Central Illinois organizes against Flock cameras

Our Take

WMBD News out of Peoria is covering something we love to see: ordinary people in Central Illinois deciding they're not okay with a blanket surveillance net quietly going up around their towns. This isn't happening in a big coastal city with a dedicated privacy nonprofit on retainer — it's happening in the Midwest, in communities that national media usually ignores until the cameras are already bolted to the poles.

That's exactly why local organizing matters so much. Flock Safety's pitch to small and mid-size police departments is almost always the same: a few cameras, a 'pilot program,' promises about solving car thefts. What doesn't get mentioned in the sales deck is the automatic data-sharing with thousands of other agencies nationwide, the lack of judicial oversight, and the fact that your daily movements become a permanent, searchable record the moment you drive past one of these poles. Credit to WMBD for actually giving airtime to the residents pushing back instead of just running the police department's talking points.

If you're in Illinois or anywhere else wondering whether this is already happening in your own backyard, check our camera map to see what's nearby, and head to our take-action page for tools to raise it at your next city council meeting before the decision gets made for you.