Cities have woken up to flock cameras and some cities are urgently removing them
The short version: A YouTuber highlights growing municipal pushback against Flock Safety ALPRs, a sign that public awareness is finally catching up to the surveillance.
Our Take
The channel You Won't Believe Me is tapping into something we've been tracking for a while: once residents and council members actually learn how Flock Safety's network operates — mass license plate capture, out-of-state data sharing, vague retention policies — the enthusiasm cools fast. It's one thing to approve a "safety tool" at a budget hearing; it's another to realize that tool is quietly building a searchable log of everyone's daily movements.
We can't verify every detail in the video since specifics on which cities and what prompted the removals aren't laid out in the description, but the broader pattern is real and well documented. Cities across the country have hit pause, let contracts lapse, or faced public records requests that exposed just how little oversight existed. That's the system working the way it should: scrutiny first, surveillance contracts second — not the other way around.
If you want to see whether your own city or county is running this hardware, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your council to "wake up" on its own, our take-action page has steps for raising it yourself.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of You Won’t Believe Me, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.