Flagstaff City Council Public Comment on Flock Safety Cameras | September 2, 2025

Our Take

Credit to Jen's Two Cents for capturing what a lot of these fights actually look like: not a slick ad campaign or a corporate press release, but ordinary residents lining up at the mic to tell their council why they don't want their daily movements logged by a private surveillance vendor. Flagstaff joins a growing list of cities where the public comment period has become the real battleground over Flock Safety, and that matters because these systems are almost always approved quietly, without the kind of scrutiny a packed chamber forces into the record.

What stands out in these local hearings, again and again, is that the pushback isn't partisan noise — it's people across the political spectrum raising the same basic questions: who has access to this data, how long is it kept, and what stops it from being misused by police, ICE, or a stalker with a badge. Flock's pitch to city councils leans hard on solving car theft and Amber Alerts, but it rarely addresses the fact that every plate on every car gets logged whether or not anyone's suspected of anything. Flagstaff's council now has that on record, in public, from its own constituents.

If you're in Flagstaff or anywhere else wondering whether your city already has these cameras watching your commute, check our camera map to see what's been documented near you, and if you want to push back the way these residents did, our take-action page has the tools to help you organize before the next vote.