Community makes decision on controversial Flock cameras
The short version: Menominee's city council weighed in on Flock ALPR cameras, and WLUK-TV FOX 11 captured the local pushback that's becoming a familiar pattern nationwide.
Our Take
Credit to WLUK-TV FOX 11 for covering what so many local outlets skip over: the actual public debate before a city council rubber-stamps a surveillance contract. Menominee is a small town, but the fight playing out there is the same one happening in city halls across the country — residents asking hard questions about who watches the watchers, where the data goes, and whether "it's just for catching bad guys" actually holds up once the cameras are installed.
These council meetings matter more than they get credit for. Flock Safety's pitch is almost always the same: a handful of success stories, a promise of limited use, and a quiet hope that nobody asks about retention periods, third-party data sharing, or how easy it is for scope to creep once the network is in place. When communities push back hard enough to make the news, it's usually because residents did their homework — something we'd encourage everyone to do before their own town signs on the dotted line.
If you want to see how far this has already spread, check our camera map to find out whether Flock or similar ALPR systems are already running in your area. And if Menominee's debate sounds like one your city needs to have, our take-action page has the tools to help you start it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WLUK-TV FOX 11, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.