The chief writing Connecticut's camera rules is running the state's largest surveillance operation in his own town
To the Milford Board of Aldermen, Mayor Richard Smith, the Board of Police Commissioners, Chief Keith Mello, and the Milford Police Employees' Union, and to our neighbors across Milford:
We are residents of Milford, writing in the open, because that is where this conversation should have happened from the start. For more than a year our town has been fitted with one of the largest police surveillance networks in Connecticut, and most of us learned of it only after it was built.
No one voted for this. The Board approved a line item called a Security Camera Project. It never named a citywide license plate tracking network, a police drone program, or a real time monitoring center. The department's own 2024 strategic plan laid all of it out a year before residents saw a word, and the system has grown from 30 cameras to more than 90 with no new vote.
We were told our data is shared with one partner. The city's own records show a dozen agencies, plus a federal one. In February the chief told the Board of Finance that federal immigration accounts could search Connecticut plate data across state lines. That is not a rumor. It is on the record.
At the very start, safeguards were put on the table, an independent audit, competitive bidding, and proof that our data is destroyed. The board voted all three down. So when we are told to trust the process, we remember that the process already rejected the guardrails.
And we cannot ignore who is leading this. Chief Mello does not only run Milford's cameras. He chairs the state council writing Connecticut's plate reader rules, and Flock itself boasts that it worked with that council to write the new law. The man selling this to Milford is helping write the rules every town in the state will follow. That is a conflict of interest, plainly stated.
To the officers and your union, we hear you, and no one here wants to take away an alert about a stolen car or a wanted person. But that tool does not require a permanent record of where every innocent person in Milford goes, shared far beyond our borders and held by a private company. You said a conversation about safeguards is welcome. So do we. Let us have it honestly.
This month the Governor asked every town in Connecticut to pause new camera installations until the state sets privacy rules. The chief who chairs that state council is refusing to pause his own town.
So here is what we are asking, in the open. Turn the cameras off and do not renew the contract. Produce the records that show who can see our data. Adopt the safeguards you rejected. And to Chief Mello, you work for the people of Milford, not for Flock Safety. If you will not stand with the residents who pay your salary, you should step down.
You all work for us. Come to Parson's Auditorium on August 19, and to the Board of Aldermen special meeting on August 27, and say so to our faces. A safe town does not have to be a watched one.
- Local members of the Milford community