South Portland will stop using Flock cameras
South Portland will pull the plug on its network of automatic license‑plate readers after a council vote that surprised many in the community.
The City Council met Thursday night and, by a 5‑to‑2 margin, voted to discontinue the use of Flock Safety’s “smart‑camera” system immediately, even though the contract with the company is set to expire in February 2027. The cameras—seven in all, positioned at Cash Corner, near Interstate 295, and along Western Avenue and Maine Mall Road—had been in operation since 2021, scanning every vehicle that passed and logging details such as make, model, color and bumper stickers.
The Council’s decision
Councilors raised a number of concerns about data security and who can access the information the cameras collect. “We don’t know enough about this stuff,” said Councilor Misha Pride, who also complained that “we don’t know where the data is going to go.” Councilors Natalie West and Richard Matthews acknowledged the value the system provides to the police department and to public safety, but agreed that the risks outweighed the benefits. The motion carried with five votes for and two against.
City Manager Scott Morelli said the city “no longer shares data with other agencies in the state” and added that he would work to have the Flock contractors remove the cameras as soon as possible. Residents in the city hall chambers cheered the decision, though some argued the move should have been the result of a longer public consultation process.
A history of the cameras
South Portland’s Flock cameras were first installed after the police department requested a $26,000 contract extension to February 2028 and an additional camera. The city withdrew that request in early May and announced a public workshop to address mounting concerns. The city has seven cameras that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to record license plates and other vehicle identifiers in real time. Flock Safety, an Atlanta‑based company that contracts with more than 5,000 law‑enforcement agencies nationwide, has faced criticism over the scope of data access. A 2025 report found that the company had shared data with federal immigration and border authorities.
Police Chief Daniel Ahern said the system has helped the department solve cases, noting it helped identify an online child predator and locate suspects in a bank robbery and a shooting. “It is one of a kind and instrumental,” he said. Despite that, many residents remained uneasy about the cameras’ reach.
Public pushback
More than 75 people—including a group of activists who gathered in the grassy yard outside city hall—organized a “People’s Public Comment” before the first workshop on May 19. The workshop was adjourned after nearly two hours of comment and a failed motion to disable the cameras until the council decided. In the meantime, the police department stopped sharing Flock data with national databases, limiting searches to Maine agencies only.
A city audit conducted in June of a nationwide Flock network of 4.5 million external searches between February 2025 and May 2026 yielded a number of findings that have fueled the debate. The audit found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had no direct access to South Portland data. The city disabled partner agencies’ ability to search for immigration‑related purposes on April 15, a day after concerns were raised at the budget workshop. No searches for reproductive‑health‑related investigations or enforcement were found before or after that date.
However, the audit did record 1,800 searches explicitly related to immigrants in the nationwide network, with more than 1,450 of those conducted by the Department of Homeland Security since February 2025. “We found two unnamed federal agencies—neither of which is ICE or DHS—that conducted searches in June 2025 and January 2026,” said the city spokesperson Shara Dee. The audit does not indicate whether those searches used South Portland data or simply searched the network broadly.
An ICE agent in the Massachusetts field office told Detective Jeff Levesque on May 21 that the agency had never accessed South Portland data.
Community voices
Alex Redfield, an organizer with No Flock for SoPo, said it was concerning that external agencies could search South Portland data with terms such as “immigration” and “abortion” before the April 15 cutoff. “If any member of the public has information that South Portland Flock data was utilized by an outside agency, we welcome reviewing that information,” the city document said.
“ The only way to ensure our data isn’t used for immigration enforcement is to not collect it in the first place,” said Shelby Leighton, also with No Flock for SoPo. The group is demanding more transparency about who has accessed the data and has signaled that it is prepared to take legal action if external searches are conducted or if Flock’s permissions or settings change.
Search records of automatic license‑plate readers are confidential under state law, meaning the city cannot release the names of agencies that have performed specific searches. Dee noted that other Maine departments, such as Falmouth, have released network logs in response to freedom‑of‑information requests.
What happens next?
The city’s decision to shut down the cameras means that, for the time being,
