A civil liberties dispute is escalating in Cumberland, Rhode Island, after a false-arrest case raised new questions about what the town’s Flock Safety cameras are actually capturing.
At the center of the fight is a demand from the ACLU of Rhode Island that Cumberland end its deal with Flock Safety, saying the town may have enabled a level of surveillance far beyond what residents were told to expect.
What happened?
According to SteveAhlquist.news, a June federal false-arrest lawsuit prompted the ACLU of Rhode Island to ask the Cumberland Town Council to stop using Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers. The group says the case shows the devices captured images of drivers and passengers, not just license plates.
The lawsuit, Pizzarelli v. Town of Cumberland, was filed on behalf of a woman who was falsely identified from a Flock-captured image and then wrongly arrested, according to a press release. The case says an officer reported seeing a car make unsignaled turns before a brief chase, and that police later turned to Facebook to decide who they believed was driving…