DA warns of more 'victims who don't get justice' after Monterey County cuts FLOCK cameras

Our Take

Credit to KSBW Action News 8 for putting a camera on both sides of this fight. What's notable isn't that a prosecutor is upset — that's the default reaction whenever a surveillance tool gets taken away, justified or not — it's that a county board actually listened to residents and voted to pull the plug. That's rare. Most jurisdictions sign a Flock contract and never revisit it, regardless of how the technology gets used, who gets access to the data, or whether it actually reduces crime in any measurable way.

The 'victims who won't get justice' framing is a classic pressure tactic, but it skips the harder questions: how often do these cameras generate false leads, how many agencies are quietly sharing Monterey's plate data through Flock's national network, and what happens when ICE or an out-of-state agency pings that system for an abortion or immigration case. Dropping the cameras doesn't erase crime-fighting, it just takes mass location-tracking of every driver off the table by default. Supervisors weighing privacy against unverified promises of safety made the harder, better call.

If you want to see whether your own county has handed itself over to this kind of tracking network, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your local officials to catch up to Monterey, our take-action page has the tools to start that fight now.