By Miles Layton

PLYMOUTH — John Shelton spent 28 years as a police officer building cases with a judge’s permission. On Monday, he told his fellow Town Council members that Flock’s license-plate cameras skip that step entirely — and warned the town may be running an unconstitutional surveillance program without realizing it.

As a country editor, I’ll admit that though I’d heard of Flock cameras, I didn’t know much about them or the constitutional issues surrounding their use — so when Shelton started talking, I paid close attention.

And while I understand the usefulness of Flock cameras to law enforcement, I’m skeptical of government as a general rule, so I think the less our country gravitates toward a surveillance state, the better off we’ll be as free citizens. And worth noting, Mayor Crystal Davis said she was tracked — see that further down in the story.

Monday’s Plymouth Town Council meeting opened with a contract renewal deadline and quickly turned into a wide-ranging debate over whether the town’s license-plate-reading cameras are worth the privacy trade-off. For more than half an hour, council members picked apart the town’s contract with Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company whose cameras have become both a fixture and a flashpoint in small towns across the country. The discussion laid bare a divide between council members who see the cameras as a proven crime-fighting tool and those, led by Shelton, who see a system quietly building a record of where ordinary residents drive, who they visit and when.

“Anybody who has access to our data has access to your comings and goings — not that you’re involved in criminal activity,” Shelton said. “And so the government having that data, to me, is unconstitutional.”

Shelton’s case against the cameras

Shelton pushed hardest on where the town’s data actually goes once Flock collects it. Pulling up the company’s own transparency portal, he noted that Plymouth is sharing information with police agencies in Acworth, Georgia; Lehigh County, Pennsylvania; and Fort Worth and Irving, Texas. “We don’t have any control over what Lehigh County, Pennsylvania does when they go in and look at our data,” he said.

Shelton also pressed Police Captain Kevin Phelps, who joined the meeting by a shaky phone connection, on how long that data sits in the system. Flock has recommended a seven-day retention window industry-wide amid growing national criticism of the company, but Plymouth currently keeps footage for 30 days. “Is there a plan, if the contract is renewed, to drop that to the recommended seven-day retention?” Shelton asked. Phelps said he’d support a shorter window if directed but preferred the status quo. “I would still recommend a 30-day period,” he said, “just because, in case we have to go back that far for information.”

Shelton grounded his broader concern in Katz v. United States, the 1967 Supreme Court case that established the Fourth Amendment protects a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy, not just physical spaces. He described the case as involving a drug suspect tracked using an expired court order. “He successfully overturned a prosecution because he said that there was no lawful reason for them to gather that data,” Shelton said.

Drawing on his own career, Shelton argued Flock skips a safeguard he relied on for decades. “When I was a cop, if I had a crime and I wanted to find out where you were, if I thought you were a suspect, I had to go to a judge,” he said. “There’s a legality check and balance there to get that access… this information is held by the government, and so there’s a whole different constitutionality there.”

Shelton painted a specific picture of what unchecked access could look like. “They can build a heat map, and they can say (Council member) Kim Williams (as an example to illustrate the point) spends a lot of time driving over here in this street, and Kim Williams goes and visits this convenience store… anybody who has access to our data has access to your comings and goings — not that you’re involved in criminal activity. And so the government having that data, to me, is unconstitutional.”

Shelton said the concern isn’t brand-specific to Flock. “It can happen with any company the way this is set up,” he said.

Mayor Davis said she has her own reasons for taking the issue personally.

“Well, I’m talking about public safety, because right now, right — that’s what I’m saying. I just had a guy do a public records request on me and store me in a map, in a system, with this government, for a certain amount of time. When I had a public records request from that attorney, right? When they did that, they stored me in this system forever, right? That just happened,” she said.

For Davis, the real issue isn’t Flock specifically — and she suggested the data could even help solve decades-old cases

“So I’m saying all that to say is, it’s public safety, right? So with public safety, even if we do say we go away with Flock, we have these same concerns with another company, because they could record and store that data too. And again, as you being a cop, couldn’t some of that data be stored and used in evidence? We have cases that are unsolved that’s probably 10 years back. So with that, it could be a blessing. I understand what you’re saying is privacy.”

Still, Davis pointed to Plymouth’s unsolved cases as a counterweight: “What do we do in the cases that we have unsolved? For those, that data to be stored… could be a blessing.”

What the cameras have actually caught

Phelps gave the council a status update on the rollout: 17 cameras running, including four license-plate readers out of seven planned, with the rest held up by property-owner permissions he said are close to resolved. Pressed by Shelton on results, Phelps said the system had generated 21 “hot list” alerts in the past 30 days but that he couldn’t yet say how many were accurate. Seven searches had been run in that window, he said, each tied to a case number or accident report through Flock’s built-in audit trail. “That information that is downloaded and stored is only for evidence use,” Phelps said. Access, he added, is currently limited to himself and the police chief.

Asked directly whether he was satisfied with the system, Phelps didn’t hesitate. “I am. I’m actually very happy with Flock,” he said. “I just wish we had the rest of them running sometimes too.”

Councilwoman Williams said her priority is keeping people safe. “I’m more concerned about the videos because we don’t have any video cameras here,” she said. “That’s my main concern — is keeping our citizens safe.” Told that Phelps had said he was happy with the system, Williams saw little reason to reconsider it. “The officer said that he’s happy with Flock and they’re the one that’s doing his job,” she said.

Money the town doesn’t control

Before anyone could move to end the contract, Mayor Crystal Davis urged her colleagues to slow down. “We do know that there’s a lot of backlash on internet, TV, everywhere about Flock, right?” she said. “But we do know that those issues are internal… their issues weren’t because of the Flock; it was because of things that happened.”

Davis noted that Plymouth doesn’t own a single camera and pays nothing out of its own budget for Flock — the cameras are covered by a $325,000 federal Community Project Funding grant awarded to the town in 2024 — so canceling the contract would leave the town on the hook to fund a camera system itself.

That appropriation carries its own risk. Town Attorney Arnita Dula told council members that walking away from the contract could jeopardize the federal grant funding behind it. “You might be in breach with the grant funding. You may have to return that money,” Dula said, though she cautioned she hadn’t reviewed the paperwork closely enough to say for certain. “I don’t have the grant documents in front of me… I would have to look at, review the grant documents to see what happens if you fail to use that money for the designated purpose.”

Interim Town Manager Dorenda Wallace said the appropriation isn’t tied exclusively to Flock. “It’s for camera systems,” she said. “It does not have to be Flock.” But she warned that leaving grant money unused could hurt Plymouth’s chances the next time it needs help from Washington. “When a small town like ours has an appropriation, I can’t see you asking for another one,” she said, “because you didn’t use the one that you had… what you’re doing is saying, ‘Thank you for the money, but no thanks.’”

An alternative on the table

Councilwoman Yan Weiner offered the meeting’s one concrete alternative: standalone cameras that store footage locally on an SD card instead of a shared network. “It’s not shared by anybody. It’s only shared into the actual camera,” Weiner said, noting such systems carry no monthly fee. “Nobody knows your business until you look at the SD card.” She acknowledged the trade-off — someone has to physically retrieve the footage every few days — and noted that motion-activated, AI-enabled versions also exist. Davis objected to that feature immediately. “That would breach security, because we do know AI is not private,” she said.

Councilman Micah Weathersbee raised a separate idea: using leftover appropriation funds to buy equipment the town could actually keep, since Flock’s cameras get taken back at the end of the contract. “Flock will not be owned; it will be taken back,” he said. Wallace said she’d need to check the grant terms before answering.

No vote was taken. Wallace said she will be coordinating a call with Flock’s representative, along with Phelps and the police chief, before any final payment is made — and a council member is expected to sit in.