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GROTON — To kick off a public forum for a newly created Police Camera Working Group in Groton last week, Deputy Police Chief Rachael Mead offered residents an apology on behalf of the department.

“This is something we should have done a couple years ago when we first started having this conversation about having [automatic license plate readers] in town,” said Mead during the forum Thursday.

Mead was referring to the town’s now defunct contract with Flock Safety, a company facing relentless backlash recently for its system of ALPR cameras it provides to law enforcement agencies across the country. The stated intent of the system is to scan the license plates of passing vehicles so that police can later track a specific vehicle during an investigation.

Police have touted the cameras as effective tools when it comes to solving crimes and concluding investigations, but the ALPR systems offered by Flock and companies with similar products like Axon and Motorola have come under scrutiny for what many see as a violation of the Constitution due to the data being collected without a warrant.

On top of that, critics have often expressed concern over the security of the data collected by Flock cameras, and whether that data is being shared with federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Those concerns were found to be prevalent in a survey the working group had been conducting the same week the department announced the end of its Flock contract, Mead said.

“I don’t think we understood or realized how much of this was going to cause conflict with residents in town,” said Mead. “I know by not having these forums ahead of time, we probably broke some trust.”

Mead provided a brief history of Groton’s relationship with Flock. In December 2024 the department proposed an ALPR program for the next fiscal year, and in January of this year the town’s Flock program went live, Mead said.

“It was meant to help address traffic issues, so we looked at some of our worst intersections, and that is where we were going to place some of these cameras,” said Mead.

Groton started with a two-year contract with Flock, which Mead said would allow for the police to test the system and “see if it was right for our town.”

Several months later during the spring Town Meeting in May, Mead said a resident put forward a motion to remove the cost of the Flock cameras from the fiscal 2027 town capital budget, which passed. That motion prompted the creation of the camera working group to research all types of cameras that may be used by the police, not just ALPRs.

When it comes to the future of ALPRs in Groton specifically, Mead said the working group has been exploring all options, including using another cloud-based data storage system like Flock, using an ALPR system where the data is hosted locally, edge computing and not having ALPRs at all.

In the meantime, removal of the Flock cameras began on Sept. 15, and as of the day of the forum about half had already been removed, while the department asked Flock to reduce its data retention to the lowest available level.

“We’re not saving data anymore, it’s just that the cameras are up,” said Mead.

While Groton’s Flock pilot program was active Mead said there have been investigations in which data collected by the Flock cameras is being used. Those investigations have not yet been closed, Mead noted, but when they are closed she said more information will be provided.

Many of the same concerns expressed about ALPR technology over the last year were expressed by residents at the forum. Among the many who spoke was Al Solomon, who said Flock, Axon and other ALPR companies have been “disingenuously approaching individual town governments in order to achieve their contracts without contextualizing what their larger business goal is.”

“I honestly don’t feel like the town of Groton messed up, I think that we were taken advantage of by a company. That is truly how I would view how this goes,” said Solomon. “In that same regard we are now in a place where federal and state agencies have not protected us from this type of behavior.”

Groton is one of more than 30 known cities and towns in Massachusetts to drop or suspend their contract with Flock after a summer of pushback against the technology, a list recently joined by Lowell, Tewksbury and Wilmington among others.

When the Groton Police announced the move on Aug. 31, they said the goal of the working group would be to make a final recommendation on the issue of ALPR technology for the spring 2027 Town Meeting, but in a social media post Tuesday the department said they “do not have a plan to bring ALPR technology to spring town meeting.”

“There is a lot here and we want to take our time to research, discuss and make a recommendation that is right for our town,” said the Groton Police.

The full recording of the forum can be viewed at thegrotonchannel.org.

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