After vote, Lansing City Council asks admin and police to terminate Flock contracts

Our Take

Credit to WLNS 6 News for covering a story that deserves more attention: a 7-1 council vote in Lansing pushing the city to walk away from its Flock Safety contracts. That's not a symbolic gesture — it's elected officials responding to real concerns about a surveillance network that was installed with little public debate and even less accountability.

What makes this notable is the margin. When a council votes nearly unanimously to unwind a surveillance contract, it usually means residents pushed back hard enough that "public safety" marketing stopped working as a shield. Flock's pitch to cities is always the same — stolen cars, Amber Alerts, officer safety — but it rarely mentions the permanent record of everyone's movements that gets built along the way, or who else can access that data down the line.

Lansing now joins a growing list of cities reconsidering whether blanket ALPR surveillance is worth the tradeoff. If you want to see whether these cameras are watching your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a council vote to do something about it, our take-action page has the tools to start pushing back locally.