Are FLOCK cameras here to stay?
The short version: A Manhattan Institute video frames Flock ALPRs as inevitable crime-fighting infrastructure — we think 'inevitable' is doing a lot of unexamined work.
Our Take
Rafael Mangual's video for the Manhattan Institute asks whether Flock cameras are "here to stay," and the framing itself tells you where this is headed: treat mass license-plate tracking as a settled fact of modern policing rather than a policy choice communities are still fighting over. That's the think tank's house style — lean into the crime-reduction pitch, skip the part where thousands of networked cameras feed a searchable, retained database that cops, federal agencies, and sometimes private actors can query without a warrant.
"Here to stay" is also doing a lot of work for a technology that's only been widely deployed for a few years, is run by a single private vendor, and has already shown up in immigration sweeps, data-sharing scandals, and audits nobody asked for. Permanence isn't a fact about Flock — it's a goal of the companies and agencies selling the rollout, and normalizing that goal is exactly what pieces like this do, intentionally or not.
We'd rather treat the question as open, because it still is. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your plates, then head to our take-action page if you want to push back before "here to stay" becomes the only answer on the table.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Manhattan Institute, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.