Methuen said Wednesday it plans to immediately cover its existing Flock Safety cameras and arrange for removal after officials said they don’t have enough control over their use and following an allegation another department searched a city councilor’s license plate.
In a joint statement Wednesday, Methuen Mayor David P. “D.J.” Beauregard Jr. and Acting Police Chief Jamie Moore said that while they found no evidence Methuen personnel misused the system, they concluded “Flock does not provide sufficient protections or local control of that data.”
“We are also aware of concerns recently raised by a Methuen city councilor about searches of the councilor’s license plate reportedly conducted by another police department. Those searches were not conducted by the Methuen Police Department,” Beauregard and Moore added, without providing details.
They acknowledged the cameras, used as automated license plate readers, can help locate missing or abducted children and vulnerable missing persons, recover stolen vehicles, identify vehicles connected to serious crimes and respond to imminent threats. A statement refers, for example, to last December’s use of the cameras that were able to track a rental car used by the suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University to a storage facility just across the Methuen line in Salem, N.H.
However, Beauregard and Moore said they will “pursue an alternative system that preserves those important investigative capabilities while meeting Methuen’s standards for privacy, constitutional protections and local data control.”
The cameras have come under scrutiny. Last month, Haverhill city councilors voted unanimously to ask City Solicitor Lisa L. Mead to draft an ordinance spelling out how they can be used and what guardrails are needed. They also voted to send the matter to the council’s Public Safety Committee for further study and debate.
Haverhill has 19 Flock cameras installed at entrances to the city and downtown and the system has been in place since 2023.