Your neighborhood’s surveillance cameras are supposed to belong to the police department that operates them. So when Tiverton residents discovered that Peter Sherman — a Middletown resident and president of Newport Propane — appears as the billing contact on the town’s Flock Safety contract, the reaction was swift and blunt. Organizers from Indivisible South Coast New England are pushing for immediate action at the June 22 Town Council meeting at 7 pm. The question hanging over the whole arrangement is deceptively simple: why is a private citizen’s name attached to a public police surveillance system? See the contract here.
Who’s Actually Paying for Tiverton’s Surveillance Cameras?
The answer should be straightforward — but the contract documents raise more questions than they resolve.
According to those documents, the Tiverton Police Department is listed as the customer. Sherman’s name, his business email, and an out-of-town business address appear on the billing side of the agreement. Whether his role stops at paying invoices or extends to any administrative access or system credentials remains unconfirmed. That distinction matters enormously — and so far, nobody is offering a clear answer.
Here’s what the documents and public records show:
- Sherman is identified as customer and billing contact; TPD is the listed contracting party
- Sherman is a Middletown resident with no apparent official role in Tiverton government
- Tiverton already operates two municipal-owned Flock Safety cameras, according to the ACLU
- Flock cameras capture vehicle movement data tied to ordinary residents’ daily travel patterns
- The June 22 Town Council meeting is the next public decision point
Private donations to police departments happen all the time — cruisers, K-9 units, community event funding. Critics argue, though, that bankrolling a surveillance network is categorically different. It’s a bit like discovering your apartment building’s security systems are being paid for by a neighbor you’ve never met, one who never introduced themselves at the mailbox. The data implications aren’t comparable to a donated squad car.
Tiverton Isn’t Alone — Cities Are Pushing Back on Flock
A growing number of municipalities have already moved to suspend or cancel their Flock deployments after similar community pressure.
Bend, Oregon suspended its Flock contract following privacy backlash — one of several cities where local opposition proved decisive. Flock Safety acknowledges that agencies typically fund license plate reader programs through public revenue, asset forfeiture, and dedicated local funding streams. That context makes a private individual’s name in the billing field all the more conspicuous, and all the more worth explaining publicly. Concerns about secretly tracking users without clear disclosure have fueled similar community resistance nationwide.
The June 22 meeting will test whether Tiverton’s council treats this as a paperwork footnote or a transparency problem worth fixing. The contract details are public. The answers, so far, are not.
