Darth Vadar speaks in support of Flock cameras at public safety meeting

Our Take

NBC New York caught a moment almost too strange to script: a man in a Darth Vader costume stepped up to a public safety committee microphone to defend Flock Safety's license plate readers. It's a funny clip, and credit to NBC for airing it, but the costume is a sideshow. The real story is that a city council chamber is exactly where these fights get decided — not in press releases, not in slick Flock sales demos, but in half-empty meeting rooms where most residents never show up.

That's the part worth sitting with. Flock's pitch to local governments is built on fear and convenience: catch the bad guy, solve the case, keep everyone safe. What rarely gets debated in those same meetings is who else gets swept up in a database that logs every vehicle's movements, how long that data sits around, who can query it, and whether any of it actually reduces crime versus just generating more surveillance infrastructure that outlives the officials who approved it.

Costumed or not, public comment is still the main lever communities have before these systems go live. If you want to know whether your town already has ALPR cameras watching your street, check our camera map, and if you'd rather be the person at the podium making the actual case against surveillance creep, our take-action page has what you need to show up prepared — no costume required.