Cohasset's Select Board took up a citizen's petition Sept. 8 that would require town police to seek public approval before adopting new surveillance tools such as license plate readers and facial recognition software, a proposal Police Chief William Quigley urged the board to reject.
South Shore Times previously reported that the Select Board voted to halt automatic renewal of the town's Flock Safety camera contract, opening a 30-day window to renegotiate terms after the system helped recover two stolen vehicles in July. The petition taken up Sept. 8 would go further, creating a standing public review process for any new surveillance technology the town acquires.
Sara Reeves, of 362 Beachwood Street, presented the proposed bylaw to the board by video conference as the petition's lead sponsor. She described it as modeled on the American Civil Liberties Union's Community Control Over Police Surveillance framework, adopted in 26 jurisdictions nationally and seven in Massachusetts. The bylaw would require town agencies to file a public disclosure statement before funding or deploying qualifying technology, including automatic license plate readers, cell site simulators, facial recognition and other biometric tools, and predictive policing software. Standard security cameras and manually operated recorders would be excluded. Reeves said the bylaw targets tools that are aggressively pushed on local departments.
"What we're doing is really trying to prioritize the new and rapidly emerging surveillance technologies that are so heavily marketed to law enforcement agencies," she said.
Vice Chair Ellen Maher questioned whether a policy built around larger cities fit Cohasset and asked whether Reeves had consulted police before drafting it. Reeves said she had not.
"I read through it. I've read through other towns and cities, and it seems as if most, if not all of this comes from Cambridge and Brookline and Boston, certainly not municipalities that have anything in common with Cohasset other than we have citizens and we have police officers," Maher said.
Pressed on why license plate cameras raise privacy concerns on public roads, Reeves said the issue is not any single camera but the shared statewide network they feed into. Vehicles flagged by cameras in other communities become searchable in that same database, she said.
"If you can identify who people are and where exactly they go, where they go to church, where they get reproductive healthcare, who they're associating with, that becomes the trigger for needing constitutional protection," she said.
Maher went on to question Reeves who was behind the push for the bylaw saying at one point, "Invest in Cohasset is the sponsor." She also referenced the group's "huge social media presence." At the time of this publication, the Invest in Cohasset Facebook group has 143 followers and on Instagram 363 followers.
Reeves rejected that saying, "Invest in Cohasset is not the petitioner. I was, and I've been really grateful for their support."
Town counsel Janelle Austin told the board the bylaw as written raises significant legal exposure. She said its data-sharing restrictions could conflict with state and federal requirements that police share certain criminal justice information with the FBI and state police.
"There's significant enforcement proposed in the bylaw, including attorney's fees, which usually is not available absent a statutory requirement to do that," Austin said.
She also raised separation-of-powers concerns over town meeting's authority to direct select board contracting decisions, and said the bylaw's records retention window is shorter than the town's existing schedule.
Quigley told the board Cohasset already regulates its four Flock cameras under a written policy with monthly audits that has been in place for about two years.
"During that time, we've had zero claims of misuse by a Cohasset police officer or Cohasset Police employee," he said.
The chief said the technology has helped detectives narrow investigations rather than cast a wide net, and cited a recent case in which a camera helped locate a missing person on Route 3A. He also warned new data-sharing restrictions could jeopardize regional partnerships and grant eligibility.
"What documented misuse of police technology in Cohasset are we trying to correct?" Quigley asked the board.
Board members did not vote on the petition. They said they would wait to hear a recommendation from Cohasset's advisory committee before taking further action.