METHUEN — Flock cameras will be coming down.
Mayor D.J. Beauregard announced on Wednesday that the city will be ending its partnership with Flock Safety, which operates automatic license plate readers in the city that then feed data to a searchable archive.
Officials said the cancellation is based upon concern over the control and security of the data. The city had previously halted the installation of new cameras amid concern over the devices.
The cameras will be covered while arrangements can be made for their removal, according to a prepared statement from Beauregard and Acting Police Chief Jamie Moore.
“While there is currently no known evidence that Methuen personnel have misused the system, we have determined that Flock does not provide sufficient protections or local control of that data,” the statement reads.
License plate readers automatically record passing cars allowing police to track any passing vehicles by using data from other readers. The data is searchable by law enforcement and is often shared between departments.
In previous statements, Methuen officials have said the city’s data sharing would be limited.
A three-year $200,000 contract for 22 license plate readers was approved by the City Council in 2025. Officials at the time said cameras would generally be installed at entrances and exits to the city.
At a similar time, Lawrence had at least 35 license plate readers.
The city had so far spent $67,000 on the technology and installed 13 Flock cameras, according to Beauregard.
He and Moore said the city would pursue an alternative to Flock that preserves the technology’s “important investigative capabilities while meeting Methuen’s standards for privacy, constitutional protections, and local data control.”
Officials said license plate readers have value including in locating missing or abducted children and vulnerable missing persons, recovering stolen vehicles and responding to imminent threats.
Supporters of automatic license plated readers have pointed to how the technology aided in the investigation of the 2025 mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor. The cameras helped lead law enforcement to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.
The cancellation comes amid an apparent misinterpretation of Flock statistics by Methuen City Councilor Patricia Valley.
The Lawrence Police Department has disputed an allegation from Valley that her license plate was searched 359 times in less than two years by the department. Instead, police said in a news release that the number Valley had found on haveibeenflocked.com actually refers to the total number of searches by an officer in a two-year period.
Valley’s license plate was searched during one session in an investigation into a hit-and-run that occurred on May 12, 2025, involving a vehicle similar to Valley’s, according to police.
This information was provided to Valley through phone and email communications a few hours before she posted the allegations on social media Tuesday, police said.
Valley has said she was never informed of the May investigation.
Have I been Flocked? is a searchable database that draws from publicly available information to see if a license plate has been searched by law enforcement.
The database is not comprehensive, instead relying only on information that has already been released by authorities, according to the website.
The department will be working with Flock to develop a transparency portal to provide the public with more information on how the department uses the technology, according to the statement.
“The Department welcomes constructive scrutiny and recognizes the important role public oversight plays in maintaining trust,” Lawrence police said. “That scrutiny, however, should be based on complete and factual information rather than assumptions or incomplete accounts.”