Flock Approved for Codington County

Our Take

Another day, another county commission nodding through a Flock Safety contract. Creator James Simmons documented the Codington County approval, and while we don't have the full transcript or vote breakdown here, the pattern should sound familiar by now: a vendor pitch about "solving crime," a short public comment window, and a vote that locks a rural South Dakota county into a recurring surveillance subscription that feeds data into a network far beyond its borders.

What makes these small-county approvals worth watching isn't the size of the budget line — it's the precedent. Once cameras go up on county roads, that license plate data doesn't stay local. It can be queried by other agencies, including ones outside South Dakota, often with little oversight of who's searching and why. Residents rarely get a say after the fact; the time to ask hard questions is before the contract is signed, not after the poles are installed.

We appreciate Simmons for putting this meeting on record so people outside the room can see how fast these decisions move. If you want to know whether Flock or similar ALPR systems are already watching roads near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your own county's version of this vote, our take-action guide has steps for showing up before approval day.