Flock & ALPR Cameras in Charleston, Illinois
Volunteers have reported 13 automated license plate readers in and around Charleston — cameras that log every passing plate with a time and location.
Jurisdiction · by recorded street address
The 13 cameras counted on this page are every reader mapped within about 20 kilometres of Charleston, so the count crosses municipal lines. By the street address recorded for each one, 11 of them sit inside Charleston itself.
The rest sit in Ashmore (2).
Source: community-mapped camera data (OpenStreetMap, ODbL), with addresses resolved by Nominatim.
Need this city’s camera data? Custom extracts are free for researchers, journalists and advocates. Ask for it.
No new reports near Charleston in the last 30 days — checked hourly, last checked Oct 7, 21:32 UTC. Cameras only get on the map when someone looks: be the one.
Where the cameras are in Charleston
The readers mapped around Charleston break down as 13 Flock Safety. The first camera here was reported in Nov 2025; the most recent in Jun 2026.
- Illinois Route 16 — 2 readers
- Lincoln Avenue — 2 readers
- Edgar Drive — 1 reader
- Lincoln Highway Road — 1 reader
- North County Road 1600 East — 1 reader
- West Charleston Road — 1 reader
- Route 16 — 1 reader
- West Ashmore Street — 1 reader
- Illinois Route 130 — 1 reader
- Madison Avenue — 1 reader
- West State Street — 1 reader
Charleston IL PD and the sharing network
Per Flock’s own transparency portal, Charleston IL PD appears in the sharing network with connections to 80 other agencies.
Charleston in the Coles County picture
Coles County has 31 reported cameras county-wide and ranks #296 of 3,222 U.S. counties for cameras per resident, inside the top 13.8% nationally. That’s across 46,689 residents and 1,778 road miles. By road density that is 0.02 cameras per road mile, in the top 31.6% of counties nationally.
Where contributors recorded what a camera watches, the split here is 5 traffic.
What’s watching Charleston
These aren’t red-light cameras. Automated license plate readers like Flock Safety’s photograph every plate that passes, log the time and place, and store it in a searchable database that’s often shared far beyond Charleston — here’s where that data goes. Counts cover cameras reported closest to Charleston (within ~20 km), so nearby towns share the same corridors. Spot one that’s missing? Report it on DeFlock.
What you can do in Charleston
Ask who approved these cameras, how long plate data is kept, and who it’s shared with. File a public records request, raise it at a council meeting, and see the full playbook on Take Action. Fighting this locally? Join or start a chapter and we’ll amplify you.
Not sure what one looks like? See photographs of installed cameras before you go looking.
Cameras near Charleston
← All Illinois cameras, counties & cities
Camera reports: the open-source DeFlock project. Place data: GeoNames (CC BY).