Flock Follow-Up Questions 11-15
Welcome to Part 3 and the final part of this series. I know I asked a lot of questions. These were questions others were asking me and they were questions I wanted to know. When a. mass surveillance system is put into our town without public discourse, we should be questioning it. As a reminder, my questions are in blue, the answers are in red, and my response is in black.
Below are the files I had shared previously for reference:
Many of the answers reference M.G.L. Ch. 4 § 7 sub. 26 (F) (N), so I've included the law and those exemptions below:
"Public records'' shall mean all books, papers, maps, photographs, recorded tapes, financial statements, statistical tabulations, or other documentary materials or data, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by any officer or employee of any agency, executive office, department, board, commission, bureau, division or authority of the commonwealth, or of any political subdivision thereof, or of any authority established by the general court to serve a public purpose, or any person, corporation, association, partnership or other legal entity which receives or expends public funds for the payment or administration of pensions for any current or former employees of the commonwealth or any political subdivision as defined in section 1 of chapter 32, unless such materials or data fall within the following exemptions in that they are:"
and Exemptions F and N are used as a justification to not answer questions:
f) investigatory materials necessarily compiled out of the public view by law enforcement or other investigatory officials the disclosure of which materials would probably so prejudice the possibility of effective law enforcement that such disclosure would not be in the public interest;
(n) records, including, but not limited to, blueprints, plans, policies, procedures and schematic drawings, which relate to internal layout and structural elements, security measures, emergency preparedness, threat or vulnerability assessments, or any other records relating to the security or safety of persons or buildings, structures, facilities, utilities, transportation, cyber security or other infrastructure located within the commonwealth, the disclosure of which, in the reasonable judgment of the record custodian, subject to review by the supervisor of public records under subsection (c) of section 10 of chapter 66, is likely to jeopardize public safety or cyber security
Question & Answer 11
The contract allows existing town cameras to be connected to the Flock system. Have any of Agawam's existing cameras been connected?
a. If no, is there a plan to connect them and when would those go live?
b. If yes, when did it go live?
A. No
B. No
These were one of those questions, where the answer caused me to have an audible sigh of relief. I am glad there isn't a plan to connect any other cameras to the Flock Safety system.
Quesetion & Answer 12
On June 11, 2026, Barbara Bard distributed a packet to the Council at the request of the Agawam Police Department. This packet included the article, "Retired Austin cop tears into leftist city council for stripping police of key tools before shooting rampage" and includes inflammatory remarks such as "activist council" and "the rest of them are far-left liberal radicals". The Council is a nonpartisan body. Whose decision was it to include the article in the document packet?
I included it to the Mayor as part of the information that I sent to him. My focus was the
information included in the article that a Major U.S. city had gotten rid of their FLOCK
cameras, and then realized that there was actually real public safety value in having them
in their City, and ultimately that City Council’s re-consideration of their previous ban. I
was not focused on the inflammatory rhetoric that was included in the article or its title.
I do not believe this response. If you look through the Flock information packet Agawam City Council was sent, the article I am referencing looks like this:
Right before this article he shared the article from a local news source entitled, "After shooting spree, Austin City Council members reconsider license plate readers," which covered the same event without the inflammatory framing.
If the Chief were interested in sharing an article about a City Council reconsidering the technology, his message came across with the local news source. What I found particularly interesting is the rhetoric is very reminiscent of what a Councilor said in the beginning of the year that got a lot of press.
You can read more about it here: https://thereminder.com/local-news/agawam-residents-speak-out-against-councilors-comment-on-municipal-benefits-for-domestic-partners/
Additionally, we were not sent this packet from the Mayor. When we received it, I emailed the council's clerk and asked who had sent it and she said the Agawam Police Department.
Here is what I am being to asked to believe with this answer:
The inflammatory article and rhetoric wasn't noticed because he wanted the story to be included
The same event was covered in the article right before this article
The language in this article is strikingly similar to what was said by a councilor earlier in the year. An incident that went viral online and was in multiple newspapers, and the Chief of Police did not notice the language
This was sent to the Mayor, not City Council, despite us getting the email and being told it came from the Police Department
There is not much more to say about this answer.
Question & Answer 13
What version of the Flock Safety system is APD running?
a. If different from the version at the time the contract was signed, what are the stated updates from the previous version?
b. How often are new versions pushed out?
The version of FLOCK that we are currently running is the same as we signed onto originally. The Agawam Police Department has not changed versions.
A. No change.
B. Flock periodically performs updates. However, According to Flock they do not create new versions like you would for example on a smart phone.
This answer is inaccurate. The contract was signed in September of 2025 and there have been updates to the software in:
October 2025- https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/policy-pulse-transparency-control-and-the-path-forward
November 2025- https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/search-safeguards-how-flocks-search-filters-work
December 2025- https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/offense-type-dropdown-a-simpler-more-accurate-audit
February 2026- https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-aligns-license-plate-reader-technology-with-state-specific-legal-frameworks
The version of Flock they have now is not the same version it was when they signed the contract.
Question & Answer 14
In the 6/15/2026 City Council meeting, Chief Gillis shared an anecdote where someone called because a woman with a camera was observed at Bondi's Island and that APD personnel were concerned she could be a terrorist but it turned out that she was just taking pictures of a Bald Eagle nest. This story is concerning because it appears that the APD jumped to a worst-case scenario with scant evidence to base that supposition on.
a. Is this indicative of how investigations are typically conducted (i.e., is it normal to jump to the worst-case scenario before evidence is found)?
b. How does that impact the way an investigation is conducted?
The incident referenced in this question regards a facility that is defined by the United
States Department of Homeland Security as critical infrastructure. Employees of those
facilities are trained and required to report suspicious activity at those facilities to their
local police departments. Those law enforcement agencies are required to investigate those
instances and make a determination as to whether or not the incident requires reporting to
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts FUSION Center.
This incident was reported to us by personnel from that facility and was investigated to
determine what further notifications should be made if any. As was highlighted in the
presentation, the investigation, aided by a FLOCK camera image captured by the Town of
West Springfield's Police Department system, provided us with the necessary initial
investigative lead that enabled investigators to determine that it was a benign event that did
not require additional upward notifications. Absent this lead, and information gleaned by
investigators thereto, notifications to the Commonwealth FUSION Center would have been
required and additional investigative efforts at higher levels of law enforcement could have
been needlessly undertaken. The point of sharing this experience was to illustrate that
investigative leads generated by information contained in FLOCK databases can assist us
in ruling out information/incidents reported to us, just as well as ruling information in.
When people say, "If you don't do anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about" or "I have nothing to hide" tell them this story. This woman did not do anything wrong or have anything to hide; she was taking pictures of a Bald Eagle's nest. Yet, someone said she they thought she was suspicious because of her camera, and yet there was a warrantless search for her in the Flock system and law enforcement showed up at her door. When people make comments about "not having anything to hide," it assumes the system only ever flags actual wrongdoing. It doesn't. It flags whoever someone decides looks suspicious, and it does it for everyone.
Question & Answer 15
In the 6/15/2026 City Council meeting. It was stated that APD used Flock with investigations under the jurisdiction of the State Police. Did the State Police specifically ask APD to assist by searching the Flock system for the vehicles?
This question with respect to both of these incidents/investigations will not be answered in
accordance with M.G.L. Ch. 4 § 7 sub. 26 (F)
Exemption (F): Disclosure of how we shared FLOCK information with the Massachusetts
State Police in two of their investigations could alert suspects to the direction or scope of
their investigations, influence witness testimony, reveal leads or strategies still being
pursued, or compromise the fairness of a pending prosecution. It is our understanding that
both of these investigations remain open at the time of this response.
However, without divulging specific details of those cases/investigations, we can share that
in both instances we were at-scene with the Massachusetts State Police and were privy to
witness information regarding vehicles that may have been involved with the incidents. We
offered to search our FLOCK data to see if we could locate vehicles that matched the
witness descriptions in and around the time that the incidents occurred. Detectives
searching our FLOCK data were able to identify vehicles in both incidents that matched
the witness descriptions. Once those matching vehicles were identified through their search
of our FLOCK data, Detectives ran the vehicles through CJIS to determine vehicle owner
information, and that information was relayed to investigators with the Massachusetts State
Police. It is our understanding that they then utilized that vehicle owner information in
furtherance of their investigations. To be clear, the Massachusetts State Police did not
directly access data on our FLOCK system. We simply assisted them by searching our
system for data relevant to their investigation. This was done in the spirit of inter-agency
cooperation, and that type of cooperation is essential to overall public safety effectiveness.
This is one of the more detailed answers, and it is worth acknowledging that. But it also reveals something separtae from the exemption issue: APD didn't wait to be asked. Officers decided on their own initiative to search Flock data for a case under State Police jurisdiction, then ran CJIS lookups and passed owner information along. That may well have helped an investigation, but it also means the decision to deploy this surveillance tool, in this instance, was made entirely inside the department, with no outside request and no outside check. What policy, if any, governs when officers can proactively volunteer a Flock search to another agency? That is the question this answer opens.
This is the end of my three part series. Please continue to speak out against the Flock cameras in town. Come to City Council meetings, share my posts on social media, share these blog posts, and let people know what is going on. There are still people in town that have no clue about the cameras, and they deserve to know.
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