WSAZ+ | Huntington City Council votes to enter into contract with Flock Safety + more

Our Take

Credit to WSAZ NewsChannel 3 for putting this vote on the record, because these decisions have a habit of sailing through council chambers with barely a mention outside the local paper. Huntington now joins a long and growing list of American cities that have signed on with Flock Safety, often after a slick sales pitch about solving crime and precious little discussion about who else gets access to the data, how long it's stored, or what happens when it's inevitably shared with outside agencies, including federal ones.

This is the pattern we track over and over: a city council hears a pitch framed around a handful of car thefts or an amber alert, votes yes in a single meeting, and suddenly every plate crossing town is logged, time-stamped, and sitting in a searchable database. Nobody in Huntington voted for a system that lets other jurisdictions query their residents' movements, but that's what these networked camera deals typically enable once the ink is dry. The public rarely gets a real accounting of that scope before the vote happens.

If you live in or around Huntington, this is worth pushing your council members on before the cameras go live, not after. Check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to find out how to demand real answers about data sharing and retention before your city becomes the next line item on Flock's client list.