Columbia Heights Votes Unanimously to Rip Out All 12 Flock Cameras
The short version: Columbia Heights, Minnesota's city council unanimously killed its Flock Safety contract and ordered all 12 ALPR cameras removed, proving local pushback works.
Our Take
Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for flagging this one: a unanimous city council vote in Columbia Heights, Minnesota to tear out all 12 Flock Safety cameras isn't a fluke, it's a blueprint. When elected officials who originally approved a surveillance contract turn around and kill it unanimously, that's usually a sign the promised crime-fighting miracle didn't materialize, or that enough residents showed up and asked hard questions about who has access to their movements and why.
This matters because Flock's pitch to city councils is always the same: quick approval, minimal debate, "it's just for solving crimes." What rarely gets discussed upfront is the retention period, the data-sharing agreements with other agencies, or how easy it is for a network built for one purpose to get repurposed for another. Columbia Heights joins a small but growing list of towns willing to hit reverse once those tradeoffs became visible to the public instead of buried in a council packet.
If you want to see whether your own city is running this hardware, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push your council toward a vote like this one, 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 Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net), published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.