NEW HANOVER COUNTY — New Hanover County commissioners said they will review a $219,000 contract with the surveillance company Flock Safety after a protest and 41 community members signed up to speak against the sheriff’s office use of or automated license plate readers during public comment Monday.
As part of a call to action involving 70 cities, ILM Action Network and DeFlock ILM — nonprofits dedicated to protecting citizen’s rights — organized a protest along Princess and Third streets ahead of the commissioners’ meeting. Approximately 50 people held black and yellow signs stating “DeFlock New Hanover Today,” others with phrases like “stop normalizing mass surveillance,” “danger, they are conditioning you to view your privacy as selfish,” and “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,” — a reference to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
Flock cameras use AI to automatically capture vehicle information, such as a license plate, make and model. It’s put in a cloud database for both law enforcement and other private entities with Flock contracts to search without warrants.
READ MORE: Following in NCDOT footsteps, city stores DSA bus benches for now
New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office has had a 36-camera contract with Flock since February 2025; it expires in 2027.
Catie Wilkinson, one of the protest organizers, told Port City Daily she decided to take action after finding a Flock camera outside of her home.
“As somebody who’s very familiar with AI, there’s a lot of potential issues that could happen, when law enforcement specifically is using AI,” Wilkinson said, noting the possibility of bias or false accusations. “They’re not just regular security cameras. They are always taking in data, they’re saving it. And then they feed it back to their AI model to train it.”
She hoped the commissioners would hear the protestors’ cries and cancel the county’s Flock contract. Other requests included pausing nationwide data-sharing, holding a public hearing, releasing an unredacted search audit and detailing the county’s camera inventory.
Speaking at the meeting Wendy Dale, who is running for school board, urged commissioners to put tighter restrictions on who can access Flock data and why.
“I think there is an important difference between using flock cameras to respond to a specific threat and using them to routinely track the movements of people who have done nothing wrong,” Dale said.
Other protestors also signed up to speak at the commissioners’ meeting thereafter. The public comment session lasted nearly two hours — approximately 41 people spoke out opposing Flock’s use.
“You have an obligation to uphold the Fourth Amendment, and this technology is a clear violation of that,” New Hanover County School Board member David Perry — who also attended the protest — told commissioners. “There’s no warrant. There’s no individualized suspicion. They track and monitor us like sheep. Sheep, dumb sheep, that need to be tracked, monitored, and herded — hence the name flock.”
Flock was not on the meeting agenda, though commissioners committed to keeping the conversation ongoing and reviewing the contract. No vote was taken or formal agreement made. They were speaking in response to community outcry and wanted to further look into the sheriff’s office use of Flock and continue the conversation with county management.
“The contract that was put forward in our sheriff’s budget, I don’t believe that any of us were aware of what the contract had to say,” Commissioner Rob Zapple said Monday.
Commissioners were given a copy of the contract by the county manager, prior to the meeting in anticipation of the public bringing the issue forward.
Zapple added residents have been writing to the county about privacy concerns and given the board a pathway “to make more intelligent decisions” about Flock in the future.
Vice Chair Dave Scalise believed it an important step for the board to listen and take into account what the public is saying about the cameras.
“I don’t pretend that I have all of the answers,” Scalise said. “I don’t pretend that I’m always right. I have been elected to make decisions, and this is something that we’re going to have to decide on. I can tell you definitively that I have learned things tonight that I did not know. I have perspectives that I did not previously have.”
Commissioner LeAnn Pierce thanked everyone for a respectful show of dissent during and prior to the meeting, calling the protests peaceful
“You respected everyone in here tonight,” she said at the meeting from the dais. “Everyone got to speak, and I’m really proud that we have citizens in New Hanover County who show up and care and respect each other when you’re doing that.”
Privacy vs. public safety
Opposition to Flock has become a national movement as of late, largely due to social media spreading information about the technology, its privacy implications and potential misuses.
The technology has made headlines for instances of misuse, including the recent arrests of two North Carolina police officers. In July, Charlotte-Mecklenberg officer Seth Elliot was arrested for running an unauthorized search of a North Carolina license plate. Then, earlier this month, Mooresville police officer, Elizabeth Snowman was arrested after allegedly accessing Flock cameras 31-times to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife.
These incidents are similar to ones around the nation — the Washington Post has reported that more than 50 law-enforcement officers have been charged across the nation with alleged misuse of automated license plate readers, including to stalk ex-romantic partners.
A local change.org petition was started to advocate for the removal of the cameras from Wilmington. Since Feb. 24, it has garnered 3,177 signatures. Approximately 57.5% of signees provided a New Hanover County address according to DeFlock ILM.
“It’s mostly gotten traction because we started talking with a lot of people online and physically in the community about the Flock cameras being populated so quickly in the area,” co-founder of ILM Action Network Cheyanne Dos Santos told Port City Daily Monday.
Public records obtained by DeFlock ILM to audit New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office Flock records showed from Jan. 23, 2025, through June 5, 2026 nearly 3 million searches were made. The network audit highlights every search that tapped into the county’s cameras, but it does not mean all of these searches originated from NHCSO.
The audit redacted every searching agency and officer name.
According to the NHCSO — separate from the audit — during the first half of 2026, the office said it accounted for 3.9% of searches using county Flock cameras.
In an email to the County Manager Chris Coudriet — obtained by Port City Daily — McMahon explained out-of-state agencies may search for a specific license plate through Flock, which may result in New Hanover cameras being searched. McMahon added even though the search did not result in a release of any data, it can still be reflected in records.
At Monday’s commissioners meeting, several community members argued the costs of Flock’s surveillance outweigh its benefits. Resident John Herrmann said there have been abuses of the system and no provided evidence of improved public safety.
“I think the burden of proof should be on the sheriff’s department to provide strong data to demonstrate that the cameras actually make a significant impact on the clearance rates of law enforcement agencies in resolving crimes,” Herrmann said. “Anecdotes about individual cases do not make the case. We can make a million anecdotes in the other direction. That’s not the way to set public policy.”
The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office reports having 19 cameras that are strictly license plate readers. Seventeen consists of Flock’s Falcon model, a solar powered license plate reader that collects data such as vehicle’s make, model, color and any other identifying information such as stickers, dents or damage.
The contract also included three Solar Flock LR cameras — a long range camera that can capture details from vehicles traveling upward of 100 miles per hour. One of the solar-powered cameras was stolen, according to NHCSO. No charges have been made in the case.
Port City Daily asked the sheriff’s office what the 17 county cameras not listed as automatic license plate readers do. A spokesperson did not respond by press.
In response to the recent outcry, Sheriff Ed McMahon read a statement on camera to WECT saying the license plate reading technology helps keep the community safe. He added the office was developing a Flock transparency portal — which is now live.
The portal cites 720 user search sessions in the past 30 days with 771,733 unique license plate reads. Additionally, it shows 4,472 hotlist hits in the past 30 days; hotlists work by alerting local law enforcement when a known wanted vehicle is detected. Hotlists include the National Crime Information Center and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Amber Alerts.
The portal — built by Flock but operated by NHCSO — also highlights what NHCSO categorizes as “community success stories.” Examples include Flock cameras helping identify the vehicle of a missing 89-year old with early signs of dementia within 30 minutes of the emergency call being made, finding a reported missing vehicle that was entering New Hanover County, identifying and apprehending a bank robber and locating a vehicle with 1 kilogram of cocaine.
The NHCSO portal also claims Flock is not used to track race, gender or facial recognition. However, critics of Flock say this assurance is not enough to stop possible profiling or protect their privacy, particularly with AI features.
“These cameras can be used to make very vivid profiles of everyday law-abiding citizens: where you work, what doctors you go to, when you leave your home, when you get home, where you go to church, whether you bowl, hike, attend political protests, or even go to shooting ranges and hunting clubs,” Sarah Morton said to the board.
The sheriff’s office is reducing the data retention period from 90 days to 30 and performing a monthly internal review audit, to be reviewed by McMahon himself.
Regardless, residents remained unhappy at the commissioners’ meeting.
“Government should be in service of its citizens, not the other way around,” Laurel Taylor said at the commissioner meeting. “I’m here to firmly say on behalf of everyone else and many more people I have talked to about this, get the flock out of our lives.”
NHCSO’s new policy differs from the state, operating under a 30 day data retention period when the state sets a maximum of 90 days.
Flock retains the data on its servers, Flock claims to do so for 30 days before permanently deleting it, unless otherwise specified by law or an individual customer agreement. It has mentioned changing its policy to a seven-day timeline but no action has been taken.
Additionally, McMahon said If an officer is found to have misused the technology, they may be disciplined, terminated or face criminal charges. Port City Daily asked for more details but a response was not provided by press.
North Carolina General Statute 20-183.30 outlines proper use of automatic license plate readers to include actions related to criminal investigations, arrests, prosecutions, post-conviction confinement, or supervision, apprehending an individual with an outstanding felony warrant and locating a missing or endangered person or a lost or stolen vehicle.
The statute adds that anyone who violates the proper use of the cameras is guilty of a class 1 misdemeanor, which carries a maximum sentence of 120 days in jail.
The state legislature recently passed a provision in its budget to permanently allow the North Carolina Department of Transportation and State Bureau of Investigation to place automated license plate readers, like Flock, on state-owned property.
Initially, the collaboration between NCDOT and the SBI was temporary, lasting between January 2024 until July 2025. The agreement was then extended by one year before becoming permanent in July 2026.
[Editor’s note: The piece has been updated to reflect that a resident who spoke at the meeting is named John Herrmann, not John Harmon. PCD regrets this error.]
Have tips or comments for Sophia DePhillips? Email [email protected]
At Port City Daily, we aim to keep locals informed on top-of-mind news facing the tri-county region. To support our work and help us reach more people in 2026, please, consider helping one of two ways: Subscribe here or make a one-time contribution here.
