Ending the License Plate Reader Program Did Not End New Hanover County’s Relationship With Flock
New Hanover County ended its automated license-plate-reader program but kept eight Flock Condor cameras.
On Sept. 8, the Board of Commissioners voted 4-0 to decommission the county’s automated license-plate readers, or ALPRs. The decision ended the county’s use of 17 Flock Safety Falcon cameras and three Solar Falcon readers.
The following day, Chief Financial Officer Eric Credle asked Flock for a $53,571.43 refund for the unused portion of the ALPR contract. The county’s letter added a qualification: There would be “no changes to the Condor cameras portion of the contract.”
(Below) At a special meeting fo the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, the Board voted 4-0 to remove Automatice License Plate Reader cameras from the Flock Safety agreement, while retaining the Condor cameras.
Condors are a different kind of camera. A plate reader photographs vehicles, captures license-plate information and creates a searchable record of where a vehicle was seen. A Condor is a pan-tilt-zoom camera that can record video, provide live feeds for real-time viewing, and be operated remotely to zoom in and follow people and vehicles.
FreeForm: Searching for People
FreeForm is a Flock platform tool that allows an authorized user to search camera data with plain-language descriptions of people, clothing or accessories instead of starting with a license plate. According to DeFlockILM's review, New Hanover's audit logs included searches in a people category.
FreeForm is part of the broader Flock platform, not the Condor camera itself. Available records do not show whether New Hanover's Condor footage is saved and indexed for FreeForm searches. The Sheriff's Office has not said if they stopped using FreeForm with the Condor cameras.
Broken Trust: The Flock Contract Continues with Eight Condor Cameras
Though Sheriff McMahon stated in writing to Commissioner Walker that the Sheriff's Office doesn't employ Condor technology, it does. His statement was verifiably false.
The county’s own contract shows that the Condors were a substantial part of the purchase. According to Port City Daily, New Hanover County paid $100,000 for the 20 ALPRs and eight Condors during the current contract period. About $40,000 of that amount was allocated to the Condor cameras.
After the vote, the Sheriff’s Office said it disabled national data sharing, removed system access for current employees and notified the State Bureau of Investigation about the ALPR termination.
The Sheriff’s memo to commissioners described the program as license-plate-reader technology and said the cameras photographed the rear of vehicles. The contract, however, also covered pan-tilt-zoom Condor cameras. That difference is more than technical. It affects what residents understood the county was buying and what safeguards they should expect.
The Condors remain operational, leaving residents with basic questions.
Where are all eight cameras? We know there's one, possibly two, at Long Leaf Park; one at Veterans Park, and one on S. 17th Street at The Pointe 14 theater.
Who can access the footage? How long is it retained? Condor cameras can record video, but unlike ALPR data, North Carolina law does not limit how long that footage may be held.
What rules govern artificial intelligence that identifies or follows people? Is there an official policy for the Condor cameras? How is Condor usage audited?
North Carolina’s automated license-plate-reader law is written only around plate data. It addresses retention, access, sharing and permissible law-enforcement uses. It does not clearly explain how long person-focused Condor video may be kept, how it may be searched or how it may be combined with other records to reconstruct someone’s movements.
DeFlockILM argues that Condor cameras are more invasive of privacy than ALPRs because they record and can track people, not just vehicles. The concern is especially serious when the cameras are pointed at places where children gather.
A 404 Media investigation of a separate Flock network in Dunwoody, Georgia, reported that Flock employees, not local law-enforcement officers, accessed camera feeds from sensitive locations, including a children’s playground, as part of sales demonstrations. The reporting described employees watching footage of children playing. Flock said the access was authorized and disputed that characterization. There is no public evidence that Flock employees accessed New Hanover’s Condors, but the episode shows why residents need to know who can view the county’s feeds.
(Below) A video examines reports that Flock employees remotely viewed children practicing gymnastics and asks how that surveillance makes them safer.
Ending the ALPR program changed New Hanover County’s Flock arrangement, but it left eight Condors in operation, with big unresolved questions about their locations, access and governance.
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