Twinsburg EPA Stays in City, Digging Ban Lifts With New Contractor Rules

Our Take

Credit to Jabbering With Julie and Northeast Ohio News for capturing something we see over and over again: a resident does the homework city staff should have done months ago, shows up to a council meeting, and asks officials to actually read what she found before they rubber-stamp another year of Flock Safety cameras. The response? Council says it's "still reviewing" her emails. That's a convenient place to be when the renewal is already on the agenda and the contract practically votes itself through on inertia.

This is the pattern that lets ALPR networks expand quietly across Ohio and the rest of the country — not through public debate about retention windows, audit logs, or who gets access to the data, but through procedural momentum. A dredging bid and a contractor rule change get read into the record in the same breath as a surveillance renewal, as if license plate tracking is just another piece of municipal housekeeping. It isn't. Every renewal locks a city into another year of recording residents' movements, with Flock controlling much of the backend and sharing infrastructure that can reach well beyond Twinsburg's borders.

If you live in Twinsburg or anywhere nearby, don't wait for council to finish "reviewing emails" before you weigh in. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action guide to push for real public input before the next vote, not after the contract's signed.