Two New Bedford employees have lost their jobs over the licence plate cameras the city shut down in August, the first result of an audit into how the department used a private surveillance network.
Mayor Jon Mitchell dismissed Officer Emily Pacheco and Sergeant James Martinelli on October 22, acting on a recommendation Police Chief Jason Thody made in September.
The internal affairs file reads poorly. Pacheco looked up her former girlfriend’s plate upwards of 650 times, along with the plate of that woman’s new partner more than 200 times. Martinelli ran his girlfriend’s plate close to 70 times, certain she was seeing someone else.
What triggered the review was public pressure rather than police oversight. Public anger drove it, not internal supervision: crowds packed a July 28 meeting demanding the contract be cancelled, and within three days Thody had ordered the audit and stripped Pacheco of her access. A judge served her with an abuse prevention order on August 10, finding she posed a credible threat to the other woman’s safety.
One day later the department switched the whole system off. Officials conceded that until then nobody had been running the regular search audits their own policy required.
What happens next
Mitchell described the conduct as a breach of public trust. The union intends to appeal both dismissals and contends the policy underneath was too thin from the start.
The wider audit remains open, with a second review covering December 2024 through 2025 still under way. New Bedford notified Flock on October 8 that it would not renew the contract expiring November 12. Councillors gave a plate reader ban a second 8-3 vote on October 22, and a committee takes up the chief’s proposed guardrails on October 26.
