'Tracking everybody, everywhere': Richmonders rally against Flock license plate readers
The short version: Richmond residents pushed back on RPD's Flock ALPR network, echoing a national pattern: crime-fighting sold to the public, mass tracking delivered in practice.
Our Take
WRIC's 8News covered Richmonders showing up to say what a lot of us have been saying for a while now: a camera on every corridor logging every plate isn't 'targeted policing,' it's a dragnet. The phrase one resident used — 'tracking everybody, everywhere' — is the whole problem in five words. Flock doesn't wait for probable cause. It builds a searchable travel history on every driver who passes its lenses, guilty or not, and that database doesn't stay put. It gets queried by other agencies, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with the case it was supposedly installed for.
Richmond isn't unique here, and that's exactly the point. City councils across the country are approving these contracts with minimal public debate, often on the promise that the tech only helps solve the crimes that already happened. What doesn't get mentioned enough at these council meetings is how easily that same infrastructure enables location tracking of political activists, journalists, people seeking reproductive care, or anyone else a department decides is worth watching. Once the cameras are up, the mission always creeps.
Credit to WRIC for putting actual residents' objections on the record instead of just running the police department's talking points. If you want to see whether Flock or similar ALPRs are already watching your commute, check the map, and if Richmond's fight sounds familiar, our take-action page has steps for pushing back at your own council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WRIC ABC 8News, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.