Melrose Police Chief Kevin Faller told a packed City Council special meeting on Thursday, October 15 that he will not suspend the city’s three Flock Safety license plate cameras, even as a dozen residents and two ACLU of Massachusetts representatives urged the council to have the contract canceled and the cameras covered, and Mayor Jen Grigoraitis wrote that she had told the chief she would prefer “to put the use of this technology on hold” while the council and public weigh in. The council took no vote; it placed the chief’s answers on file under an informational order sponsored by Councilor Ryan Williams with Councilors Maya Jamaleddine, Kim Vandiver and Elizabeth Kowal.
What the city has, and what it costs
Faller said the department signed a pilot agreement with Flock on December 7, 2020 under the previous chief, that the three cameras are all on Main Street, and that he does not know why those spots were chosen; there was no council vote or public input. The city has paid $13,500 over five fiscal years, now $3,000 a year on a subscription that renews each July. The mayor’s memo, read into the record by Council President Brad Freeman, said the chief can approve purchases under $10,000 without a written contract, so the mayor’s office, solicitor, IT director and chief financial officer never reviewed the terms. Councilor Christopher Park, who works in software, said the price “is also not a coincidence that it’s less than the amount that would be needed to get city council approval,” and that the data collected is worth more than the fee. Faller said he will now work with the solicitor on a master services agreement, that he is “not married to Flock,” and that the real question is whether the community wants plate readers at all.
The chief’s case
Faller, a 32-year officer who teaches the state’s legal update course, said the cameras take still photos, not video, do not run plates or identify owners, and that searching requires one of 46 investigative reasons, multifactor login and training; 26 of 50 sworn officers are certified after he opened access beyond the detective division in January. Quarterly audits have found no misuse, he said. After meeting with councilors in August and September he cut retention from Flock’s 30-day default to 14 days, stopped sharing with the FBI, the Postal Service and every out-of-state agency, and now shares with 89 Massachusetts departments. He walked through cases he said the cameras helped solve: a man with dementia found driving in circles with melted ice cream in his car; a suspect in a knifepoint robbery of a gas station clerk arrested in South Carolina after Malden entered the car he stole as stolen; and several hit-and-runs, including a pedestrian struck on Green Street in August, solved from descriptions like “silver-gray minivan.” He gave “a hard no” to more cameras and to facial recognition and said he would welcome strict, consistent state regulation, but added: “I’m not suspending it because I don’t want that on my shoulders.”
Residents and councilors push back
Speakers cited Boston, where Flock shared data the city said it had disabled, and Cambridge and Littleton, where cameras came back on after cancellation. A Walton Park resident who became a citizen last year said the technology “has already been used for immigration-related searches” and that “freedom means that government should have a reason to watch you in the first place.” A Winthrop Street resident argued the department’s policy likely violates Article 14 of the state Declaration of Rights. An ACLU of Massachusetts staff member said Flock’s network includes 80,000 to 90,000 readers and that the Supreme Judicial Court warned in 2020 that “with enough cameras in enough locations” the practice would trigger constitutional protection; Faller cited the same case, Commonwealth v. McCarthy, as upholding the limited use of four fixed cameras. A trustee of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building opened the meeting by reading his resignation over the council’s questioning of a fellow trustee on October 5, and was cut off at the five-minute limit.
Williams said the chilling effect is personal: “I thought to myself, what if I’m on a list?” Kowal asked why the city should not wait for the Legislature; Faller answered that it “never moves fast” and cited a city worker killed after another community suspended ShotSpotter. Vandiver asked whether the cameras could be clearly marked; the chief said that could deter criminals or help them avoid the cameras and invite vandalism. Jamaleddine said the harm falls on people without privileges and asked Faller “to remove it instantly, as soon as possible.” Councilor Jason Chen said the system “got really big” and “leaky” and that relying on “Fourth Amendment nerds” running every department is not realistic. Councilor John Obremski and others said the distrust is of the company, not the department. The mayor’s memo said the administration “stands ready to collaborate” on guardrails in the city code.
Councilors Cal Finocchiaro and Manjula Karamcheti were absent. The recording is on MMTV’s Vimeo page and the agenda packet, including the 57 questions councilors submitted, is on the city’s CivicClerk portal. The department’s Flock transparency page lists the agencies it shares with.
