At least 280 Flock cameras are operating in Rhode Island with no uniform state rules governing retention, searches or which outside agencies can access the data — including in Pawtucket, where one city’s cameras logged more than 431,000 plate reads in 30 days.
On August 18, Governor Dan McKee ordered a 60-day pause on new automated license-plate reader installations by the Rhode Island State Police and directed a statewide privacy review — the first time the executive branch has conceded, in writing, that a surveillance network built camera by camera across three dozen municipalities is operating without uniform state standards. Existing State Police systems keep running. Municipal cameras keep running. And in Pawtucket, where the argument over these devices first went public in this state, the officer who forced that argument into the open no longer wears a badge.
His name is Noel Pichardo. He joined the Pawtucket Police Department in 2018 and resigned on July 18, 2025, two days after receiving a complaint recommending his termination. In between, he told a reporter that the city’s Flock Safety cameras were a “grave threat” to privacy, compared the system to “1984,” testified against ALPR legislation at the State House, absorbed a 30-day unpaid suspension for the media comments, and became the target of a sequence of internal investigations that his own state’s police chiefs’ association would eventually denounce him over by name. Pichardo says the sequence was retaliation. The department maintained that he violated workplace and conduct rules. No hearing decision ever resolved which is true, because he quit before one could be held…