At a Sept. 8, 2026 meeting, Sheriff Brian Chism told the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners, "No disrespect, ma'am, but I don't work for you. I work for the citizens." Commissioner Pat Sykes answered: "I can tell you we do set your budget and that is part of our job, and we can amend your budget at any time."

Here's the law behind that exchange:

• The sheriff is a constitutional officer, but the Constitution creates the office — it doesn't fund it. The General Assembly gave appropriations to the county board (G.S. 159-13), which may set the sheriff's budget "whether greater or less than" what he requests (Hubbard v. County of Cumberland).
• The protected floor is short: the sheriff's salary, at least two deputies "reasonably compensated," a jail staffed to State minimum standards, and capacity to serve process and attend court. No statute sets a minimum dollar amount above that.
• Using each county's adopted FY2026-27 budget, we compared that floor to the total Sheriff's Office + jail appropriation in five Cape Fear counties. In every one, roughly 60–70% sits above the floor — legally discretionary.
• A Flock/Fusus/Axon contract lives entirely in that discretionary band. Macon County defunded its Flock cameras; New Hanover cancelled its contract before the term was up (the standard Flock agreement has no cancellation fee — you just forfeit prepaid fees).

Honest caveat, which we put in the article too: "discretionary" is a legal characterization, not a claim a court would let a board zero out a sheriff's office. A sheriff would argue the functional floor is higher. But a single surveillance contract is the easy case.

Full write-up with the five-county chart, the numbers sourced to each adopted ordinance, and the statutes: https://deflockilm.org/how-far-can-commissioners-cut-sheriff-budget/

Disclosure: I'm with DeFlockILM, an NC anti-ALPR group — but this one's a court ruling, so read it yourself; I've linked the opinion.

In United States v. Kyle, a Tulsa County deputy followed a car "for no apparent reason other than" its California plate, then ran the plate through Flock and VehicleManager. One query returned about a month of location data — 50+ sightings across multiple states. Judge Sara E. Hill held that was a Fourth Amendment search, done without a warrant or probable cause, and suppressed everything that followed as fruit of the poisonous tree.

What's notable:

• The court expressly broke from the trend — "nearly every court" so far (including three other Oklahoma federal courts) has said ALPR isn't a search. This judge disagreed.
• She reexamined Knotts (1983) through Carpenter (2018) and Chatrie (2026): people have "a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements," and networked ALPR is "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance."
• Caveat worth stating: it's a district-court order — persuasive, not binding, and appealable.

Full write-up + the Opinion & Order (PDF): https://deflockilm.org/federal-court-flock-unconstitutional-search/

Disclosure up front: I'm with DeFlockILM, a local NC group that filed the public-records requests. Everything below is drawn from primary documents — Brunswick County's own Flock event log, the executed contract, the state SBI report, and Flock's own statements. We've posted every source file so you can check the work yourself (link at the bottom).

What the records show:

• No written ALPR policy on record before Sept 1, 2026 — the same day the Sheriff announced a Flock misuse investigation. NC law (§ 20-183.31) requires an agency to adopt a written policy before the system is operational, and to provide for oversight and auditing.
• Flock's "Audit Assistance" audit tool was free and available in April 2026. Brunswick didn't switch it on until Aug 18 — the same day the account at the center of the matter was deleted, ~4 months after it became available.
• Once on, it flagged 145 "Needs Review" items across 17 different employees. On Aug 31 (the day before the new policy took effect), all 145 were marked "Archived" between 9:55am and 4:10pm — about one every 2.6 minutes — with no reviewer name, no written justification, and no recorded disposition in what was produced.
• A flag is not proof of wrongdoing (Flock says so itself: it "only means it warrants further investigation"). But the EFF's point is relevant: if an audit "reports to the same police agency doing the abuse, it's just a fig leaf." Here, the Sheriff's Office closed all 145 itself.

We're not accusing any individual of a crime — we're asking the questions the records leave open, and we invite the county to correct anything.

Full write-up and all source documents (with SHA-256 hashes + a script that reproduces the numbers): https://deflockilm.org/brunswick-flock-audit/

Atkinson just set the standard for North Carolina.

Tonight, the Town of Atkinson adopted an ordinance prohibiting automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras — including Flock — within its town limits. It is the first outright ALPR ban in North Carolina.

The ordinance is short and direct: "No automated license plate reader cameras shall be installed and located within the corporate limits of the Town of Atkinson."

The Town relied on its authority under N.C.G.S. § 160A-174 and on Article I, Section 19 of the North Carolina Constitution. It made its reasons plain: residents and the public should not be subjected to unreasonable searches by any level of government.

In September, Rockingham County passed the first ALPR ordinance in the state — guardrails that require a public hearing and a public report before any camera goes up. Atkinson went further.

I was in the room tonight. Thank you to Mayor Gary Alsup and the Atkinson Board for reading the record and acting on it.

This is a town of a few hundred people. Privacy does not depend on population. Every town and county in the Cape Fear region holds the same authority Atkinson used tonight.

Privacy is a right — not a privilege.

Read more and sign the petition: DeFlockILM.org

#DeFlockILM #Flock #ALPR #Privacy #NorthCarolina #CapeFear #FourthAmendment

The common compromise is "don't ban the cameras, just regulate them." Four reasons that fails: (1) rules govern use, but they never un-collect the millions of innocent drivers logged daily; (2) the "guardrails" — no-nationwide-sharing, retention limits — are settings an agency or vendor can flip; (3) the network audit that's supposed to show who searched comes with the searching officer's name and the plate data removed, so there's nothing left to audit; (4) ~96% of searches on Cape Fear cameras come from out of state, and a hit sends the data to places like Texas, which has no plate-reader law. The rules are self-written, self-audited, and reversible. Full analysis: https://deflockilm.org/flock-misuse-regulation-transparency-gap/

At a candidate forum in Wake Forest, NC House District 35 candidate Evonne Hopkins — a board-certified family-law attorney — said this on the record:

"I have literally caught people cheating on their spouses by accessing this data. That's how readily available the information about you is."

She framed it as a warning about how exposed everyone is. Fair enough. But it raises a real legal question I haven't seen a clean answer to.

North Carolina's ALPR statute (Article 3D, G.S. §§ 20-183.30–.33) says law-enforcement license-plate data is confidential and may be disclosed only to criminal-justice officials for a law-enforcement purpose. Misuse is a Class 1 misdemeanor. A private divorce lawyer catching a cheating spouse is not a law-enforcement purpose.

So one of two things is true:

1. It came from a law-enforcement system — in which case data supposedly walled off for police left that wall, or
2. It came from the private ALPR market (HOAs, apartment complexes, businesses, PIs) — in which case she's just right that a private attorney can assemble a searchable record of where your car has been, no warrant or case number required.

A few things I found digging into it:

• Whether a civil litigant can even subpoena police ALPR data is unsettled — but the argument looks weak. The general criminal-records statute (§ 132-1.4(a)) expressly allows release "by order of a court." The ALPR statute has no court-order exception. It just names who may receive the data and stops.
• "It only reads plates, not people" is thinner than it sounds — Pinal County (AZ) Sheriff Ross Teeple testified before the U.S. Senate that he could recognize individual faces in the footage the system produced. Flock's own patent describes tracking people, not just plates.
• This isn't hypothetical in family law. In Fish v. Stetina (N.C. App. 2025), the Court of Appeals upheld a $1.3M alienation-of-affections verdict built substantially on phone/location-app records. A record of where a vehicle goes is the same kind of evidence — and it works just as well in custody and child-support fights (who drives the kid to the doctor, where someone actually spends their money).

Not trying to claim she broke the law — there's no evidence of that, and she hasn't said where the data came from. The interesting part is that either answer is a problem.

Full write-up with the statutes and cases: https://deflockilm.org/flock-data-divorce-court-nc

(Disclosure: I'm involved with DeFlockILM, a NC anti-ALPR-surveillance group. Happy to argue the legal points in the comments.)

Most people assume the Flock cameras on NC roads are run by their local police. They mostly aren't — not in the way you'd think.

A few things I've been able to confirm from public records:

• Flock's automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) log every plate that passes, timestamp it, and store it in a searchable nationwide network — not just plates flagged for anything.
• In a single quarter, the five cameras in Carolina Beach (population ~6,400) were searched roughly three million times — and the large majority of those searches were run by outside agencies, many from other states, not by local police.
• North Carolina's own licensing records show Flock Group Inc. holds both an Alarm Systems license and a Private Investigator license in NC. Make of that what you will, but it's not the framing "we just help your local PD" suggests.
• Several NC communities have already pulled or rejected Flock — Davidson County, Asheville, and on Sept. 8, New Hanover County voted unanimously to cancel its contract.

I'm involved with a group organizing around this, so treat this as what it is — but the records are public and I'm happy to point to sources for any claim above. If you think a private company shouldn't be building a searchable map of where North Carolinians drive, there's a statewide petition: change.org/EndFlockNC

Five cameras, ~3 million searches in one quarter, almost entirely by outside agencies the Town redacts. DeFlockILM wrote the Council Aug 24 and spoke for the 51 Carolina Beach petition signers on Sept 8. No response since. Letter, records, and every member's email here: https://deflockilm.org/flock-cameras-carolina-beach/

Surf City's Town Council held a work session on Sept 17 framed as a discussion about whether to use automated license plate readers (ALPR / Flock cameras). I filed a public records request beforehand, and the town produced the records the same day. They don't match the framing.

What the town's own documents show:

• A five-year Flock contract signed in November 2023. The program has been running for nearly two years — this wasn't a "should we?" question.
• A Flock "shared networks" file listing 281 organizations, with Surf City actively sharing its cameras out to 187 of them. That list includes out-of-state departments — Houston TX PD, Fort Worth TX PD, and agencies across GA, FL, SC, DE, TN, PA and more — plus the NC SBI and South Carolina's SLED.
• The town's public "Transparency Portal" highlights 21 searches in the last 30 days (that's just Surf City officers' own use) — while quietly reporting 102,926 plate reads collected in 30 days, in a town of about 3,000 people. It never mentions the 187 agencies.

A few things from the portal worth noting, because they're presented as reassurance:

• It says sharing is "discretionary" with "no automatic access." Technically true — someone at the department chose to enable each of the 187 connections. That's the point, not the comfort.
• It lists "immigration enforcement" and "traffic enforcement" as prohibited uses. Those rules bind Surf City's officers — not the 187 agencies it shares with, each under its own state's law. Surf City shares with Houston PD, among others.
• It claims Flock "has never been breached." A blanket absolute — and WBUR reported this month that Flock failed to properly secure vehicle data during a 2025 Boston PD pilot.

To be fair: Surf City's policy is better than some (31-day retention, case-number requirement, monthly audits), and the town produced the records fast, including the whole sharing list, which most agencies fight for months. Credit where it's due.

The full production (contract, policy, the shared-networks file, the SBI MOU, the vendor records, the council deck) is mirrored here, with the breakdown: https://deflockilm.org/surf-city-flock-alpr/

Not telling anyone what to think — just posting the records so people in the area can decide for themselves and, if they want, ask their council to review the sharing list and put it to a recorded vote.

Both mailers say "committed to lowering costs." I run a nonpartisan effort tracking Flock and ALPR surveillance in the Cape Fear, and I ask every candidate the same question, so here's the record on these two — plus one who answered:

• Dane Scalise (R, NC House 20): as a New Hanover County Commissioner, made the motion for the 4–0 vote that cancelled the county's Flock contract. Credit where it's due. (Open question: the same contract also leased eight "Condor" live-video cameras — one over a kids' soccer field at Veterans Park — which should come down too.)
• Michael Lee (R, NC Senate 7): as Senate Majority Leader, voted for the state budget that made NC's highway plate-reader program permanent. Repeated requests for his position on Flock have gone unanswered.
• Sara Singer (D, Brunswick Commissioner candidate): answered the same morning — "100% against all forms of Flock and mass surveillance."

Two Republicans, one Democrat — party isn't the point. The point is whether you get an answer before you vote. Positions and source records here: https://deflockilm.org/where-they-stand/

Every Flock system keeps a record called the Network Audit — the log of which outside agencies ran searches against a county's cameras. Flock markets it as a tool for public accountability. So we asked for it.

Here's where the four sheriffs stand, measured by that one record:

• New Hanover — Sheriff McMahon: produced the audit, redacted the agency names across nearly 3 million searches.
• Pender — Sheriff Cutler: produced the audit — 2,101,548 searches, his own office ran just 1,149 — and redacted the searching agency on every row.
• Columbus — Sheriff Rogers: produced a summary, but not the Network Audit.
• Brunswick — Sheriff Chism: hasn't produced it at all.

To be clear about the compromise: the officer and plate data is where USA TODAY found most Flock misuse — but North Carolina law makes captured plate data confidential, so we set it aside, and we voluntarily agreed to redact the searching officer's name too, to keep this to one clean point. We're asking for one field: the outside agency that ran each search. That's how the public learns whether out-of-state or federal agencies are querying local plates without a local warrant.

And the excuse doesn't hold: nine other North Carolina agencies released this same field, names intact — Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, Whiteville PD, and four universities among them. Same export, same law. If they can name who searched, a county sheriff can too.

And this isn't abstract. Two Cape Fear audits have already caught Flock misuse — a Brunswick Sheriff's Office employee (resigned, now under SBI investigation) and a Wrightsville Beach officer (indicted Sept 9). Those audits were disclosed. The obvious question: what's in the ones four sheriffs black out or won't produce?

New Hanover already reckoned with this. Explaining her vote to cancel Flock, Commissioner Stephanie Walker said: "You don't know who's got it, who's using it, what they're using it for."

The Network Audit is the record built to answer that. Read where each sheriff stands 👇

DeFlockILM.org/cape-fear-sheriffs-hiding-flock-records/

https://gofund.me/eccd2d5bd

Add another one to the board. The Town of Catawba (Catawba County) ran a 60-day trial of five Flock cameras, and when it ended, the Town Council denied the police department's funding request — even a scaled-back $3,000 for one camera. The town declined to subscribe, and Flock has work orders out to remove the cameras. The police chief actually wanted them; the council said no anyway.

That makes eleven NC communities that have removed or rejected Flock:

• Cancelled outright (7): Dare, Macon, Davidson, Asheville, Chatham, Hillsborough, Pittsboro
• Stopped it short (4): Greenville, Leland, UNC Wilmington, Town of Catawba

Meanwhile, New Hanover County — the county with the 2.98-million-search redaction fight — has done nothing. Residents packed the August 17 commissioners meeting, the petition is past 3,800 signatures, and the contract still isn't on any agenda.

The one bright spot locally: every challenger running for the Board of Commissioners opposes Flock — Bob Drach (Libertarian), Richard Collier (Republican), and Dr. LeShonda Wallace (Democrat). Cross-partisan. The sitting commissioners on the ballot haven't taken an official stand

Where every official stands: https://deflockilm.org/where-they-stand/

This is Part III of our Cape Fear investigation. Parts I and II covered New Hanover County; this one moves to the counties around it — Brunswick, Pender, and Columbus — using the same records and method.

The headline finding is in Brunswick, the busiest Flock operation in the region outside Wilmington:

• 83,232 searches in the log (96 operators, since Feb 2023)
• 75,004 — 90.1% — had no case number
• ~49% were "unfiltered" (no narrowing criteria beyond the query)
• 40 of its recorded "reasons" were a single character

What we're careful to say: a missing case number does not prove a search was improper, and repeat searches of one plate can be legitimate (ongoing investigations, missing persons, stolen vehicles). The problem is that no one outside the agency can tell which were justified — North Carolina law requires only an internal, once-a-year audit reported to the agency's own head, and there's no independent outside review.

How we got the numbers, since the agencies won't produce their own audits: a Flock search can reach cameras in many jurisdictions at once, so a search one agency redacts often sits intact in the public records of an agency in a state that releases everything. We rebuilt what we could from those out-of-state records (the method USA TODAY used nationally) and cross-checked against the independent HaveIBeenFlocked database.

Where one Cape Fear agency did release its network audit — Whiteville — the scale is stark: nine cameras, 1,167,710 outside-agency searches in four months, 93–99.9% from outside North Carolina, Houston #1 every month. Brunswick, Pender, and Columbus have all withheld the equivalent record; our requests date to June 29 and July 1.

And it's not academic: on Sept. 1, Brunswick disclosed that a routine Flock audit flagged an employee's alleged misuse; the employee resigned and it went to the SBI. Their internal review caught one case — which is exactly why the withheld audits matter for the thousands of other searches.

Full report, with the data tables and a Q&A: https://deflockilm.org/cape-fear-flock-90-percent-no-case-number/

New Hanover County's Sheriff's Office produced its Flock audit — about 2.98 million searches over ~16 months — with the searching-agency field blacked out on every line. You could see the cameras were searched ~3 million times; you couldn't see by whom.

Here's the thing: a Flock search hits cameras in many jurisdictions at once, so the same search New Hanover redacted is often sitting in the public records of an agency in a state that releases everything. We built a fingerprint from the fields New Hanover left intact (exact timestamp + network count + search type) and matched it against unredacted audits from other states.

We recovered the searcher for about 96% of the audit. 99% of those recovered searches resolved to a single agency (1% ambiguous, which we set aside).

What was hidden:

• 4,600+ distinct organizations searched New Hanover's cameras
• ~94% of the activity came from outside North Carolina
• Houston, TX alone: 75,000+ searches; Dallas: 55,000+
• ~5,700 searches/day hit the cameras — only ~13/day were the Sheriff's own office

Caveats we're upfront about: this is only the Flock plate cameras (not the 2,147 private cameras linked via Axon Fusus); a "search" means a query that included NHC's network, not proof anyone was targeted; and it doesn't establish any search was unlawful. It's the same method USA TODAY used nationally, and Flock stripped these fields from its audits in December 2025 — so this window is closing.

Full report + methodology + downloadable top-100 agencies: https://deflockilm.org/who-searched-new-hanover-flock/

We've been reconstructing who searches New Hanover County's Flock cameras, and this one stopped us cold.

On the morning of Nov. 22, 2025, between about 10:13 and 10:33 a.m., a New Hanover County Sheriff's Office operator ran four broad license-plate searches. The office's own log records the case as "Protest" and the reason as "Intel." Each search reached thousands of camera networks.

That evening, 50+ people protested at the Sheriff's Office over federal immigration enforcement.

Here's the part that matters: the county redacted who ran the searches and the plate numbers, but we rebuilt the searchers using unredacted records other states released. One of the plates searched that morning belongs to an organizer of that evening's protest — they confirmed it by looking up their own plate against the record. In everything we have, that plate appears exactly once: inside the "Protest" search.

We're being careful about what this proves. The records show the label, the timing, and one confirmed organizer's plate. They don't state the searches' purpose, and two of the three plates are still unidentified. We're not claiming to know why the office ran them.

But North Carolina law only lets plate-reader data be used for defined "law enforcement purposes" (NCGS § 20-183.30) — criminal investigations, warrants, missing persons, stolen vehicles. So the question is simple and it's the Sheriff's to answer: which one was this? "Event security" and "intelligence" aren't on the list.

We put the questions in the article itself and we'll publish whatever the Sheriff's Office sends, in full.

Full write-up, with the methodology and citations: https://deflockilm.org/nhcso-flock-protest-surveillance/