The central issue in the case against former Braintree police officer Mark Sherrick is not only how often a former girlfriend’s vehicle was tracked. It is also whether the safeguards surrounding an automated license-plate-reader system were capable of detecting or preventing that alleged misuse.
According to Boston 25 News, court records and Braintree police audit documents allege that Sherrick searched a plate associated with his ex-girlfriend more than 1,049 times through the department’s Flock camera system after the couple broke up. The records also allege that he used a department-issued phone to monitor her vehicle and placed a GPS tracker on it. A criminal harassment case is pending; the allegations have not been adjudicated.
Boston 25 reported that the audit found searches beginning around Aug. 20, 2024, the date identified in the records as the couple’s breakup. The station also reported that Massachusetts POST Commission records show discipline for multiple violations, including harassment. Those details come from the station’s review of records and should be distinguished from any findings a court may ultimately make.
The technology is designed to leave a record
Flock Safety says its platform ties searches to individual users, records them in permanent audit logs and allows agencies to review usage histories. The company also says searches require a standardized offense type, according to its published account of its controls. Those are vendor-described capabilities, however—not evidence that Braintree adopted every available setting, reviewed the searches promptly or acted on warning signs in this case.
That distinction leaves an important unanswered question: what did Braintree’s own policy require, and who was responsible for reviewing the searches? The available reporting establishes that an internal audit eventually identified the activity, but it does not establish how often audits were supposed to occur, whether alerts were generated automatically or what disciplinary controls applied before the investigation.
Massachusetts has proposed rules, but a proposal is not a safeguard
Massachusetts lawmakers filed H.3431 on Jan. 12, 2023, proposing a statewide framework for automated license-plate readers that included rules for permitted uses, retention and access. The Massachusetts Legislature’s bill document is evidence of a proposal, not an enacted statewide system of controls.
The gap between proposed and enacted rules matters because departments may otherwise differ in how they define authorized searches, retain location data and audit employee activity. A January 2025 National Conference of State Legislatures report said at least 18 states had enacted laws addressing ALPR use or data retention. It cited Georgia requirements limiting use to law-enforcement purposes, requiring agency policies and training, and generally requiring destruction of data no later than 30 months, subject to exceptions.
A separate case shows the comparison—and its limits
The Braintree allegations resemble a separate Kentucky case in the alleged personal use of a police-accessible Flock system, but the cases are not identical. On Aug. 26, 2026, CNN reported that Shively police officer Asad Zahir was arrested after authorities said he used Flock searches to track his ex-girlfriend more than 2,000 times, involving two vehicles. CNN reported that he faced charges including official misconduct and unlawful computer access. One comparable incident cannot establish a national frequency or trend, but it illustrates how audit records can become evidence in alleged insider surveillance cases.
Transparency is becoming part of the oversight fight
A separate Massachusetts records dispute also shows why audit information matters beyond a single disciplinary case. The ACLU of Massachusetts reported that a Suffolk Superior Court judge ruled on Sept. 2, 2026, that State Police could not withhold basic information about its ALPR camera locations and audit records, with license-plate numbers redacted. That ruling involved State Police records, not Braintree’s system, and does not resolve the allegations against Sherrick.
The immediate accountability questions in Braintree therefore remain specific: what searches were authorized, what the department’s logs showed at the time, when supervisors learned of the activity and whether existing review procedures were followed. The records reported by Boston 25 document the alleged searches and the later investigation; they do not, by themselves, establish whether the system’s safeguards failed, were bypassed or were never fully implemented.
