Despite public concerns, Huntington officials say Flock cameras could cut crime

Our Take

An eight-hour city council meeting is its own kind of evidence. When officials need that long to talk a community into a surveillance contract, it's usually because the public showed up with hard questions the pitch wasn't built to answer. Credit to WCHS-TV for actually sitting through Huntington's marathon session and pulling out the parts that matter: Chief Phil Watkins' promise that Flock cameras could shrink a manhunt "from days to hours or even minutes," and the $2 million price tag attached to that promise.

That's a bold claim, and like most bold claims about ALPR effectiveness, it's asserted more than it's proven. Flock's own marketing leans hard on anecdotes of quick captures, but independent audits in other cities have repeatedly found spotty documentation on how often the cameras actually solve crimes versus how often they just quietly log the movements of people who've done nothing wrong. "National network" is the phrase that should stop everyone in that room cold — Huntington isn't just buying cameras, it's plugging local plate data into a system other departments across the country can query, with little public visibility into who's searching, why, or how long the data sits there.

Privacy and misidentification aren't side issues to be managed after the purchase order is signed; they're the whole debate. If you want to see whether a Flock system is already watching your own streets, check our camera map, and if Huntington's fight sounds like your town's fight, our take-action page has tools for pushing back before the eight-hour meeting becomes an eight-year contract.