Tempe turned off its 33 Flock license plate reader cameras and ended its contract with Flock Safety.
The short version: Tempe, Arizona shut down all 33 Flock Safety ALPR cameras and ended its contract, a rare reversal Salem News Channel reports worth celebrating and studying.
Our Take
Salem News Channel is flagging something we don't get to cover often enough: a city actually pulling the plug on Flock Safety. Tempe reportedly killed its contract and powered down all 33 license plate readers, which is the kind of outcome every community fighting a Flock rollout should be paying attention to. Contracts aren't permanent, and "we already signed" isn't the end of the conversation — it's the start of one.
We don't have the granular details behind Tempe's decision, and we're not going to speculate on motives we can't verify. But the bigger picture is clear: these systems get sold to city councils as low-cost, high-value tools, and then the actual costs — financial, legal, and in terms of mission creep — start catching up with them. When a city walks away, it's proof that the sales pitch isn't bulletproof and that public pressure, budget scrutiny, or policy failures can actually reverse these deployments.
If you want to see whether Flock or similar ALPR systems are running in your own city, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your town look more like Tempe than the hundreds still expanding their networks, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back before — or after — the ink dries.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Salem News Channel, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.