Flock Cameras in Carolina Beach, NC
Five cameras. About 3 million searches in a single quarter. A town of 6,400 whose plate-reader network reaches from Houston to the FBI — and which, on the deadline we set, produced the whole record.
Carolina Beach, population about 6,400, runs five Flock devices — two Falcon, one Falcon Flex, and two Solar LPR units added in December 2025 — at about $13,696 a year. After a deficiency letter, the Town produced its records in full. Here is what five cameras in a small beach town actually do.
Carolina Beach Town Council — next meeting: Tuesday, October 13, 2026
6:00 p.m. (confirm the start time on the posted agenda) · Council Chambers, Carolina Beach Town Hall, 1121 N. Lake Park Blvd, Carolina Beach, NC 28428. The Council meets the second Tuesday of each month, and every regular meeting includes a public-comment period.
The ask is simple: tell your elected Council, on the record, to cancel the Town’s Flock contract and take the cameras down — the same step Davidson County, Asheville, and — on September 8 — New Hanover County took. A chief signed Carolina Beach onto Flock by himself; the Council that funds it can end it.
How to speak (three minutes)
- Sign up before the meeting begins. Arrive about 15 minutes early and add your name to the public-comment sign-up sheet at Town Hall. (If you’d rather confirm the exact sign-up steps first, call the Town Clerk at (910) 458-2999.)
- You have up to three minutes. Step to the podium when called, state your name and address, and speak into the microphone.
- Keep it to one clear ask. You are a resident asking your Council to end a warrantless surveillance program the town never voted on. Bring a neighbor — numbers in the room move commissioners.
Confirm on the Town calendar & agenda → Email the Mayor & Council first →
Meeting details verified from the Town of Carolina Beach’s official meeting records (second Tuesday, 6:00 p.m., Council Chambers). Agendas post about a week ahead — always confirm the date, time, and public-comment sign-up on the posted agenda before you go.
What we told the Council
DeFlockILM wrote the Carolina Beach Town Council on August 24, 2026, respectfully asking it to end the Town’s Flock program. (Read the letter (PDF).) The Council did not respond — so at the September 8, 2026 meeting, we delivered these remarks in person. Watch the testimony:
Good evening. My name is Mark Williams. I’m an attorney in Wilmington — but for much of my life, Carolina Beach has been my go-to spot: dinner, music, and the surf.
I’ve spent years coming down here — listening to music at Sea Witch, eating at the Deck House, pulling my boat up to Stoked, getting donuts at Britt’s, and driving my Jeep down Freeman Park. My family has owned property here for more than twenty years. To me, this place means freedom, relaxation, and keeping things simple.
That’s why it’s hard to stand here tonight — while Carolina Beach runs taxpayer-funded Flock surveillance cameras that feed a nationwide tracking network.
Look at the numbers. Nearly 3,900 people have signed our petition to take these cameras down — and more signers live right here in Carolina Beach than any other beach town. Your five cameras were searched roughly three million times in a single quarter. Almost none of those searches were run by Carolina Beach police. They were run by outside agencies, most from out of state, looking at the plates of locals going about a normal day.
And communities are pushing back. Twelve North Carolina towns and counties had already removed or rejected Flock — and this morning, New Hanover voted unanimously to cancel its Flock contract. Just last week, Dare County, on the Outer Banks, voted theirs out. People who value their privacy on vacation are taking notice — and they have a choice where to spend their money.
The risk of abuse is not theoretical. A Brunswick County deputy resigned and was referred to the SBI for misusing this exact system. And just today, a Wrightsville Beach officer lost their job for misusing that town’s Flock cameras, caught only when the town finally audited the log.
And there’s history right under our feet. In the 1790s this was called Federal Point, named for the Constitution that North Carolina refused to ratify in 1788 until a Bill of Rights protected the individual. Our sense of liberty here is that old. And Freeman Park epitomizes freedom. This has always been a place people came to be free — not to be tread upon and watched.
People buy Apple because it makes them feel safe — their privacy protected. Carolina Beach should feel that way too: a place where you’re trusted, not tracked.
Carolina Beach voters would rather be left alone than logged in a government database.
So we should not hand out-of-state agencies a digital map of everywhere we drive.
We wrote this Council on August 24th, respectfully, asking you to end this program. We never heard back. So tonight I’m asking in person. New Hanover County acted this morning. Carolina Beach can be next.
I’m asking you to protect the people who live, work, and play here. My ask is simple: take these cameras down.
Let’s keep Carolina Beach free. Thank you.
— Mark Spencer Williams, DeFlockILM
The cameras, on the map
Live map of ALPR cameras in and around Carolina Beach, from the crowdsourced DeFlock map.
Carolina Beach by the numbers
What the record shows
Three million searches, led by Houston. Carolina Beach’s five cameras were searched 3,027,943 times in a single quarter, discoverability set to “Within Nationwide.” The heaviest single searcher was Houston, TX police (183,274); the FBI ran 16,339 in May alone, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD — the department whose officer was just charged with Flock misuse — searched 13,942 times.
A quarter-million searches for a use NC law bars. 258,521 searches against Carolina Beach’s cameras are coded “Traffic Infraction,” which § 20-183.31(b) forbids for ALPR data. The Town’s own officers coded 41 more the same way, plus 15 “Traffic Analysis.”
The policy came years after the cameras. The Town has been billed for Flock since November 3, 2022; the written policy the statute requires before a system goes live carries a September 2023 date. Lawful on its face — a 90-day purge, annual audits — but three years behind the hardware.
And it is not just plate readers — the Town holds facial recognition too. Separate from Flock, records show the Carolina Beach Police Department holds an active Clearview AI facial-recognition license with unlimited searches. Clearview matches a face against a database of billions of images scraped from the internet and attaches a name. That makes this small beach town one of the few New Hanover jurisdictions — alongside the Sheriff’s Office — documented to own both the cameras that capture faces and the software that can identify them. To be precise: holding the license establishes the capability, not proof that any specific image has been run. How often the tool has been used is exactly what a usage-log request would show — and what the layered surveillance picture is built on.
Credit where it is due. On the deadline we set, Carolina Beach produced a complete, unredacted file — the contract, the SBI MOU, the discoverability settings, a camera-location map, and Network Audits that name every searching agency. It is the most complete production we have received in North Carolina. The problem here is not secrecy; it is what the open record shows.
The full record
- The complete Carolina Beach audit — every figure, sourced.
- Kure Beach — the neighbor town’s four-camera record, for comparison.
- The records hub — where every Cape Fear agency stands.
What you can do
Sign the petition Email your leaders
The New Hanover County Commissioners meet September 21 — public comment is open.
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name, then tell your county commissioners to cancel the Flock contract.