NEW BEDFORD – An abuse prevention order against a New Bedford police officer lodged by an ex-girlfriend due to Flock camera surveillance was extended in New Bedford District Court.
Judge Heath Antonio ruled that the restraining order against Officer Emily H. Pacheco be extended for six months after a hearing on Aug. 13. The initial order was issued Aug. 10.
Pacheco must stay at least 50 yards away from the plaintiff, whom the Standard-Times is not naming, and cannot communicate with her in any form. Pacheco must also surrender her firearms.
The plaintiff said she requested the restraining order after an interview with New Bedford Police the previous week. The interview was part of an internal affairs investigation into Pacheco's use of the license-plate-reading technology that has been linked to allegations of police abuse in multiple states.
The cameras record and log the license plates of all passing vehicles and create a searchable database. That includes details like the car's model, color, and dents.
The plaintiff, who was not represented by an attorney, told the court the police investigators were concerned with the large number of times her plate had been tracked through Flock by Pacheco.
They asked her if she felt like she was being followed or someone was looking over her shoulder or whether Pacheco had shown up unexpectedly at times. Did she feel scared, she was asked.
There were times that did "freak me out," she said.
On June 15 she stopped at a coffee shop in Somerset, she said. "I didn't tell anyone where I was going."
She came out of the coffee shop with a coffee in each hand and got a text message from Pacheco: "You must be really tired and low energy."
She thought the text was weird. They hadn't been speaking.
The police interview confirmed her suspicions that something was going on, she said.
On April 26, she pulled into her residence, she said recounting another incident. Pacheco was on duty and pulled in across the street in a police cruiser. She waited for a time to go out again, but Pacheco was still there and approached her to speak.
The woman didn't want to talk but Pacheco persisted and blocked her with her body, she said.
After 10 to 20 minutes the woman said she had to call her work supervisor to deescalate the situation.
Pacheco showed up twice at one of the places where the woman works and called her more than 100 times and sent endless texts, the woman said. She said Pacheco generated fake numbers to reach out to her.
Judge Antonio asked if she was currently in fear of Pacheco.
After the internal affairs interview, police asked her if she had the paperwork for an abuse protection order. She didn't. They provided it and advised her to consider filing it, she said.
Pacheco, who was represented by attorney Kathryn Blythe, denied using Flock for personal reasons, and denied using it to track Pacheco, including to the Somerset coffee shop.
Blythe said the low-energy text was related to a text between the pair the day before.
Pacheco said she had used the plaintiff's car to test Flock response times in the past. She said alert response times varied.
New Bedford Police Officer William Mouyos was called by Blythe to testify. He said the Flock response time was about two minutes from sighting. He said officers could make a query on a plate via Flock. There were also "hot lists" set up with license plates of vehicles believed to have been involved in crimes that would spring a Flock alert.
Pacheco also testified under questioning from Blythe that the plaintiff's license plate was part of an investigation launched recently.
The investigation was spurred by a confidential informant's tip, Pacheco said. The investigation was the reason for her frequent use of Flock to track the plaintiff's license plate, she said.
Blythe said she wanted to make it clear the plaintiff was never the driver that was the target of this investigation.
Judge Antonio asked Pacheco how many times she used Flock to track the plaintiff's license plate in July.
Pacheco said she didn't know the number, and it wasn't provided to her by internal affairs investigators during her own recent interview.
Asked for a ballpark figure, she said she didn't know.
Judge Antonio asked whether the investigation's target was involved in a relationship with the plaintiff.
Pacheco said, "It was for another target that was operating her vehicle, but I can't disclose more" because it is an ongoing investigation.
Pacheo also said that she went to the plaintiff's home on June 15 because she heard that she was upset, and welcomed help from the supervisor to assure her the plaintiff was OK to drive.
Antonio said after he ruled in the plaintiff's favor that Pacheco stated she had been using Flock on the plaintiff's car since May 2026 for the criminal investigation associated with the plaintiff's recent ex-significant other.
Antonio said that the pattern of behavior indicated by the evidence also supported his finding. That included a threat to use handcuffs on the plaintiff during the June 15 incident, he said.
The maximum order extension is one year, which the plaintiff requested.
Blythe requested three months. Blythe said the New Bedford Police internal affairs investigation could be concluded by then and they could bring additional evidence to the court.
New Bedford Police Chief Jason Thody stated in an Aug. 11 press release the city's Flock system would be temporarily suspended to conduct a thorough review of the department's use of the technology and how to best ensure its secure use going forward.
The use of the cameras manufactured by Flock Safety was blasted by residents in a July 28 meeting with Thody as a dangerous intrusion on people's lives and privacy, which had been installed with a lack of public transparency.
Gideon Epstein, representing the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, spoke of the ACLU's grave concerns with Flock during the meeting.
He said Flock is location-tracking technology, not simply a collector of license plate images. "That is a huge oversimplification."
On Aug. 13, Flock Safety announced that it will implement new safeguards to stop the misuse of its systems by police as misuse investigations have cropped up in multiple states.
A Georgia police chief was arrested in November and accused of using automated license plate readers to harass and stalk multiple people; he was found dead by suicide before he could stand trial, the Washington Post reported. An officer at another Georgia police department was also arrested for using Flock's system for non-law enforcement purposes, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Aug. 7.
An Arizona police officer resigned after he was investigated for allegedly using his department's Flock cameras to track his wife and asking another department to check its system's cameras to do a welfare check on her, reported the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network.
A North Carolina police officer was charged with a count of unlawfully accessing computers after allegedly using her department's license plate-reader system to look up the vehicle of her boyfriend's ex-wife 31 times, including twice while off duty, WBTV reported Aug. 5. The officer was accused of inputting bogus reasons for her searches into the system, including traffic infractions and burglary.
Another North Carolina officer faces a similar charge for conducting an unauthorized license plate search, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said in July.
The safeguards announced by Flock reported in USA Today include:
Every vehicle search will require a reason. Law enforcement personnel will have to input a specific case code tied to the investigation they are working on, and input the type of offense. For example, along with the code, they might select kidnapping or motor vehicle theft. Flock Safety hopes this will stop officers from making up false reasons or inputting something overly vague such as "investigation."
Audit assistance will be mandatory for all police departments using Flock. The tool flags abnormal search behavior, such as an officer repeatedly searching the same license plate day after day, or clusters of searches late at night. Users are locked out in real time until an administrator reviews the search.
Data will be retained in the system for seven days instead of 30 days, except for cases that need more time under "evidence mode," when a search is tied to an ongoing case number.
Departments can choose what types of cases can be searched for by other departments. For example, Department A might allow Department B to search its cameras for kidnapping, homicide or theft cases but exclude Department B from searching for immigration-related offenses.
This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: Judge extends restraining order against New Bedford officer over Flock