Brian Helmerson

Our Take

Credit to the DeFlockILM channel for getting a camera into the room where it counts: a county commissioners meeting. Public comment sessions like this one from Brian Helmerson are often the only real check citizens have on a surveillance rollout that typically happens with zero public vote and minimal disclosure. New Hanover County is just the latest jurisdiction where residents are asking the basic questions local officials rarely answer upfront — who has access to this data, how long is it kept, and what happens when it's inevitably shared outside the county line.

These meetings matter more than they get credit for. Flock Safety's pitch to county boards is almost always framed as a narrow tool for solving specific crimes, but the infrastructure itself doesn't stay narrow — networks expand, data-sharing agreements multiply, and oversight tends to lag years behind deployment. A single public comment won't reverse a contract that's already signed, but it puts elected officials on record and builds a local paper trail that groups like DeFlockILM are clearly working to preserve.

If you want to see how dense New Hanover County's ALPR coverage already is, or how it compares to your own area, check our camera map. And if you're thinking about showing up to your own county meeting, our take-action page has the records requests and talking points to help you do it right.