The ACLU of Rhode Island has called on the Cumberland Town Council to cancel its contract with Flock Safety and use of their automated license plate readers (ALPRs), citing an ongoing federal lawsuit demonstrating that the cameras have been used to take photos not only of vehicle license plates, but also of drivers and passengers.
This unpublicized expanded use of the cameras in Cumberland was disclosed in a false arrest lawsuit filed in June by private counsel on behalf of a woman who was falsely arrested by Cumberland Police after they used an image taken by a Flock camera to wrongly identify her. The ACLU’s letter highlights that, contrary to routine police claims that the ALPRs only take photos of license plates, in this case, the camera was also capable of taking pictures of drivers and passengers.
The ACLU letter to the Council notes:
These cameras are concerning enough when used just as license plate readers, but their danger is exponentially increased when expanded to take photos of people as well. Just as disturbing is the fact that no mention was made about this capability when the cameras were approved for purchase in 2024.
In addition to calling on the Council to cancel its contract with Flock Safety, the letter asks the Council to tell the public about:
all the capabilities of the ALPRs being used in Cumberland; at what point the ALPRs began being used to also capture photos of drivers and passengers in vehicles; how often the cameras have been used for this purpose; and whether and when this previously unreported surveillance expansion beyond license plate data was ever shared publicly.
According to the lawsuit, the arrest came after an officer reportedly saw a car make turns without using a turn signal, and resulted in a short car chase. The police officers then used Facebook to identify someone that they believed was the driver, and a police officer’s report from March 2025 wrongly concluded that “a photo from the flock camera of [the plaintiff] driving the vehicle during the pursuit . . . matches [her] license photo.”
The lawsuit, Pizzarelli v. Town of Cumberland, and the ACLU’s letter come at a time when communities across Rhode Island are pushing back against Flock’s surveillance systems. In just the past three weeks, South Kingstown, Narragansett, and Glocester town councils have voted to cancel their Flock contracts.
ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown said today: “This false arrest encapsulates the extremely serious privacy concerns that the ACLU and many others have been raising about Flock Safety and automated license plate reader cameras more broadly. This technology can do more than ‘just record license plates,’ and the secrecy surrounding its more invasive uses deserves special condemnation.”
A copy of the letter and the case documents, including the police office’s report, are available here. More information about Flock Safety in RI is available on the ACLU of RI’s website here.
