Swampscott police used partner access to search Flock network despite no town contract

← All news · September 4, 2026

Swampscott has no Flock contract and no plate-reader cameras, but police have used Flock through partner communities. The department paused that access after placing an unnamed officer on paid leave over suspected misuse.

Swampscott police have used Flock license-plate reader access through partner communities even though the town has no Flock contract and no plate-reader cameras of its own, according to a department press release quoted by the Swampscott Tides.

The department disclosed the arrangement after placing an unnamed officer on paid administrative leave while it investigates possible misuse of the system. The Tides reported the release on the evening of Sept. 4. The release does not name the officer, say who raised the concern, give a date for the alleged misuse, or say how many searches are under review. This report does not identify the officer either.

“While the Town of Swampscott does not contract with Flock and the Department does not have cameras posted in the community,” the release reads, as rendered by the Tides, “the authorized Department use of Flock license plate readers through partner communities has been strictly for active law enforcement Investigations.”

The department has paused access “with partner organizations for license plate reader systems and related investigative tools” while it conducts “a comprehensive review of its policies, permissions, supervisory controls, auditing practices, and training requirements surrounding the use of this technology.”

The release tells residents two things: Swampscott does not own Flock cameras or hold a Flock contract, and Swampscott police have searched the network through other agencies. The public record reviewed for this report does not show a Select Board vote authorizing that access, and the department does not publish a policy covering it.

Swampscott has no cameras but had access

Flock Safety sells automated license-plate readers: roadside cameras that photograph passing cars and log the plate, along with make, model, color, and other features. Officers search the resulting database during investigations. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts says at least 80 police departments across the state hold active Flock contracts.

A department does not need its own cameras to search Flock data. Flock lets each customer agency decide how widely to share: with no one, with named agencies, with all Massachusetts agencies, or with the national network. A department without cameras can hold user accounts on another agency’s Flock system, or be named as a sharing partner.

That is what “authorized Department use … through partner communities” describes. Which arrangement Swampscott used is not public. Flock says data sharing is controlled by the customer agency and is not automatic, so a partner agency’s settings, not Swampscott’s, may decide how far a Swampscott user’s search can reach.

No public vote or published policy

Swampscott officers’ ability to query a regional surveillance tool sits outside the usual public checks on town power. No Select Board vote authorizing Flock access appears in the record reviewed for this report. Massachusetts has no statute governing police use of plate readers: no retention limit, sharing rule, audit requirement, or access standard. Bills have been filed for more than a decade and none has passed.

The Police Department’s public Policies page lists three policies: Use of Force, Vehicular Pursuit, and Body-Worn Camera. None addresses plate readers or database access.

That does not mean the department writes only three policies. When it earned state accreditation, it did so across 178 of them. The town holds a large internal rulebook and publishes three pages of it. The rule that would govern who may search a surveillance network, for what, and under whose supervision is not among the pages residents can read.

Lynn is plausible, not proven

The Tides lede pointed to “Lynn’s Flock license-plate reader system.” The release itself says “partner communities” and “partner organizations,” both plural, and names no partner. Whether Swampscott’s access ran through Lynn alone, or through more than one agency, is not established by the text.

Lynn is the plausible reading because the two towns already share public-safety operations. On Oct. 4, 2023, the Select Board approved a regional-dispatch agreement with Lynn, co-presented by Police Chief Ruben Quesada and Fire Chief Graham Archer. Under it, Lynn handles Swampscott’s emergency dispatch and prisoner booking, and Swampscott gains access to Lynn’s firing range. The cost rose to about $185,000 in its first year from roughly $100,000 before.

That agreement is a dispatch arrangement. It says nothing about plate readers, and no source connects it to Flock. It shows the two departments share operations, which makes Lynn a likely partner, but it is not the instrument that grants Flock access.

Massachusetts law leaves the access question open

This is background, not legal advice. With no state statute on point, the limits on plate-reader access in Massachusetts are constitutional, contractual, departmental, and, for some out-of-state inquiries, tied to the state’s Shield Law.

The leading case is Commonwealth v. McCarthy, 484 Mass. 493 (2020). The Supreme Judicial Court adopted a “mosaic” approach to plate readers: a single read is like ordinary observation, but enough reads aggregated over time can reveal the whole of a person’s movements and become a constitutional search. The court held that the limited use before it, four cameras at two bridges, was not a search.

No Massachusetts appellate court has yet applied that reasoning to a networked query that searches many agencies’ cameras at once. That is the kind of question Flock access can raise.

Pending legislation would address the arrangement Swampscott describes. H.3755 would bar an agency from accessing plate-reader data held by other entities “except through valid search warrants.” The bill has not passed. If it became law, partner access would be regulated directly.

The Shield Law also matters to network settings. It limits Massachusetts police from assisting out-of-state inquiries into reproductive or gender-affirming care. For a shared Flock system, the question is what a local user can reach and what outside agencies can reach back.

The Select Board can ask for the records

Swampscott’s recent history shows the Select Board can bring police policy into public view. In spring 2026, the board pressed the department over its approach to immigration enforcement. On March 18 it received a five-page draft police policy, judged it too weak, one member called it “watered down” and “very tepid,” and deferred it. On April 8 it passed its own resolution on town property and warrant access. Whether the police policy itself was ever adopted is unresolved. Most of the members who ran that push have since left the board; the clearest continuity is Vice Chair Danielle Leonard.

Flock is not on the agenda for the board’s next meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 8 at Swampscott High School. That meeting is the first chance the board has had to raise it since the release, whether through the Town Administrator’s report, public comment, or the board’s own report. The current board is Chair Catherine “Katie” Phelan, Leonard, MaryEllen Fletcher, Ted Dooley, and Wayne Spritz, with Nicholas Connors as Town Administrator.

Public records could answer what the release does not: any memorandum of understanding, letter agreement, or user-account authorization between Swampscott and Lynn or any other partner; the department’s plate-reader or database-access policy, if one exists; the Flock audit log for Swampscott users; the list of authorized users and their ranks; any notice to the Select Board or Town Administrator; and whether the 2023 Lynn dispatch agreement, whose three-year term appears to have ended June 30, was renewed.

All are requestable under the state public-records law. The office that would field such a request answered more than 1,160 records requests last year.

This is the third time this summer that Swampscott residents have learned something about their town government not from the town but around it. The August network disruption reached the public through a three-sentence notice and a spoken account of about a minute; the meeting record briefly survived only as phone photos of a corkboard. The Flock release appears on no town web surface at all — only in a newsletter. The subjects differ. The pattern is the same.

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