The Cop Who Took On Flock
The Cop Who Took On Flock
挑战 Flock 的警察
On an early fall afternoon in 2023, midway through a shift in Pawtucket’s District Five, Rhode Island police officer Noel Pichardo noticed a strange camera perched on a utility pole over West Avenue. 2023 年初秋的一个下午，罗德岛州波塔基特市（Pawtucket）第五区的警官诺埃尔·皮查多（Noel Pichardo）正在执勤。在西大道（West Avenue）上方的一根电线杆上，他注意到了一台奇怪的摄像头。
Pichardo was 28, five years into the job, and alone in his cruiser during one of the brief lulls between responding to the typical churn of radio calls for domestic disputes, petty disturbances, and welfare checks. The camera was compact and solar-powered, angled down toward passing traffic. Pichardo made a U-turn and drove beneath it again, more slowly this time, to get a better look. 皮查多当时 28 岁，入职已有五年。当时他正独自驾驶巡逻车，在处理家庭纠纷、轻微骚乱和福利检查等日常琐碎警务的间隙，享受着短暂的平静。这台摄像头小巧且由太阳能供电，镜头向下对着过往车辆。皮查多掉了个头，再次从摄像头下方驶过，这次他开得更慢，以便看个究竟。
He then began searching for the cameras on roads near highway ramps, at major intersections, along the routes into and out of the city. He found them again and again. By the time Pichardo finished circling the district, he knew exactly where he had seen them before. 随后，他开始在高速公路匝道附近、主要路口以及进出城市的道路上搜寻这些摄像头。他一次又一次地发现了它们。当皮查多绕完整个辖区时，他已经清楚地知道自己之前在哪里见过这些设备。
Two years earlier, officers had gathered on the second floor of a small police substation in Pawtucket for a presentation about a surveillance system made by Flock Safety. A high-ranking police official stood in front of a PowerPoint and explained that the company’s automatic license plate readers could identify passing vehicles not only by their license plates but by bumper stickers, roof racks, and other distinguishing features. Investigators could search for a particular car across jurisdictions and, camera by camera, reconstruct where it had been. 两年前，波塔基特市一个小警察分局的二楼曾召开过一次会议，向警员们介绍 Flock Safety 公司生产的监控系统。一位高级警官站在 PPT 前解释说，该公司的自动车牌识别系统不仅能通过车牌识别过往车辆，还能识别保险杠贴纸、车顶行李架以及其他显著特征。调查人员可以跨辖区搜索特定车辆，并通过摄像头逐一还原其行踪。
The system was presented as another tool of routine police work, a way to recover stolen cars, locate suspects, and find missing people. But as Pichardo listened, he found himself thinking less about the vehicles police wanted than about all the others. In a medium-size city like Pawtucket, where a handful of roads carried people nearly everywhere they needed to go, a record of a car’s movements amounted to a record of a person’s life—the places they visited, the people they saw, the routines they followed. 该系统被宣传为日常警务工作的又一工具，旨在找回被盗车辆、定位嫌疑人并寻找失踪人员。但皮查多在听讲时，想到的却不是警方想要追踪的车辆，而是所有其他普通车辆。在波塔基特这样一个中等城市，少数几条道路几乎承载了人们所有的出行需求，因此，车辆的行踪记录就等同于一个人的生活记录——他们去过的地方、见过的人以及遵循的日常规律。
As Pichardo understood it, the Flock proposal had gone nowhere because the city could not afford a permanent installation. So he let it slip from his mind. 据皮查多所知，由于城市负担不起长期安装的费用，Flock 的提案当时并没有下文。于是，他便没再把这件事放在心上。
But now, on that afternoon on West Avenue, the cameras were all over his district. 然而现在，在西大道那个下午，他发现这些摄像头已经遍布了他的辖区。
Pawtucket’s cameras are one small piece of a sprawling vehicle-surveillance system that touches nearly every state in the country. Flock markets its platform as the nation’s largest fixed license-plate-reader network, processing billions of sightings each month. Because departments can open their records to agencies elsewhere, a camera installed by one municipality can become searchable by investigators hundreds or thousands of miles away. 波塔基特的摄像头只是一个庞大车辆监控系统的一小部分，该系统覆盖了美国几乎每个州。Flock 将其平台营销为全美最大的固定车牌识别网络，每月处理数十亿次的识别记录。由于各部门可以向其他地区的机构开放记录，一个城市安装的摄像头，远在千里之外的调查人员也能进行检索。
In 2021, around the time of Pichardo’s training, Flock offered Pawtucket police a free 60-day pilot. Seventeen cameras went up around the city as part of a regional test that also included Cranston and Woonsocket, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The rollout quickly drew criticism. The ACLU of Rhode Island accused the department of installing the cameras surreptitiously, after the pilot began without prior public input or notice to the city council. Pawtucket chief of police Tina Goncalves later apologized, saying that the department would “work better in the future” to communicate with the city council. 2021 年，即皮查多接受培训前后，Flock 向波塔基特警方提供了为期 60 天的免费试用。据《连线》（WIRED）查阅的记录显示，作为包括克兰斯顿（Cranston）和文索基特（Woonsocket）在内的区域性测试的一部分，全市安装了 17 台摄像头。此举迅速引发了批评。罗德岛州美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）指责警方在未征求公众意见或通知市议会的情况下，秘密安装了这些摄像头。波塔基特警察局长蒂娜·贡萨尔维斯（Tina Goncalves）后来道歉，称该部门在未来会“更好地”与市议会沟通。
The pilot ended later that year, and in May 2023 the local TV news reported that Pawtucket was not moving forward with the installation. Pichardo believed the idea was a dead letter. 试用期于当年晚些时候结束。2023 年 5 月，当地电视新闻报道称，波塔基特市不会继续推进该安装计划。皮查多以为这件事已经彻底告吹了。
It was not. In September 2023, records show, Pawtucket moved forward with a two-year deployment worth $128,000. Records show that the city planned to install 20 cameras along many of its busiest roads, including Newport Avenue, Main Street, Broadway, Smithfield Avenue, and West Avenue—where Pichardo first noticed one hanging over the road. 事实并非如此。记录显示，2023 年 9 月，波塔基特市推进了一项价值 12.8 万美元的两年期部署计划。记录显示，该市计划在许多最繁忙的道路上安装 20 台摄像头，包括纽波特大道（Newport Avenue）、主街（Main Street）、百老汇（Broadway）、史密斯菲尔德大道（Smithfield Avenue）以及西大道（West Avenue）——也就是皮查多第一次注意到摄像头悬挂在路上的地方。
“Wait a minute,” Pichardo recalled thinking. “When did we make this decision to put these up?” “等一下，”皮查多回忆起当时的想法，“我们是什么时候决定安装这些东西的？”
Within months, Pichardo’s questions would set off a chain of events that, he says, ended his career in law enforcement. They would also eventually place him, somewhat improbably, at the center of a backlash against Flock that unites large factions of the American left and right. 几个月内，皮查多的质疑引发了一连串事件，据他所说，这些事件终结了他的执法生涯。最终，他也有点不可思议地成为了反对 Flock 的舆论中心，这场运动将美国左翼和右翼的广大群体团结在了一起。
For a policeman, Pichardo contains more than his share of contradictions. He speaks with a thick Rhode Island accent that sounds like something lifted from a cop movie, but he peppers his conversation with occasional references to Nietzsche or obscure films. He describes himself as private by temperament but seems driven to stand out. 作为一名警察，皮查多身上有着超乎寻常的矛盾特质。他说话带着浓重的罗德岛口音，听起来就像警匪片里的角色，但他谈话时又会时不时引用尼采或冷门电影。他形容自己性格内向，却似乎又渴望脱颖而出。
Having spent some of his childhood in a poor neighborhood where drugs and gangs were part of the landscape, Pichardo says he learned that it was safest to keep his opinions to himself and stay out of other people’s business. When he was 12 or 13, he learned that his father, who had returned to the Dominican Republic several years earlier, had done so because he had a criminal record and was told it would be best if he left the country. Becoming a police officer offered a way of drawing a line between his father’s path and his own. After studying in the criminal justice program at Salve Regina University in Newport, Pichardo entered the police academy and joined the Pawtucket department in 2018. To hear him describe it, he’s always been something of an outlier on the force. “I’m possibly the only cop who would voluntarily go to musicals,” he once told me. 皮查多的童年是在一个毒品和帮派横行的贫困社区度过的，他说他学会了最安全的做法就是保持沉默，少管闲事。12 或 13 岁时，他得知父亲几年前回到多米尼加共和国，是因为父亲有犯罪记录，被告知离开该国是最好的选择。成为一名警察为他提供了一种方式，将自己的人生道路与父亲的道路划清界限。在纽波特的萨尔维·里贾纳大学（Salve Regina University）学习刑事司法专业后，皮查多进入警察学院，并于 2018 年加入波塔基特警察局。据他自己描述，他一直是警队里的“异类”。“我可能是唯一一个会自愿去看音乐剧的警察，”他曾对我这样说。
In the weeks following that fall shift when he first noticed Flock cameras all over town, Pichardo kept picking at the question of how the cameras had returned. Detectives, he says he learned after asking around the department, were already using the system, though many patrol officers like himself appeared to know little about it. 在那个秋天他第一次注意到全城遍布 Flock 摄像头的那个班次之后的几周里，皮查多一直在追问这些摄像头是如何“回归”的。他说，在向部门同事打听后得知，侦探们已经在利用该系统，尽管像他这样的许多巡警似乎对此知之甚少。
Pichardo contacted his work district’s local city council rep and asked how the cameras had been approved—his first time speaking to a politician, he says—but didn’t emerge with a clear answer. (Records show that the department had notified the purchasing board…) 皮查多联系了他所在辖区的市议会代表，询问这些摄像头是如何获得批准的——他说这是他第一次与政客交谈——但并没有得到明确的答案。（记录显示，该部门曾通知过采购委员会……）