Local Records
This is our local document library — the government’s own contracts, policies, and search-audit records for the Cape Fear counties — New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender, Columbus, and Onslow — the City of Wilmington, and the beach towns, obtained directly through public-records requests. Read them yourself. For the statewide picture — every North Carolina agency we’ve asked, and where each request stands — see our Records Hub.
Last updated August 6, 2026
Our New Hanover County documents are below, followed by ALPR records produced elsewhere in North Carolina. Want to see who we’ve asked and where each request stands? That’s the Records Hub.
Responses from the City of Wilmington
Obtained through a public-records request to the City of Wilmington on 24 February 2026 and received on 12 March 2026. We requested:
“copy of any contracts between Flock Safety and any of the following entities to wit: City of Wilmington, the Wilmington Police Department, New Hanover County, and/or the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department. In addition, please provide a list of agencies that such data is shared with and any policies, SOP, and training materials regarding the use, retention and auditing of Flock data and/or other ALPR data.”
Responses from New Hanover County
Obtained through a public-records request to New Hanover County on 24 February 2026 and provided on 20 March 2026, covering the same request above.
Everything on this page, plus the Wilmington Police ALPR and Fusus directives and the full correspondence with the County Attorney, is archived at the Internet Archive as one permanent, citable set. We publish there as well as here so the record survives whatever happens to this website — and so no one has to take our word for what a document says. The README in that item lists every redaction we made and why.
The audit records — and our demand for the names
These records were obtained through a public-records request to the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office on 28 April 2026 and received on 18 June 2026. The request concerned the County’s contract with Flock Group, Inc. (Contract #25-0364), and sought: the Flock Organization Audit (searches done within the agency) and the Flock Network Audit (searches of the organization’s Flock network by any agency in the Flock system), for the period from 1 January 2025 to the date the request was processed; the Flock Safety Event Log for the same period; and the names of the agencies and organizations with which the agency shares, and from which it receives, ALPR data and “hot list” information.
Carolina Beach, Kure Beach & Wrightsville Beach
The county isn’t the only local government running Flock. Three New Hanover beach towns operate their own cameras — and their records tell three very different transparency stories.
Carolina Beach Police Department
Filed June 30, 2026. After a deficiency letter, the Town produced its records in full and unredacted on July 30 — the Flock contract, the SBI memorandum of understanding, the network-discoverability settings, a camera-location map, and native-CSV audits that name every searching agency. It is the most complete production we have received anywhere in North Carolina.
Read our analysis of the Carolina Beach production →
Kure Beach Police Department
Filed June 30, 2026. The Town produced its ALPR policy, its memorandum of understanding with the SBI, its shared-networks list, its network-discoverability settings, and its camera locations. Its four cameras had been searched 2.56 million times over five months — with about a third of the Town’s own searches coded “Traffic Infraction,” a use North Carolina law forbids.
Read our analysis of the Kure Beach audit →
Wrightsville Beach — produced after 45 days
Filed the same day as Carolina Beach and Kure Beach — June 30, 2026. Wrightsville Beach held out and referred the matter to outside counsel, then produced on August 14, 2026 — 45 days later. The production: the Flock order form (four Falcon plate readers, $12,000/year, 30-day retention), an invoice (INV-84665, $12,840), the Town’s written ALPR policy (Policy 5.09), an SBI/DCI access agreement, and a network sharing-features configuration. The Town uniquely provided GPS coordinates for its cameras — a step no other agency in this project has taken. Still missing — and requested in a deficiency letter: the Network and Organization Audits, the Event Log (no CSV files were produced), and any misuse records.
Brunswick & Pender County Sheriffs
New Hanover isn’t the only county running Flock on the Cape Fear coast. The two counties on either side operate their own Sheriff’s Office networks — and, like the beach towns, their records tell different stories.
Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office
Eight Flock Falcon cameras on a DocuSign-executed contract (~$53,200 over the initial term), with the Sheriff’s Office self-publishing its contract, ALPR Policy E-07, and FY26 payment record. Brunswick’s Flock activity runs to about 83,232 searches in the available audit data since 2023, roughly 90% with no case number — and in September 2026 an employee resigned under N.C. SBI review for misuse found in a routine audit. The 24-month contract auto-renews unless the county opts out with 30 days’ notice.
The Brunswick County page — the contract, the misuse, the renewal clock →
Pender County Sheriff’s Office
Eight fixed Flock cameras plus a mobile unit on a $70,600 purchase order the commissioners passed on a consent agenda. Pender withheld its camera map but produced seven private-landowner agreements that name the sites, and 13.7% of the Sheriff’s own searches are coded “Traffic Infraction” — a use North Carolina law bars. The Network Audit and Event Log — the who-searched logs — remain withheld; we’ve escalated with a preservation and litigation-hold demand.
The Pender County page — cameras on private land, unmapped →
ALPR records produced elsewhere in North Carolina
We’re not the only ones prying these records loose. Across the state, journalists and residents have obtained Flock contracts, policies, and search-audit logs from other agencies. Here are productions worth reading — the receipts from the rest of North Carolina.
‘Private Eyes’ — the full NC dataset: 160+ agencies surveyed, scraped portal data, search audits, contracts (open data on GitHub)
Apex PD ran thousands of Flock searches with the reason redacted; Cary PD’s produced usage logs
Buncombe County, NC — audit data showing the Sheriff’s Office Flock network searched by agencies outside North Carolina
Public-records confirmation of Flock contracts across New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender & Columbus counties
Official agency dashboards — camera counts, sharing, and 30-day search totals (Raleigh shown; Garner, Fuquay-Varina, Asheville, Hillsborough and more exist)
Independent index of NC agency audit-log data — Apex, Cary, Durham, Greensboro, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Chatham and more
A mix of official productions and independent transparency projects, labeled by source. The journalist- and crowd-obtained items are the work of others; we link them so you can see how widely these records have been pried loose across North Carolina. Last updated June 30, 2026.
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