HERO or CRIMINAL? Man Arrested for Removing Canceled Flock Cameras
The short version: A New Mexico man filmed himself tearing down Flock ALPR cameras he says were already decommissioned, and got arrested for it — a stunt that says a lot about public frustration with unaccountable surveillance.
Our Take
Credit to (In)JusticeForAll? for putting this one on camera, because it captures something we hear from readers constantly: people are fed up with license plate readers popping up on their streets with zero public input, and some are done waiting for city councils to act. Johnvon Martinez didn't just complain online — he grabbed tools and started pulling Flock units down in Bernalillo County, then got arrested for it. Whether you call him a hero or a vandal, the case highlights how little recourse ordinary residents feel they have once these cameras go up.
We don't endorse self-help demolition of surveillance infrastructure — it's a fast track to felony charges and it hands Flock and local PD a sympathetic victim narrative instead of a policy fight. But the underlying anger is legitimate. These networks get installed through opaque contracts, often without a public vote, and 'canceled' or not, the hardware and the data pipeline tend to linger. That ambiguity — is it live, is it decommissioned, who even knows — is exactly the kind of unaccountability that fuels vigilante responses like this one.
If you want your county's cameras mapped instead of guessed at, check our camera map, and if you want to fight this the way that actually sticks — public records requests, council meetings, ordinances — hit up our take-action page before you reach for a wrench.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of (In)JusticeForAll?, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.