The Tiverton Town Council voted July 27 to approve a contract for automated license plate reader cameras from Flock Safety, even though council members said they had never seen the actual service agreement they were approving.
The motion, made after roughly an hour of public testimony and a vendor presentation, approved the contract "subject to the solicitor's review and a termination clause for cause." It passed by voice vote, with applause from the audience afterward. Automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, are pole-mounted cameras that photograph the rear of passing vehicles and record the plate, make, model and color.
What the council actually had in front of it, according to the exchange captured on the town's published meeting recording, was a purchase order — not the master service agreement that governs how the data is handled.
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The agenda item, as read by the chair, was listed as "discussion and possible vote to approve contract for automated license plate reader services." One councilor noted the mismatch aloud: "It sounds like to me that the agenda should have said not 'approve a contract,' but 'approve the purchase order.'"
A councilor said plainly before the vote that the paperwork gap was a problem. "Our item here on the agenda is a possible vote to approve the contract. I have a hard time approving a contract I haven't seen," the councilor said, drawing applause. "I want to know what I'm saying yes to."
The Flock Safety representative present, Carl Bach, told the council the company could supply the underlying document. "We can help with a master service agreement that has the level of detail that you would need to feel comfortable," he said. "There is a reference to the master service contract."
The solicitor advised that the council could not approve a document he had not reviewed, but offered an alternative: "You could make a motion to approve the contract subject to my review and sign-off." That is the path the council took.
Residents raised data ownership, security and Fourth Amendment objections
Six residents and one visitor spoke against the cameras during public comment, and none spoke in favor.
A representative of a privacy advocacy group who identified himself as a Providence resident gave the most detailed critique, focused on the contract language the council had not seen. He told the council he had sent members a legal analysis a month earlier.
His central claim was about the difference between raw footage and processed data. He said the 30-day deletion policy the town has cited applies only to "customer data," meaning the raw recordings, while anything the company derives from processing those recordings is treated as the company's own property with no retention limit.
"When you sign this contract with them, what you're doing is paying them to put up these cameras and to record whatever they want through them, and they can process that recording and monetize it any way they want," he said.
He also argued the agreement leaves the town without leverage. "It actually says in the contract that Tiverton does not have any authority of any kind to bind Flock in any way whatsoever," he said, adding that the police department's own written policy barring the sale of data cannot constrain a vendor the town has no authority over. He said the contract also bars the town from conducting a security audit.
Another resident opposing the cameras listed communities she said had ended or declined ALPR contracts and described a Florida case in which a detective was arrested for using the system to track a former spouse's new partner. "I support our police, but I do not support this Flock company," she said.
A resident of Starlet Road framed the objection constitutionally, saying warrantless collection at scale becomes "mass-surveillance infrastructure" and that Rhode Island has no state law setting guardrails on license plate readers. "I don't think we have any kind of legislation at the state and local level that really speaks to the privacy issues," he said.
Another resident cited AI misreads that led to armed traffic stops of innocent drivers in other states, and said the town would be relying on "a private company's pinky promise" not to leak or sell data.
A separate resident spent her public comment time in a tense exchange with the solicitor over public records. She said she had filed a third records request seeking the current Flock contract and had received only what she called an expired quote. The solicitor told her the town had produced everything it has and directed her to appeal to the Rhode Island Attorney General's office, which she said she would do.
The police case for the system
Police Chief Costa defended the program and listed cases he said the technology helped resolve, including a hit-and-run involving a pedestrian that resulted in a 15-year sentence with five years to serve, an armed robbery in Fall River, a child pornography investigation in January 2026, stolen vehicle complaints, two elder-fraud cases, and the location of a missing person with Alzheimer's.
"These are facts that happened in Tiverton, Rhode Island," the chief said, adding that he found it "defensive" to have his data questioned at prior meetings.
Costa said the department has used the technology since 2022 and audits the system every 30 days rather than annually. The deputy chief, asked what the audit covers, said he reviews every transaction officers make in the system and matches each to a case number in the department's records system, and that the task takes most of an eight-hour workday.
Costa also disputed the account that a camera had been donated. He said one camera was paid for by a private vendor in town and the other from a town account, and that no cameras were gifted.
The chief acknowledged limits. Asked whether the cameras prevent crime, he said: "I hope so, but I cannot tell you that it is. We are using it to solve crimes."
Bach's presentation said the cameras capture still images rather than video, include no facial recognition, are not connected to motor vehicle records, and log every officer search permanently. He said data is stored in Amazon's government cloud environment and encrypted in transit and at rest, and that the company retains an outside firm for security testing. Asked directly what the company hides in its contracts, he said, "We're not hiding anything in your contract. Your solicitor would be the best person to talk to about that."
Asked whether existing agreements include a termination clause triggered by a data breach, Bach said he does not work on the contract side and would look for sample language. That question became the second condition attached to the council's motion.
What happens next
The vote authorizes the town to proceed, but the actual agreement still has to be drafted, reviewed by the solicitor and signed. Because the council attached the termination-for-cause condition, the negotiated language on breach remedies has not been written yet.
The council did not set a date to review the finished agreement in public, and the recording does not indicate whether the master service agreement will come back before the council or be executed administratively after the solicitor signs off.
Residents who want the underlying documents can file an access to public records request with the town; the solicitor told one resident that appeals over withheld records go to the Attorney General's office. The council's next regular meeting was referenced during the appointments portion of the evening as August 11.