Burbank City Council Candidate Nolan Southerland on Airbnb Money and Flock Cameras
The short version: A Burbank council candidate's refusal of police and developer cash spotlights how local elections quietly decide whether Flock cameras keep spreading unchecked.
Our Take
Credit to JamieDelphine for turning a municipal race into a case study on money and surveillance. City council contests rarely get this kind of scrutiny, but they're exactly where decisions about Flock Safety contracts actually get made — usually with little public debate and a lot of quiet lobbying from vendors and the departments eager to use them. A candidate who publicly declines landlord, developer, and police funding is making a statement about independence that goes straight to the heart of how these camera deals get approved in the first place.
This matters because ALPR expansion isn't happening through some grand national mandate — it's happening one city council vote at a time, often pitched as a simple public-safety upgrade with the privacy tradeoffs left out of the pitch. When the people writing the checks for a campaign are the same interests benefiting from more cameras and more policing contracts, voters deserve to know. Whether or not you live in Burbank, the pattern is worth watching: local elections are turning into referendums on mass surveillance whether residents realize it or not.
If you want to see how far this network already reaches in your own area, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back at the city level, our take-action page has the tools to get started.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of JamieDelphine, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.