Cancel Flock in Asheville now, and don’t bring it back!
The short version: Asheville council member Kim Roney is pushing to actually terminate the city's Flock contract, and residents should watch closely to make sure 'cancel' doesn't mean 'pause.'
Our Take
Kudos to Kim Roney for doing what too few elected officials bother to do: putting a real vote on the table to end a Flock Safety contract rather than just quietly renewing it behind closed doors. Asheville joins a short but growing list of cities where council members are asking the blunt question — did this network of license plate cameras actually make us safer, or did we just buy a permanent surveillance grid on a subscription plan?
The thing to watch here is the fine print. 'Cancel' can mean a lot of things in municipal government. Does the resolution actually decommission the cameras and purge the data, or does it just pause renewal while the cameras stay bolted to the poles and the vendor waits out the next election cycle? Flock contracts are notoriously sticky, and plenty of cities that voted to 'reconsider' their ALPR programs found the cameras stayed up anyway. Asheville residents should be showing up Tuesday and asking city staff to spell out exactly what termination looks like, in writing.
This fight isn't unique to North Carolina — it's playing out block by block across the country, usually with little public notice until the contract's already signed. If you want to see whether Flock or similar ALPR systems are already running in your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you want to push back locally, our take-action page has tools for exactly this kind of council fight.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Kim Roney for Asheville, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.