825 Searches in a Beach Town — and 276 Coded for the One Purpose the Law Forbids

Kure Beach has about 2,400 year-round residents and four Flock cameras. It is a town you can drive across in five minutes, and it sits inside New Hanover County — the same county whose commissioners fund the Sheriff’s Flock contract.

On June 30 we asked the Town for its ALPR records. On July 14 it handed us a USB drive. We have published everything on it, unaltered, so you can check every number below yourself.

What the Town produced is, we think, the most revealing set of ALPR records released in this county so far — not because it shows a scandal, but because it shows what an ordinary small-town Flock program actually does all day.

First, the stall — and then four days

We filed on June 30, 2026 (the request). On July 10, Police Chief J.B. Bailey acknowledged it and said the records would take “two to three months” to compile, citing the department’s busy season.

North Carolina law requires public records to be furnished “as promptly as possible.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 132-6(a). Most of what we asked for — the audits, the event log — are exports generated from Flock’s own dashboard in a few clicks. We said so in writing that same day, copied the Town Attorney, and noted the remedies the statute provides.

Two to three months became four days.

We say that plainly because it matters: the delay was never about capacity. When a records request is answered in four days after being called a three-month job, the original estimate is worth remembering the next time an agency says it needs a season.

825 searches in three months

We tabulated every row of the three audits the Town produced. Between March 2 and May 31, 2026, the Kure Beach system logged 825 searches. Here is how the Department’s own personnel coded them:

• Traffic Infraction — 276 searches (33.5%)
• Alcohol Offenses (Non-DUI) — 134
• Larceny/Theft Offenses — 108
• Drugs/Narcotics — 81
• Motor Vehicle Theft/Stolen — 73
• Everything else — the remainder, including 20 welfare checks, 8 wanted-person searches, 3 stalking, 3 missing-person, and 6 coded “City Planning/Traffic Analysis.”

The traffic number is not flat. It is climbing:

By May, nearly two out of every three searches Kure Beach ran through its Flock system carried a traffic-infraction reason code.

What North Carolina law says

The statute is not ambiguous. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-183.31(b) provides that ALPR data “shall be obtained, accessed, preserved, or disclosed only for law enforcement purposes,” and then adds: “Notwithstanding, data obtained under the authority of this Article shall not be used for the enforcement of traffic violations.”

And “law enforcement purpose” is not a loose phrase. The legislature defined it exhaustively at § 20-183.30(5) — there are exactly four:

• actions related to criminal investigations, arrests, prosecutions, post-conviction confinement, or supervision;
• apprehending someone with an outstanding felony warrant;
• locating a missing or endangered person; and
• locating a lost or stolen vehicle.

A traffic infraction is not a crime. North Carolina defines an infraction as “a noncriminal violation of law not punishable by imprisonment.” § 14-3.1(a). Traffic engineering is not on the list either. (The ALPR statute, word for word.)

Kure Beach’s own policy says the same thing. Policy 426.4(g) repeats the prohibition verbatim: “ALPR data shall not be used for the enforcement of traffic violations.” Policy 426.4(a) limits the system to “official law enforcement business.”

Now the part where we slow down

Here is what we are not saying, and we want to be exact about it, because a guide you can’t trust is no use to you.

A reason code is what an officer selected from a dropdown before running a search. It is not proof of what the search was ultimately used for. We cannot tell from these records whether any of those 276 searches produced a citation, whether an officer picked the closest-fitting label from a menu, or whether the code was simply wrong. Any of those is possible.

What the records do establish is narrower, and still serious: on 276 occasions, the stated reason for querying a government location database was the one purpose the statute expressly forbids — and the share rose every month. That is not an accusation. It is a question, and it is the Town’s to answer.

We would rather publish the Town’s explanation than our inference.

Nobody’s name is on any of it

There is a second finding, and in some ways it is the more troubling one.

Across all 825 rows, the audits identify no user and no officer. Not one. There is no case number on a single row either. The event log the Town produced — 61,000 characters of it — does not contain a single username or email address anywhere.

Kure Beach’s own policy requires better. Policy 426.6(a) says ALPR data shall be accessible only through a system “capable of documenting all access of information by name, date and time.” The records the Town gave us cannot answer the simplest possible oversight question: who ran the search?

If those fields were redacted, no statutory basis was cited — and captured plate data is confidential under § 20-183.32(e), but an audit log of who searched, when, and why is not plate data. If the fields are simply empty, then the Department cannot identify who runs its own searches. We asked which it is. (It is the same accountability gap we found in the county’s 2.98-million-search audit, where every agency and officer name was blacked out.)

What the Town didn’t produce

We asked for nine categories. Several came back empty:

• The Network Audit was not produced at all. Every row of every audit we received reads Org Name: Kure Beach NC PD — these are the Town’s own searches. The Network Audit is the record showing which outside agencies have searched Kure Beach’s cameras. It never came, and no reason was given for withholding it.
• No data-sharing agreements. None — though the event log records dozens of “create shareRequest Network” events on May 18, 2026, between 16:32 and 16:37 UTC, roughly one every six seconds.
• No sharing configuration showing State, Nationwide, or Community network participation.
• No training records — though Policy 426.4(d) bars any member from touching the system without department-approved training.
• No maintenance or calibration records, which § 20-183.31(c) requires the agency to keep on file.

One search in the March audit reached 291 separate camera networks. Sixty-four searches reached more than ten. Whatever Kure Beach’s four cameras are, they are not a closed system — they are a doorway into a national pool, and back again. (How one search reaches a thousand networks.)

The policy arrived thirteen days after we asked for it

The Town did produce an ALPR policy. It is watermarked “DRAFT” and carries a Lexipol date of July 13, 2026 — thirteen days after our request, and after every one of the 825 searches above.

Section 20-183.31(a) is explicit: an agency using an ALPR system “must adopt a written policy governing its use before the automatic license plate reader system is operational.” Kure Beach’s cameras were running by at least February 2026. So we asked the obvious question: was a policy adopted before the cameras went live, and if so, when? If the answer is that the draft we received is all there is, the Town should say so.

What it costs, and why the exit is narrow

The contract is small and the lock is not. Kure Beach signed with Flock on November 10, 2025 — a 24-month term, $19,800 total ($10,200 the first year, then $9,600 a year), for two dual solar LPR bundles. Chief Bailey signed it himself.

Two details matter. The agreement’s “Project Prove It” clause gives the Town a 30-day opt-out after the first camera goes up — and after that, the Town cannot terminate and owes the balance of the term. And it auto-renews for 36 months unless someone gives written notice at least 30 days before the term ends.

So unlike New Hanover County, whose Condor contract can be canceled at any time, Kure Beach’s realistic exit is a calendar entry: the non-renewal window. A town that wants out has to remember to say so in advance.

We asked. We will publish the answer.

On July 14 we wrote to Chief Bailey and copied the Town Attorney. We identified the records still outstanding, and — separately — we invited the Town to explain, in its own words:

• the authority for the 276 searches coded “Traffic Infraction”;
• the authority for the six coded “City Planning/Traffic Analysis”;
• whether a policy was adopted before the system became operational; and
• whether the Department can identify who ran any given search.

That part of the letter is not a records request. It asks for no search of files. It is an invitation to respond, and we meant it. If Kure Beach has an explanation, we will publish it here in full and without editing. If the reason codes are wrong, we want to know. If we have a number wrong, we will correct it in public — the complete production is posted precisely so anyone can check our arithmetic.

To be fair to the Department: after a rough start, Kure Beach produced records in four days that many larger agencies have spent months not producing. That is worth saying. It is also why the remaining gaps — the Network Audit above all — are worth asking about rather than assuming the worst.

Why a beach town matters

It would be easy to file this under “small town, small problem.” Four cameras. Twenty-four hundred people. Nineteen thousand dollars.

But Kure Beach is in New Hanover County, and its records answer a question the county’s own records cannot. New Hanover redacted every name from 2.98 million searches, so we cannot see what its officers were doing. Kure Beach didn’t redact the reason codes — and what they show is that a third of the searches, rising to nearly two-thirds by May, carried the label of the one use the legislature took the trouble to prohibit by name.

That is what these systems do when nobody is reading the logs. Not conspiracy. Drift. The tool is there, it is easy, and the reason dropdown has a convenient option.

The New Hanover County Board of Commissioners meets August 17, 2026. Public comment is three minutes — enough to hold up a beach town’s own audit and ask the five people who fund the county’s much larger program a simple question: if a four-camera department drifted this far in ninety days, who is reading our logs? (How to speak — and what to say.)

Read it yourself

• The complete production — everything Kure Beach gave us, unaltered (ZIP).
• Our June 30 request · the Chief’s “two to three months” reply · our July 10 demand letter · our July 14 deficiency letter.
• Every request we’ve filed, and where each one stands: the records repository.

Sources

• Kure Beach Police Department Flock organization audits, March–May 2026; Flock event log, March–May 2026; Policy 426 (draft); Flock Group, Inc. Law Enforcement Agreement executed Nov. 10, 2025 — all in the archive above, as produced.
• N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-183.30(5) (definitions) · § 20-183.31(a)–(c) (regulation of use) · § 20-183.32(a), (e) (retention & disclosure) · § 20-183.33 (penalty) · § 14-3.1(a) (infractions) · § 132-6(a) (promptness). (Our plain-language guide to the ALPR statute.)
• DeFlockILM — Three Million Searches, Zero Names · the numbers, sourced in one place.

DeFlockILM is a citizen effort on ALPR and privacy issues in the Wilmington area. This article describes public records as produced and the statutes that govern them; it is general information, not legal advice, and creates no attorney-client relationship. We do not allege that any individual violated the law, and we have asked the Town of Kure Beach to explain its records. We will publish its response in full. If any figure here is wrong, write to mark@deflockilm.org and we will correct it in public. Last updated July 14, 2026.