At least two Flock cameras removed again in Grass Valley

Our Take

Credit to ABC10 for staying on this story, because it's a perfect case study in how sticky these surveillance contracts really are. Grass Valley's city council did the right thing and killed its Flock Safety deal back in August. But weeks later, cameras that should have been gone were back up on poles, reportedly after being "serviced" under maintenance terms the city says it never agreed to reinstate. That's not a clerical error — that's a company treating a cancellation like a suggestion.

This is exactly the pattern we track: communities vote to end ALPR surveillance, and the infrastructure lingers anyway, tangled up in vendor paperwork, service agreements, and finger-pointing about who authorized what. Flock's business model depends on cameras staying mounted and feeding data into its national network, even in towns that have formally said no. When a company doesn't respond to a city's cancellation notice, that silence is doing a lot of work.

Grass Valley residents deserve a straight answer on how many cameras are actually down, who authorized the "maintenance," and when the contract is truly closed. If you want to see what's still running near you, check our camera map, and if your city is fighting the same battle, our take-action page has steps for making a cancellation actually stick.