New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell has introduced his own ordinance to govern how the city uses automatic license plate reader cameras, wading into a fight that already cost two police employees their jobs and shut down the city’s entire camera network. Mitchell says his proposal could become something bigger than a local fix — he believes it could serve as a national model for regulating the technology.
The mayor’s ordinance, detailed by WBSM, would require a public hearing and City Council approval before the city enters or renews any ALPR contract. It would also limit camera searches to police personnel who have been certified by a supervisor as having completed ALPR training, and it would cap data retention at 30 days unless that data is tied to an ongoing criminal or internal investigation.
Mitchell said the goal is to find “a reasonable balance between safety tools and civil liberties,” according to the same report. He has also said he expects some pushback from councilors but does not anticipate unanimous support, adding that he believes most council members recognize the need for the technology even as they debate how tightly to control it.
How New Bedford Got Here
New Bedford Police had used Flock Safety cameras since December 2024, but the program unraveled this year. Chief Jason Thody suspended use of the Flock system on August 11 after privacy concerns surfaced alongside allegations that two department employees had misused the technology. An internal affairs investigation later found that the two employees had used the cameras to track individuals who were not part of any ongoing investigation and with whom they had personal relationships, the station reported. Mitchell fired both employees after disciplinary hearings.
New Bedford Police have said they will not renew the Flock contract when it expires on November 12. Mitchell told WPRI that all Flock cameras citywide remain shut off while his administration and the police department work out an alternative measure, a message he repeated as he unveiled his own ordinance.
A Veto Fight Already Brewing
The mayor’s plan arrives after the City Council passed its own ordinance by an 8-3 vote that would ban ALPR use entirely until replacement rules are established. That effort was led by Councilor Shane Burgo. Mitchell has said he intends to veto that moratorium, and per the same report, if the eight supporting votes hold, the council would have enough to override him.
Burgo has said the council had only seen press-release bullet points about Mitchell’s plan rather than the ordinance itself, and he has argued the council should keep negotiating with the mayor until it reaches a fair compromise. Councilor Brian Gomes, who chairs the council’s Committee on Public Safety and Neighborhoods and voted against the moratorium, has said Mitchell’s ordinance aligns with his own approach to the cameras.
What the Ordinance Would Require
Beyond the public hearing and training requirements, Mitchell’s proposal lays out a layered system of oversight. All ALPR searches and data exports would need to be logged and subject to an annual audit, and the ordinance would also create monthly audits of data collection, searches, and access. Those audits would feed into a full written report to the City Council plus a separate public report covering aggregate findings, substantiated violations, and corrective actions.
The proposal would also require officers to visually confirm a plate, vehicle, alert status, and relevant circumstances before taking enforcement action based on a camera hit, and it would deactivate ALPR access for personnel once that access is no longer necessary. It would set rules for sharing data with outside law enforcement or criminal justice agencies on request, require NBPD procedures for reviewing allegations of unauthorized access, and prohibit the outright sale of ALPR data. Vendors would be barred from retaining, accessing, processing, selling, sharing, disclosing, or analyzing collected data after a contract ends unless required by law.
Chief Thody said law-enforcement technology policy should be grounded in public trust alongside strong public safety services. He said the department’s experience with the cameras shows the need for clear expectations while also demonstrating the technology’s effectiveness and importance in modern policing, and he called the ordinance an important step toward a consistent framework, adding that he would keep working with city leadership on it.
Part of a Wider National Reckoning
New Bedford’s fight is unfolding as ALPR programs face scrutiny nationwide. Per Police1, cities around the country have canceled contracts, and state officials have ordered reviews of the technology amid growing privacy concerns. The Institute for Justice reported that its database tracking local governments that have canceled or declined to renew ALPR contracts since 2025 listed 292 local governments as of November 3, a count that excludes jurisdictions that merely paused operations or switched providers.
Other states have taken sharply different paths on enforcement and access. Florida’s transportation department suspended current and future ALPR approvals on state-maintained roads and gave local agencies 30 days to remove existing cameras, according to Police1’s reporting. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced a statewide review of Flock and other plate-reader systems, examining how agencies use the cameras and who can access the data. Meanwhile, Dallas opted to keep more than 300 Flock cameras in place even as it deactivated 321 others that depended on state grant funding, with police telling city council members the cameras had helped solve 14 murder cases that year.
Mitchell has said the city will discuss his proposal with the council in the coming weeks, as the fate of New Bedford’s own camera program — and his promised veto of the council’s moratorium — remains unresolved.
