The Accountability Clock: What We Asked New Hanover County, and How Long It’s Taking
We have asked New Hanover County six times what its Flock surveillance system does and who reaches the data it collects. This is the whole record — what we requested, what the County produced and when, and what is still outstanding. We are not characterizing it. We are showing it, with the dates.
Public records are the only way a resident can see how a government surveillance system is actually used. So we asked, in writing, through the County’s own portal, six times since February. The North Carolina Public Records Act says copies must be furnished “as promptly as possible” (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 132-6). Below is how promptly — request by request, with every date the County’s own portal records.
Filed August 3, 2026. We filed a request for prelitigation mediation under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-38.3E, naming New Hanover County and the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, over the single field the County redacted when it produced the audit on June 11 and has refused to restore: the name of each agency that searched New Hanover residents’ license plates. We asked for the agency name only — not officers, not plates, not case numbers — and the County still says no. Mediation is the statute’s step before a public-records lawsuit. Read the file-stamped request (New Hanover No. 26M000599-640). The correspondence is in the Records Hub.
The record, on one clock
How to read it: 26-594 is two-toned — the amber segment is the 44 days to a partial production on June 11, and the red segment is the 53 days since, with the key field still withheld. The request is 97 days old and unresolved. For 26-910 the County promised a response by August 5. Request 26-1022 concerns a different vendor (Leonardo/ELSAG), included here because it is on the same clock.
Request by request
| Request | Filed | What we asked | What the County did | Status | Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26-273 | Feb 24 | Flock contracts; the agency sharing list; the ALPR policy, SOP, and training on use, retention, and auditing | Closed March 20 — stated it had provided all responsive records | Answered | 24 |
| 26-594 | Apr 28 | The Organization Audit, Network Audit, and Event Log; the lists of agencies the County shares data with and receives it from | Partial production June 11 — the 2,980,082-row log, with agency names, officers, plates, and case numbers redacted to “***”; the key field is still withheld | Partial → mediation | 97* |
| 26-910 | Jun 19 | For May 2026: outside-agency written requests, the audit, access logs, network configuration, and third-party disclosures under § 5.3 | Acknowledged June 22; no production yet; County set its own date of August 5 | Open | 45 |
| 26-965 | Jun 30 | The data the Office relies on to show the program works, any Flock “impact” materials, and an ADA review | Acknowledged June 30; no production yet | Open | 34 |
| 26-1022 | Jul 10 | Records on Leonardo/ELSAG and device-detection technology — a vendor separate from Flock | Acknowledged July 10; no production yet | Open | 24 |
| 26-1184 | Aug 2 | Access to the data by the vendor and other non-employees — Flock personnel, subprocessors, consultants, and automated systems (the vendor-access request) | Acknowledged Aug 2; just filed | Open | 1 |
*The partial production came at day 44 (the County’s own send date of June 11; we in fact received the file on June 18). The key field is still withheld, so 26-594 is 97 days old and unresolved. Day counts are as of August 3, 2026, and keep rising until the County produces.
One answered. Five still unresolved.
Only one of the six is fully answered: Request 26-273 came back in 24 days with the contracts and the policy. Request 26-594 is the one that produced the audit — 2,980,082 searches of New Hanover’s network — but the County redacted the one field that answers the public’s question: which agencies ran those searches. We narrowed the request to the agency name alone and withdrew any ask for individual officers. The County refused, and has cited no statutory exemption for the redaction. Five other North Carolina law-enforcement agencies on the same vendor — the Carolina Beach, NC A&T, UNC Pembroke, Kure Beach, and UNC Charlotte police — produced that exact field to us intact, naming the searching agencies while withholding individual officers. New Hanover has now withheld it for 97 days, and that refusal is what we took to mediation on August 3, 2026.
The remaining four are open, and the clock is still moving: 45 days on 26-910, 34 on 26-965, 24 on 26-1022, and one filed today — 26-1184, which asks a question none of the others do: not who searched the data, but whether the vendor itself reaches it. None of the four has produced a single page. The County acknowledged each within days, so the delay is not a question of whether the requests were received.
The same field, produced elsewhere in days
New Hanover is not being asked for anything unusual. Five other North Carolina law-enforcement agencies on the same Flock vendor produced the very field New Hanover redacted — the name of each searching agency — and they did it in days, not months. New Hanover has now withheld it for 97.
Sources: each agency’s records production, tracked in our Records Hub. Each of the five named the searching agencies while withholding individual officers — the same line New Hanover could draw. New Hanover filed April 28; the field remains redacted 97 days later and is now the subject of a mediation request.
Why the clock matters now
The Board of Commissioners that funds this contract meets August 17. A resident deciding whether the program is worth renewing deserves to know who has searched the data and how the vendor uses it — and most of those answers are the records still outstanding. We publish this so the record is public before the vote, and we will update this page each time the County responds. See also the vendor-access question the contract raises, and, if you want the commissioners to hear it, how to speak on August 17.
Every date on this page is drawn from New Hanover County’s own public-records portal (NextRequest) and the correspondence in our Records Hub. Day counts are as of August 3, 2026. If any date here is inaccurate, write to mark@deflockilm.org and we will correct it in public. First published August 3, 2026.
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