A New Bedford, Massachusetts, police officer used Flock Safety's automated license-plate readers to track her ex-girlfriend — the exact kind of abuse that 75 citizens gathered in Roanoke, Virginia, this weekend to warn about.

Flock Safety, a private contractor, has installed its cameras in more than 6,000 police departments nationwide. In Roanoke alone, 27 cameras captured 418,035 unique license plate numbers over the past 30 days, according to the department's own transparency portal. Police ran 378 searches against that database. That is a surveillance dragnet built with taxpayer dollars, contracted by city councils without a public vote, and the constitutional guardrails are only as strong as the honor of whoever holds the login.

Officer Emily Pacheco confirmed during a hearing that she ran her ex-girlfriend's plate through Flock — but claimed it was for professional reasons, according to CBS Boston video of the proceeding. A protective order against Pacheco was extended for six months and prohibits her from possessing a firearm, The New Bedford Light reported. Her former girlfriend testified that the department contacted her after her license plate was flagged a "concerning" number of times by the system. New Bedford police have suspended Flock use entirely pending an internal investigation.

The Boston.com report framed the New Bedford case as part of a broader Massachusetts "reconsideration" of the technology. What it buried: the scope of the retreat. Littleton police announced Friday that all six of the town's Flock cameras have been disabled, four physically removed. Salem and Framingham suspended use earlier this summer. This isn't reconsideration — it's a rolling evacuation.

Meanwhile in Roanoke, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot covered the largest anti-Flock gathering in the region to date, organized by Roanoke Indivisible. Criminology professor Steven Keener of Christopher Newport University told attendees they likely passed six to eight cameras on their way to the library meeting — and that every plate was entered into a police database with no valid reason. "Critics, like myself, will argue that it's severe government overreach," Keener said.

Police Chief Scott Booth called Flock "an important tool" at a July press conference and said the department will "continue to try to use that in our community." The department says access is limited to certain officers, audits are conducted, and data is purged after 21 days. The cameras are prohibited for immigration enforcement, traffic offenses, personal use, and any use against a protected class.

Those prohibitions didn't stop Pacheco in New Bedford.

The controlling legal precedent in Virginia comes from a January ruling by U.S. District Judge Mark Davis, who held that automatic capture of license plate numbers and entry into a searchable database does not constitute a warrantless search. Davis acknowledged, however, that expanding use and improving technical capabilities could eventually push the technology past a constitutional threshold.

Roanoke City Council approved the Flock contract in 2024. Council member Nick Hagen, who was not on the body at the time and attended Saturday's meeting, opposes the cameras. Opponents planned a rally Monday ahead of a council meeting.

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley announced new measures — but neither outlet detailed what those measures are. The company did not respond to the core question: why a private firm should hold the contract to build a permanent vehicle-tracking infrastructure across American towns, paid for by the people being tracked.

The courts say the Fourth Amendment isn't violated yet. A police officer in Massachusetts just proved the safeguards aren't worth relying on. The question isn't whether the technology can solve crimes — it's whether a free people should accept a surveillance infrastructure that assumes guilt and demands innocence be proven after the fact.