Flock Cameras in Brunswick County, NC
Eight plate readers on a contract nobody voted on. at least 83,232 searches in the available audit data, 90% with no case number. An employee who resigned under SBI review for misusing them. And an auto-renewal clock that runs out this fall.
Residents of Brunswick County among the signers of the petition at change.org/DeFlockILM, as of Oct. 4, 2026.
The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office, under Sheriff Brian Chism, operates the county’s Flock automated license plate reader network — eight Flock Falcon cameras on a contract with Flock Group, Inc. DocuSign-executed on January 18, 2024: about $29,200 in year one, $24,000 recurring, $53,200 total, on a 24-month term that auto-renews unless the county gives 30 days’ notice. In September 2026 the Sheriff’s Office quietly posted the whole package — the contract, the policy, and the payment record — to its own website. Here is what those records show.
The contract auto-renews unless the county opts out with 30 days’ notice. On the 24-month term signed January 18, 2024, that non-renewal window opens around early October 2026. A decision not to re-up has to be made deliberately — which means the coming weeks are exactly when residents should be telling the Board and the Sheriff to let it lapse.
Brunswick County Board of Commissioners — next evening meeting: Monday, October 19, 2026, 6:00 PM
6:00 p.m. · Commissioners’ Chambers, David R. Sandifer Administration Building, 30 Government Center Dr NE, Bolivia, NC 28422. The Board meets the 1st Monday at 3:00 p.m. and the 3rd Monday at 6:00 p.m. — the evening meetings are the easier ones to attend. After September 21, the next dates are Monday, October 5 (3:00 p.m.) and Monday, October 19 (6:00 p.m.). Every regular meeting includes a public-comment period.
The timing matters. The Flock contract’s non-renewal window opens in early October. Telling the Board now — on the record, in the room — to let it lapse is the single highest-leverage thing a resident can do this fall.
The ask is simple: let the Flock contract lapse rather than auto-renew — or at minimum, order an independent external audit, turn off default nationwide sharing, and put any renewal to a recorded public vote. Arrive about 15 minutes early to sign up for public comment, state your name and address at the podium, and keep it to one clear ask. Bring a neighbor.
Email the Board → Sign the statewide petition →
Chair Mike Forte · Vice-Chair Marty Cooke · Randy Thompson · Pat Sykes · Frank Williams (cc: Clerk to the Board). Meeting dates verified from the County’s official meeting schedule — if a Monday is a holiday, the meeting moves to the following Tuesday. Always confirm the posted agenda before you go.
At the Board’s September 8, 2026 meeting, Commissioner Pat Sykes (District 3) stated her opposition to Flock and mass surveillance on the record. We wrote to the full board on September 13, 2026. Update — Sept. 20: Commissioner Randy Thompson (District 1, running for re-election) responded publicly — he is reviewing the Sheriff’s data, says the county “may not need the Flock system,” a decision he will make after his review, and opposes spending additional tax dollars on external audits. With that, all four 2026 candidates are now on the record. The three sitting commissioners who are not on this year’s ballot — Chair Mike Forte, Vice-Chair Marty Cooke, and Frank Williams — have not stated a position. (Where every Brunswick official and candidate stands →)
Where Brunswick’s commissioners & candidates stand
We asked every sitting commissioner (Sept. 13) and every 2026 candidate (Sept. 14–18) the same question: where do you stand on the county’s Flock/ALPR program? Here is who answered — and who hasn’t.
Opposes Flock & mass surveillance (stated at the Sept. 8 meeting)
Responded Sept. 20 — reviewing the Sheriff’s data; says the county ‘may not need Flock,’ to decide after review; opposes spending on external audits
No response
No response
No response
Temporary moratorium pending review
Responded Sept. 20 — reviewing the data; ‘may not need Flock,’ decides after review
Serious concerns; full transparency before any program
“100% against all forms of Flock and mass surveillance”
✓ on the record · ✗ no response. We publish every answer in full and unedited — officials and candidates can send theirs to info@DeFlockILM.org. See the letters we sent and where they stand.
The Sheriff’s “transparency” page isn’t transparent
In September 2026 the Sheriff’s Office built an “ALPR & Flock” page and a Flock “Transparency Portal,” and posted a “BCSO Flock Records” file. We pulled all of it. Read against the underlying data, several of its claims don’t hold — and the pattern is the one we’ve documented before: the parts that would show misuse are the parts that stay hidden.
- Sixteen cameras on the portal, eight in the contract. The executed agreement the Sheriff posted lists eight Falcon cameras; the transparency portal now reports sixteen LPR cameras. Nothing in the records the office published accounts for the other eight — when they were added, what they cost, or whether the Board ever saw it.
- The “records” hide who searches. The portal offers a “Public Search Audit” CSV — but in it the searching-agency field is blank in about 99.8% of the rows (816,988 of 818,233 in March). You can download 618,969 plate reads a month and still not learn who ran a single outside search. That is the same field New Hanover County redacted, and the exact record we asked the Sheriff to produce — his Staff Attorney told us it was “all on the website.” It is not.
- “Traffic enforcement” is a listed prohibited use — the audit shows otherwise. The portal names “traffic enforcement” among Prohibited Uses, yet the Sheriff’s own offense-type audit shows “Traffic Infraction” at 8.6% (1,005 searches) — a use N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-183.31(b) bars for ALPR. The record contradicts the reassurance.
- “Flock’s cloud environment has never been breached.” An absolute claim, hard to square with the record: WBUR reported that Flock failed to properly secure the vehicle data it collected during a 2025 Boston Police pilot.
- 320 searches shown, 618,969 reads collected. The portal foregrounds the office’s 320 own searches in 30 days while collecting more than 600,000 plate reads — and its own fine print concedes that the agencies BCSO shares with “have been responding to FOIA requests and sharing this search data.” “You control your data” and “your partners are releasing it” cannot both be the whole story.
A curated web page is not an answer to a records request, and a dashboard that omits the who-searched log is not transparency — it is the appearance of it. We keep the office’s actual production to us, and the materials it self-published, archived separately, so the gap is on the record.
Brunswick County by the numbers
The cameras, on the map
Live map of ALPR cameras across Brunswick County, from the crowdsourced DeFlock map.
What the record shows
The contract and the money, in the county’s own paper. The Flock agreement is a genuinely executed document — it carries a DocuSign envelope ID — for eight Falcon V2.2 cameras at roughly $29,200 the first year and $24,000 a year after, $53,200 over the initial term. The county’s FY26 payment record confirms it: purchase order P76385, eight units at $3,000 each = $24,000 plus $1,620 tax, paid by electronic transfer on November 7, 2025 ($25,620), signed off by the county Finance Officer.
The written policy, three years of retention, and what it leaves out. Brunswick’s ALPR Policy E-07 (revised September 1, 2026) sets a 30-day retention with automatic purge and requires a Sheriff-or-designee audit at least every 30 days — and routes every outside-agency sharing request and every private-camera invitation to the Sheriff for approval. Lawful on its face. But it is silent on immigration enforcement, on facial recognition, and on drones — the uses residents most want ruled out.
83,232 searches — nine in ten with no case number. Using the same records and method as our New Hanover analysis, Brunswick’s Flock activity runs to 83,232 searches in the available audit data since 2023, and about 90% carry no case number at all — the fingerprint of routine, suspicionless querying rather than case-by-case investigation.
The abuse is not hypothetical — it already happened here. On September 1, 2026, the Sheriff’s Office disclosed that a routine audit of Flock activity found potential misuse by an employee, who resigned and was referred to the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation; the Brunswick County District Attorney will decide on charges. (The full account.) Separately, the county charged a Southport man with felony larceny of a Sheriff’s Office Flock camera (details) — a reminder that this hardware is both a surveillance tool and county property.
And it reached a public meeting. On September 8, 2026, Commissioner Pat Sykes raised concerns about the Flock program directly, and Sheriff Chism responded on the record. Watch the exchange:
What is still missing. In response to our public-records request, the Sheriff’s Office produced the contract and related items but has not produced the Organization Audit, Network Audit, and Event Log — the who-searched-and-why records that would let anyone check the 83,232 figure and test for further misuse. Those logs are the point, and they remain outstanding.
The full record
- Caught by an audit — the Brunswick deputy misuse and SBI referral.
- The felony-larceny charge over a Sheriff’s Office Flock camera.
- Pender, New Hanover, Columbus, and Onslow — the neighboring county networks.
- The records hub — where every Cape Fear agency stands.
What you can do
Only the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners and the Sheriff can end this program — and the auto-renewal window is open now. Tell them, on the record, to let the contract lapse.
Sign the petition Email the Board & Sheriff Email your leaders
Brunswick County residents have also started their own petition — “No Flock Cameras in Brunswick County,” addressed to the Board of Commissioners and Sheriff Brian Chism. Sign ours first, then add your name to theirs:
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name — then tell the officials who represent you to take the cameras down.