In an interview on Tuesday, Mayor Bob DaSilva said that while he understands the public’s concern over automated license plate readers (ALPRs), the city would not be canceling its contract with Flock Safety.

“At this point, we are not canceling contracts,” he said. “We are going to proceed making sure that we're following the best practices and best policies and making sure that we're protecting our residents, and any data that's collected.”

DaSilva said he believed there were multiple safeguards in place to prevent the system from being abused; reiterating what then-police chief Christopher Francesconi said in 2023 when the contract with Flock was approved — that anyone with authorization to pull data from the cameras needs to log that activity and get approval from a supervisor. All of those queries, he added, are subject to routine audits.

He said the program itself has protocols built in to prevent misuse from those with access who might try to do illicit things like spy on an ex-significant other, as has been documented as happening in multiple states across the country.

“From my understanding there is software that will flag if there are any anomalies, like the same person searching the same vehicle over and over again,” he added.

DaSilva, who retired after rising to the rank of Captain with the Pawtucket Police Department, said that the city has dealt with law enforcement personnel trying to abuse access to similar data in the past, citing a dispatcher who had been using law enforcement systems (unrelated to Flock) to run license plates. That employee was fired, he said.

DaSilva said that police officers already have regular access to federal databases full of personal information, and can run anyone’s license plate at any time and get access to a swath of personal data. But doing so illicitly and without just cause in the pursuit of law enforcement activity, he said, would jeopardize their careers.

“I think it's important to share with the public that police officers already have access to an enormous amount of information that's available to them, and them alone,” he said. “And they are under very strict guidelines on how to use that information. If they misuse it, they can lose their job.”

DaSilva added that the city has an “accountability portal”, a website through Flock that tracks how many scans are conducted in the past 30 days, how many searches of the system are made, and how many “hits” were made from that data. You can visit this portal by clicking here.

A liability issue?

The city’s contract with Flock clearly states that the company shall not be responsible or liable for any “Incomplete, corrupt, or inaccurate data” or “For any indirect, exemplary, incidental, special or consequential damages.”

On the potential for the city getting sued due to a false arrest stemming from such “incomplete, corrupt, or inaccurate data”, as happened recently when an East Providence woman sued the Town of Cumberland after being arrested following her car being errantly identified in a Flock hit, DaSilva said that the city’s ALPR policy — which is not codified through the city council nor in the contract with Flock, but independently by the police department — specifically instructs officers not to make arrests based solely on Flock data.

“A police officer cannot utilize a Flock hit to make an arrest,” he said. “A police officer can utilize a Flock hit as probable cause or reason of suspicion to make an interaction or contact with the person. And then from there, they have to verify the information and do their investigation to see whether or not there is probably cause to make the arrest.”

“It’s a tool,” he said. “It's not a warrant.”

UPDATE: Following the Post's press deadline, we received word from the Mayor's Office that the East Providence Police were working on additional changes to the city's ALPR policy to prevent misuse and improper use of data. We will report more on those changes when we learn more.

Legislation could be the answer

DaSilva said that he, in his role as President of the League of Cities and Towns, had been appointed to the committee formed by Governor Dan McKee and joined by several police chiefs in the state, to figure out “best practices” for using the ALPR technology moving forward. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the issues surrounding ALPRs needed to be resolved by statewide legislation.

“At some point, I support the state legislature if they wanted to come up with a policy; some type of state law,” he said. “That might be the pathway that this ends up going down.”

Asked if he would consider reducing the data retention period in East Providence from 30 days to seven — as Flock itself announced it would begin to make standard in new contracts for its ALPRs — DaSilva said he would be open to it after considering the potential downsides.

“We're looking at everything, and if that's a direction that we're going to go in that makes sense, then we would absolutely consider reducing it,” he said. “The issue you can run into potentially is, say you discover a crime scene or a body or some terrible incident that occurred that could have happened two weeks ago or longer, and now you don't have the data. So, I need to be cautious on how we proceed. I don't want to create a situation where we hurt our ability to investigate serious offenses.”

DaSilva said that while he understood people’s unease with being filmed by the Flock cameras, he asked people to remember that many of their neighbors probably already have Ring and other brands of smart security cameras active, filming their neighbors around them 24/7.

“I think we are now living in a time where there are cameras, privately owned, spread out throughout our community,” he said.

He said the benefits of the cameras cannot be ignored, just the same as ensuring they cannot be abused.

“If having a Flock camera in place helps us locate a missing child, solve a serious crime, or deters people from committing crimes in the community because they know that we have those in place, that's a good thing,” he said. “But at the same time, I am 100% aware that we need to ensure that this information is not utilized for nefarious purposes.”