Video: Auburn City Councilor Craig Diego on Flock contract
The short version: An Auburn city councilor's on-record comments about the town's Flock Safety contract show how little public scrutiny these deals usually get before cameras go up.
Our Take
Credit to The Citizen Newspaper for doing what local outlets should do more of: putting a sitting councilor on camera to talk through the actual terms of a Flock Safety contract. Most of these deals get approved in quiet consent-agenda votes, with little debate about cost, data retention, or who gets access to the footage. Just getting a councilor like Craig Diego to speak publicly about it is a small but meaningful act of transparency.
That's the real story here, not just Auburn's specific contract. Across the country, city councils are signing multi-year agreements with Flock without public hearings, without independent audits, and often without residents even knowing the cameras are being installed until they see the poles go up. When a local official is willing to discuss the contract on the record, it gives residents a rare window into how these negotiations actually work — what the city is paying, what oversight (if any) exists, and what recourse the public has if the program expands or data gets misused.
If you live in or near Auburn, don't wait for the next council meeting to ask questions. Check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to push your own council for the same kind of public accountability this video captures.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Citizen Newspaper, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.