Flock Camera Stolen in Havelock, Duplin County Wildfire & New Bern Entertainment Study

Our Take

WCTI News 12 reports that someone in Havelock, North Carolina cut the pole and wires and walked off with a Flock Safety license plate reader camera outside an ABC store. No arrests yet. Credit to the station's local coverage for putting a spotlight on this, because it's a small story that says a lot about the current moment: these cameras are popping up in parking lots and roadsides across the country with little public input, and some residents are clearly done asking politely for them to be taken down.

We're not in the business of cheering on vandalism, but we understand why people are furious. Flock's pitch to small-town police departments is that these towers are just quiet crime-fighting tools, yet they quietly vacuum up the travel patterns of every driver who passes by, with the data often shared across jurisdictions and sometimes with federal agencies, far outside whatever local debate approved the contract. When a camera gets cut down in the middle of the night, it's worth asking why a community felt that was the only way to register its objection.

If you want to know what's watching your own commute, check our camera map to see documented ALPR locations near you, and if you'd rather push back through official channels than wait for someone to grab a bolt cutter, our take-action page has steps for raising this with your city council or county board before the next camera goes up.