When Massachusetts legalized casinos, state lawmakers set aside a share of casino tax revenue to help nearby communities deal with the fallout — gambling addiction, traffic jams and stretched police departments.
But in recent years, that pot of money has served another purpose: outfitting towns with nearly $500,000 in Flock cameras and other controversial automated license plate readers. The surveillance technology has drawn broad criticism from civil liberties groups and residents of towns where they’ve been deployed.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission awards the money through a grant program known as the Community Mitigation Fund. Its rules allow the grants to go toward a variety of projects, as long as communities can show they are in response to the impact of a nearby casino.
In their applications, local law enforcement officials told the commission the cameras would capture casino traffic. Many placed them near highways leading to the casinos or several miles away. But, as some critics have pointed out, the cameras log every vehicle that drives past. Those records go into a database that police in other communities — and in some cases, other states — can search without a warrant.
All told, nine Massachusetts communities used the grant money to buy license plate readers over the past three fiscal years, a WBUR review of state records found. The camera purchases were part of their grant funding, which also went toward other public safety and traffic projects.
At the same time, only one of them, Chelsea, requested any money for gambling harm reduction, another category eligible for funding.
“When towns get money for much needed public and social issues, they just end up throwing that money at more surveillance,” said Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the digital civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Funding surveillance technology
Take Agawam, which borders Springfield and its MGM casino. In 2025, the town applied for casino mitigation money. Flock cameras weren’t part of the original request. They were added later, through an amended application seeking nearly $58,000 for the six Flock cameras.
To justify the request, the town cited increased traffic and parents dropping their children off at Six Flags New England in Agawam and then heading to the casino.
In September 2025, the Agawam City Council voted unanimously to accept the $321,500 grant. Flock cameras were never mentioned in the meeting, according to a video recording.
Christine Rickmon joined the council this January. Not long after, she started seeing Facebook posts from residents showing the cameras in town. Many people — including her — were caught off guard, she told WBUR.
“People here feel betrayed by the police and town hall because there was no conversation about this until it was already here,” Rickmon said.
Then at a contentious council hearing in June, Rickmon asked Police Chief Eric Gillis why the town had added Flock cameras to its casino mitigation grant. Gillis said he didn’t know the application had been amended.
During the meeting, Rickmon also pressed Gillis on the town’s justification for Flock cameras in the grant proposal — and whether police could document any instances of children being left unattended at Six Flags so their parents could gamble.
Gillis said the claim likely came from officers’ past encounters with parents picking up kids from the amusement park, but acknowledged police didn’t record where parents were coming from.
Rickmon remains skeptical.
“There’s no actual proof that people were dropping their children off at Six Flags and going to the casino,” she told WBUR. “That claim is wild. Why didn’t anybody look into it?”
Gillis did not respond to requests for comment.
Gideon Epstein, policy counsel at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said Agawam isn’t an outlier.
“The broader problem that we’re seeing across the state is deployments of Flock cameras and license plate readers and other surveillance tools without thorough consideration of whether communities actually want these tools,” he said.
While a handful of communities, including Boston, have adopted ordinances requiring a council vote before police can acquire surveillance technology, there is no blanket rule requiring police to get public approval before installing license plate readers.
Police equipment purchases that come out of a town’s regular budget usually require approval from local council members. But money that comes from outside the budget, like casino mitigation grants or civil forfeiture funds, doesn’t always.
Grant awards, for example, can be approved as a lump sum with no discussion of what the money will buy. That can limit transparency and community input.
Most of the communities that bought license plate readers with casino mitigation money are near MGM Springfield in western Massachusetts: Chicopee, East Longmeadow, Ludlow and Wilbraham.
The rest are near two other casinos. Plainville, home to Plainridge Park Casino, received money for the technology, as did neighboring North Attleborough and Wrentham. And Chelsea, which borders the Encore Boston Harbor in Everett, also bought license plate readers through the fund.
Most of the towns bought Flock cameras. Several bought license plate readers from third-party vendors that don’t list the camera company. Flock declined emails requesting comment.
Records show communities have used the grants for everything from extra traffic enforcement and police patrols near casinos to job training programs and tourism marketing.
Massachusetts Gaming Commission spokesman Thomas Mills referred questions about why communities sought money for the Flock cameras to the towns themselves.
But at least one commissioner registered a concern about the license plate cameras. In June, the Gaming Commission voted 4-1 to let Ludlow shift $35,000 from an earlier grant to pay for a Flock camera service contract. Commissioner Eileen O’Brien cast the lone vote against it, citing “issues with Flock.”
O’Brien didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
“The broader problem that we’re seeing across the state is deployments of … surveillance tools without thorough consideration of whether communities actually want these tools.”Gideon Epstein, ACLU
In its application for license plate readers, Ludlow described the Flock cameras as “an intricate part of everyday policing from major crime cases to shoplifting or even to help find missing people.”
Ludlow Police Chief Michael Brennan, who took over the department in January, told WBUR that a five-year Flock contract was approved by voters during an annual meeting in May 2024 for the town’s overall spending budget. The measure allows the department to pay for the cameras through its budget or grants, such as casino mitigation money.
In the last few years, there have been 30,000 searches by law enforcement for license plates on Ludlow’s cameras, according to the searchable website Have I Been Flocked that gathers public records of logs.
Brennan acknowledged that license plate readers have since become “a source of national controversy,” though he said he doesn’t think they were when Ludlow approved them.
“They have shown to be an effective investigative tool and have proved to be valuable for the Department,” he wrote.
Across the state, Flock cameras are under scrutiny over privacy concerns and police misuse. Critics point to several examples of police officers using the technology to stalk former romantic partners.
The ACLU of Massachusetts states it found nearly 90 police departments contracting with Flock or other license plate reader companies as of last summer based on public records requests. Since then, more than 30 communities have canceled or suspended their license plate reader contracts. Among them is North Attleborough, one of the towns which purchased Flock cameras through a mitigation grant.
For over a decade, state lawmakers have offered grant money to 28 cities and towns to help deal with any negative impacts of their proximity to the state’s three casinos.
Research shows people who live near casinos can face a higher risk of developing gambling problems. In 2023, the Gaming Commission specifically added harm reduction as a category for Community Mitigation Fund grants, allowing local officials to apply for money for prevention and treatment programs.
Little of the money has gone there, a WBUR analysis found. Of the $38.5 million the commission awarded to communities over the past three years, 5% went to efforts to deal with problem gambling.
Records indicate the vast majority of the money went to public safety and traffic projects — from purchasing a pair of police drones in Springfield to improving the Boston Harborwalk in Charlestown.
Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist who co-directs UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program, said he understands why communities near casinos might spend some of the grant money that way, given the added traffic and crowds. But he said prevention and treatment pay off more in the long term.
“If you invest in gambling harm reduction, you will get results in public health,” Fong said. “If you put it in Flock cameras, I’m not quite sure we’re going to get that same return on investment for public health.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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