Is this company manipulating police and city officials? Watch the truth.

Our Take

Winnebago Watch's footage from a recent city council meeting raises a question we keep running into: is Flock Safety selling a surveillance product, or selling a playbook for managing public dissent? The reported existence of an internal document literally called an "Opposition Handling Playbook" — allegedly used to coach law enforcement on how to neutralize community pushback — tells you a lot about how seriously the company takes the concept of informed consent. If accurate, this isn't just marketing. It's a strategy to treat constituents' Fourth Amendment concerns as a PR obstacle to route around, not a legitimate debate to have in public.

What makes this especially galling is the funding source. Taxpayers are footing the bill for ALPR contracts, and by extension, for the very messaging campaigns designed to out-argue the taxpayers themselves at council meetings. That's a strange kind of civic loop: your tax dollars pay a private company to train your police department to talk you out of your privacy objections. Credit to Winnebago Watch for pulling this into the light — this is exactly the kind of local accountability reporting that rarely gets traction outside the towns where it happens.

If your city is entertaining a Flock contract, this is the moment to show up and ask hard questions before the playbook gets run on your council. Check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and hit up our take-action page for tools to push back before the vote, not after.