Easthampton Shared More Data With Flock than the City Realized

Do you recognize this camera?

The camera recognizes you.

If you live in Easthampton, this camera has been watching you for years and reporting your movements to police departments and private organizations across the country.

It’s a traffic surveillance camera made by a company called Flock Safety. It sits at the base of Mt. Tom on Mountain Road.

The camera photographs every car that passes by and records its license plate and other identifying details, such as its make, model, and color.

Flock shares Easthampton’s data nationwide

What distinguishes Flock cameras from other surveillance systems is that the cameras are all linked together, allowing law enforcement agencies and private organizations across the country to search Easthampton’s data.

Between January 2025 and June 2026, outside 4,839 external organizations performed 4.2 million searches of Easthampton’s Flock data.

There’s a substantial drop in searches starting November 18, 2025. I haven’t found a concrete explanation for the change, but this is likely when the Easthampton Police Department limited sharing settings to just organizations in MA and nearby cities.

Last year, Texas deputies used Flock data to track a woman across state lines because authorities suspected she had received an abortion. That sheriff searched Easthampton’s camera data as part of that investigation because the Easthampton police department had granted access to over 3,000 outside agencies.

Police have searched Easthampton’s Flock data to support ICE operations and to identify people who participated in protests.

Easthampton didn’t understand how Flock shared its data

Residents have had concerns about Flock Safety and other license plate cameras for years, but city officials didn’t understand how these systems share data outside of the city and gave misleading or incorrect statements to the public.

At a city council meeting on August 6, 2025, then interim Mayor Salem Derby told Easthampton City Council that the police department had an official policy not to share license plate reader data with external agencies, except in emergencies:

Myself and Karin, our IT director, looked at policy. Our police department does have a policy for LPRs [license plate readers] and not sharing that data outside of the city or within emergencies like Amber Alerts and silver alerts and different emergencies.

— Interim Mayor Salem Derby, Easthampton City Council meeting, August 8, 2025

Mayor Derby’s statement contradicts the official policy, which says the police can share license plate data:

At the Easthampton City Council Finance Committee meeting on June 10, 2026, I and several other residents spoke out against Flock cameras, and Easthampton Police Chief Chad Alexander claimed that there was only limited automatic sharing:

Shortly after I was sworn in as Chief, I had meetings with Councilor Denham. I personally went into the system and shut off all sharing. So, it shouldn’t have been sharing anywhere.

And when I shut it off, it was showing that we were only sharing with four police departments outside of Massachusetts, and it was right over the line in Connecticut.

[…]

The amount of requests that were mentioned it’s just astronomical like 4.2 million. I’m confused with all the numbers that came out, for starters.

But no, so it’s either active for sharing, or it’s not. If a department were to call and say, “We’re looking for this car with this license plate; they just hit a pedestrian in downtown Holyoke,” we would go on our Flock and search it, and say, “Oh, it came into town two minutes ago,” or “It’s not on our camera,” but that would be the only kind of scenario something like that where we would offer out information, and it would be local departments like an active investigation.

— Chad Alexander, Easthampton Chief of Police, June 10, 2026

The data I obtained through public data requests contradicts Chief Alexander’s descriptions. Thousands of external organizations had automatic access to Easthampton’s Flock data and could search it with no official reason whatsoever.

Easthampton’s Flock configuration audit showed that, as of June 8th, 2026, Easthampton had automatic data sharing enabled with 104 external organizations outside Easthampton, including police departments in Nantucket, MA (150 miles away), Dennis, MA (132 miles away), Barnstable, MA (130 miles away), Ipswich, MA (100 miles away), and Kingston, MA (100 miles away).

Easthampton did not follow its own policies for Flock

The Easthampton Police Department has an official policy on how to use data from license plate readers such as Flock, but the results of my public records requests suggest that the department did not follow its policies.

No protocols for responsible usage

The Easthampton Police Department’s policy on automated license plate readers says that the department is responsible for creating protocols to ensure responsible use of the data from Flock cameras and other license plate readers:

I made a public data request for these protocols, but I received this reply from Lieutenant Andrew Beaulieu:

Everything that we have regarding our policy has previously been released to you. For your convenience, I have attached the policy again. Please note some of the answers to this request here:

IV. PROCEDURES A. General

1. The use of LPR systems is restricted to public safety-related missions of this agency.
2. LPR systems and associated equipment and databases are authorized for official public safety purposes. Misuse of this equipment and associated databases, or data, may be subject to sanctions and/or disciplinary actions.
3. LPR systems and LPR data and associated media are the property of this agency and intended for use in conducting official business only.

— Lieutenant Andrew Beaulieu

To clarify, Lieutenant Beaulieu pointed me back to the same document that said the police must create protocols for responsible usage, but he could not produce any of those protocols. This means there were rules against misuse but no systems in place to prevent or detect abuse.

This is a problem, as police are increasingly abusing Flock data to stalk romantic partners and intimidate people.

I did not find evidence of Easthampton police abusing Flock data, but their lax requirements for using Flock make it easy to hide abuse. Officers can search Flock data without providing an official case number. Flock prompts officers to enter a reason for their search, but Easthampton officers mostly chose vague reasons such as “Investigation” or “bolo” (be on the lookout). With such minimal requirements for documentation, auditing for abuse is extremely difficult. The reasons get better around December 23, 2025, but only because of a software update to Flock.

Note also that abuse of Easthampton’s data can also come from any of the 104 external organizations that have access. If a police officer two towns over were using Easthampton’s Flock data to stalk an ex, the Easthampton police wouldn’t be able to detect it because Easthampton shares data broadly with other police departments but can’t see what data those departments are accessing. Flock’s audit tools redact the license plate number, officer name, and search criteria in Easthampton’s search logs, so Easthampton doesn’t even know what data it’s revealing about its own residents.

Use of Flock data for marketing purposes

Easthampton Police policy forbids use of license plate reader data outside of “legitimate law enforcement practices”:

Despite this rule, there were 82 searches of Easthampton’s Flock data from an organization called “Flock City PD - Law Enforcement Demo.” I assume that’s a fake organization that Flock uses for sales pitches to new organizations. If my assumption is correct, that would violate Easthampton’s policy, as sales pitches for a private company are not legitimate law enforcement activities.

No tracking of effectiveness

The Easthampton Police policy requires the department to track arrests in the past two years that were the result of license plate readers:

I filed a public data request for a list of which arrests relied on Flock data, but Lieutenant Andrew Beaulieu told me they don’t have any way of tracking that:

We do not have a way in our records system to filter out arrests in which Flock was used.

— Lieutenant Andrew Beaulieu

Searches beyond the official 30-day window

The Easthampton Police policy limits retention of Flock data to 30 days:

Data shows officers routinely making requests older than 30 days or for search windows larger than 30 days, such as this search over a 176-day period for a license plate wanted in connection with “loitering.” These searches suggest that police are keeping data beyond the retention limit or otherwise don’t understand how to search Flock data properly.

City Council eliminates funding for Flock

At the June 10, 2026, City Council Finance Committee meeting, Councilman Tom Peake responded to concerns that residents raised about the Flock cameras and decided to eliminate city funding for Flock products and services:

The idea that we believed that this was not being shared, and now there’s data that suggests that it is being shared. All of this freaks me out a lot, and, frankly, it’s an issue that I’ve had a lot of constituent concerns about a lot, and I feel like I need to be responsive to that.

— Easthampton City Councilor Tom Peake, June 10, 2026

Councilman Peake put forth a motion to eliminate funding for Flock’s products and services, and it passed.

Response from Easthampton Police Chief Chad Alexander

On June 29, 2026, I emailed Police Chief Chad Alexander regarding my findings. He did not respond to my points about how the Easthampton police department appeared to violate its official policies, but he wrote back this response:

The use of the Flock camera over the past few years has been a great tool for the residents of Easthampton residents, solving numerous crimes and incidents ranging from minor quality of life issues, recovering stolen cars, residential and motor vehicle B&E’s/burglaries, violations of restraining orders, motor vehicle related incidents, and more. It has also assisted in apprehending individuals wanted on warrants, and helped potentially save lives, as just a couple months ago a family member of a person who was told by their child they were going to commit suicide, was located on I-91 through the use of learning the vehicle travelled into Holyoke and the amount of time that had lapsed. The use of Flock cameras were vital in Utah, and helped solve the murder of Easthampton resident Natalie Graves back in March. These are just a handful of the positive outcomes, and losing the access to this tool will be unfortuante for the residents of our community who fall victim to crimes that could use the assistance of the technology. After the City Council cut the funding from the budget, I contacted the company to request the cameras be removed at their earliest convenience, even though the contract doesn’t expire for several months. I received a response on June 23 that the request was sent to the technicians who handle installs and removals and it is in their queue.

— Chad Alexander, Easthampton Chief of Police

Flock will be gone soon: what to know if it returns

The Easthampton City Council eliminated the police department’s funding for Flock, and Police Chief Alexander requested that Flock decommission Easthampton’s Flock camera. Still, nothing stops the police from requesting funding for Flock in the future or funding it via grants to avoid scrutiny from the City Council Finance Committee.

If the Easthampton Police department attempts to bring Flock back, here’s what’s important to remember about the city’s first experience with Flock:

• City officials made incorrect claims about how widely Easthampton’s Flock data was being shared with external organizations.
• Easthampton police used Flock data in ways that appear to violate its official policies on license plate readers.
• Easthampton did not have protections in place to prevent or detect abuse of Flock data.

Easthampton Flock data explorer

Easthampton Police searches of Flock data are public record, so I’ve created a data explorer to help Easthampton residents understand how the Easthampton police have been using Flock data:

• Easthampton Flock Request Explorer

Get Involved

I will be presenting this information at the next City Council Public Safety Committee meeting on July 7, 2026, at 6pm. I encourage all Easthampton residents who care about Flock or similar surveillance technology to attend and communicate their stances to public officials.