traffic data around routes that lead to the casino.
Early last month, the City Council held a session in which councilors could ask questions of Gillis, Lt. Eric McGovern, and two representatives from Flock, Karl Bach and Scott Braren.
During this meeting, Rickmon asked about how the department obtained Flock, as well as specifics about the hardware, locations, and software. In that back and forth, Gillis said that he did not know about the amended application.
In an interview with The Shoestring, she said she’s not buying it.
“Stop trying to gaslight me,” Rickmon said. “Stop trying to gaslight the public.”
Gillis did not respond to requests for comment.
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Given the fact that individual police departments buy license plate readers separately, it’s difficult to get an accurate count of the amount of devices in western Massachusetts.
The activist organization DeFlock, however, allows volunteers to identify and map the locations of license plate readers nationwide. In Hampshire, Hampden, and Franklin counties, the organization’s map lists more than 130 devices, though some of that data may be incorrect. For example, Easthampton’s camera is still on the map.
Opponents of the technology have tried to argue against its constitutionality. In 2020, though, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that the use of automated license plate readers was constitutional.
Kade Crockford, the director for technology and justice programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said that the case could’ve gone differently. They explained that Paul Bogosian, the attorney representing the defendant at the heart of the case, only listed two locations for the license plate readers in the case to prove that they were violating his client’s privacy.
According to Crockford, if the judges had been made aware of the density of license plate readers — and thus their ability to track the totality of a person’s movements — they may have decided differently.
In Massachusetts, there is no legislation that regulates the use and implementation of automated license plate readers. Other nearby states, such as Maine and New Hampshire, have already taken action to regulate the technology. New Hampshire, for example, requires law enforcement to delete license plate data within three minutes if it’s not connected to an alleged crime.
State Rep. Lindsey Sabadosa, D-Northampton, in partnership with Rep. Steven Owens, D-Watertown, has filed a bill that would create regulations in Massachusetts, too. The measure would limit the reasons police could use the technology, how long they could store the data, and how they could access such data collected by other entities without a warrant. It would also bar them from selling or purchasing that data, or disclosing it unless required in a judicial proceeding.
“There’s this message that we get from [the tech] industry, like, ‘We can regulate ourselves, we don’t need your help,'” Sabadosa said. “But yet, we constantly see data breaches, inappropriate use of data, data sold, unbeknownst to people. I think consumers are really, really sick of it.”
Sabadosa said that there are instances in which Flock cameras have been helpful. In a recent shooting at Brown University, for example, Flock cameras were able to track the shooter after he had been identified, though Sabadosa said that Flock did not aid in the actual finding of the suspect.
According to Sabadosa, the Biden administration was easier to work with in terms of opening up communication about the manners in which data was used, even if federal officials didn’t agree with how a state wanted to use data. She says that communication is harder now with the Trump administration.
“They do not talk to you, they do not answer calls, they do not engage with state legislators,” Sabadosa said.
In March, the bill was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. The Legislature’s website shows no progress since then.
City councils around the state have taken accountability measures, too.
In Boston, which has some of the densest installations of Flock devices, city councilors passed an oversight ordinance in 2021 under which the police are required to submit an annual surveillance report, detailing the department’s technology use.
Locally, the Northampton City Council passed restrictions on surveillance technologies in public spaces — including license plate readers and facial recognition — in 2017.
divina is an independent reporter covering labor and social movements, pursuing a degree in journalism and social thought & political economy at UMass Amherst. They have worked for three years in legislation, policy, and research on education, child welfare, and race equity. Reach them at divina.cordeiro@proton.me or on Instagram and Twitter @divi_cordeiro
Dusty Christensen is The Shoestring's investigations editor. Based in western Massachusetts, his award-winning investigative reporting has appeared in newspapers and on radio stations across the region. He has reported for outlets including The Nation magazine, NPR, Haaretz, New England Public Media, The Boston Globe, The Appeal, In These Times, and PBS. He teaches journalism to future muckrakers at Smith College. Send story tips to: dchristensen@theshoestring.org.
