Doctor Doom Shows Support For Flock Cameras At Seattle City Council Meeting

Our Take

Credit where it's due: Dirtnap Collectibles caught something that feels almost too on-the-nose. A guy in a full Doctor Doom costume steps up to the mic at a Seattle City Council meeting and delivers earnest support for Flock Safety's camera network like he's addressing the Latverian senate. It's funny. It's also a pretty accurate satire of how these meetings actually go — a parade of two-minute comments, most from people who never got a real chance to weigh in on the contract terms, the data-sharing policies, or who else gets access to the plate reads once they're logged.

Strip away the cape and the joke lands on something serious: public comment is often the only formal checkpoint before a city signs a multi-year deal with a private ALPR vendor. When that checkpoint gets treated as theater — by supporters and critics alike — it's a sign the real decisions are happening somewhere else, with far less scrutiny than a supervillain cosplay gets on YouTube. Seattle isn't unique here; city councils across the country are approving Flock deployments with minimal public debate about retention windows, audit logs, or interagency sharing.

If your own city is heading toward a Flock vote, don't leave the mic to the cosplayers. Check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and hit take action for tools to push your council for real answers before the contract gets signed.