Why Wellesley Police are testing a Flock license plate reader

Scrutiny over municipal use of Flock Safety automated license plate readers (LPRs) across the country has led to some cities and towns ditching them in the face of privacy concerns raised by members of the public and organizations such as the ACLU. Natick’s Select Board at the start of the year quashed a police pilot, Framingham Police recently ended their Flock contract, and New Bedford is among the communities currently figuring out its approach.

Whereas some communities have installed networks of Flocks, leading to concerns about vehicles being tracked across a town or city and beyond, Wellesley has a single Flock LPR mounted on a pole at the intersection of Rte. 9 East and Rte. 16 near Elm Park, where the clocktower stands. That location was chosen because the department knows from experience that suspects fleeing crimes in the area often head in that direction.

You can check out an interactive map to see where Flock systems are installed.

Wellesley has been using the camera since May of 2025 and plans to have it in place until next May, according to Chief Scott Whittemore. “While we continue to evaluate the camera, the department doesn’t plan on expanding the system—the one camera is fine for us to test,” he says.

The department has been using mobile LPRs since 2014, and the ones it is using now come from Motorola. LPRs are also used by private businesses and the state police.

Whittemore says Wellesley installed the Flock at a time when many police departments in the area and in metro Boston were using the technology. “At the time we were an outlier who didn’t,” he says.

(We had asked Whittemore about this topic in January back when Natick was deciding what to do about its Flocks and then revisited the subject this summer after the Boston Globe published an update on Flocks across the state.)

The Wellesley Police Department chose its location for a Flock to be in the center of town. The department did not to install a “mosaic” of cameras, taking into consideration a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling from 2020.

“I know every department has its own philosophy and reasoning for deploying Flock cameras, and I want to be clear that I’m not questioning that (as I don’t have that information from other communities),” Whittemore says. “However, Wellesley’s philosophy is that we are going to follow what the SJC ruling was to the best of our ability. As such, I would not be inclined to have 10 cameras all over town covering the entrances and exits to the community.”

Flock devices capture license plate and other vehicle data, but don’t, for example, support facial recognition.

Using LPRs has played a major role in helping the Wellesley Police Department solve a number of cases over the years, including mail theft, car thefts, a kidnapped dog, and a house break-in. The Flock system itself hasn’t contributed to any breakthroughs during its year-plus in town, though the police have been busy of late with incidents not involving vehicles.

The police department does share data with other police departments in Massachusetts and other states close by (suspects from New Jersey and New York aren’t unusual in Wellesley).

“We do not share with ICE. While there are no specific guidelines about the use of LPR and the Massachusetts Shield Law, to be safe we don’t share data with anyone in states that have banned abortion. I’m hopeful that there will be some specific guidance in the future from the Commonwealth regarding this,” Whittemore says. “Flock also has some internal restrictions on searches related to immigration and abortion, but we simply don’t make our data available. Essentially, we have an approximate 200-mile radius for police departments around Wellesley.”

Whittemore is well versed on the privacy concerns about the Flock devices, as he is regarding the use of drones for police work. The Wellesley Police Department has a policy on LPR use (as it does for drone use), and the Select Board is aware that the department uses LPRs, he says.

The department paid for its Flock system using awarded asset forfeiture and seized money, primarily from drug cases that are prosecuted and adjudicated. Flock charges for its systems as well as for an annual subscription fee.