Franklin County votes to sever ties with Flock Safety amid privacy backlash

Our Take

CBS 21 News is reporting something we don't get to cover nearly often enough: a unanimous vote to kick Flock Safety to the curb. Franklin County commissioners didn't just quietly let the contract lapse — they rejected renewal outright after hearing from residents who clearly weren't buying the "it's just for finding stolen cars" pitch. That's a meaningful signal. These cameras tend to get installed with little public debate, and once they're up, local governments rarely revisit the decision. Franklin County did, and the answer was no.

What makes this notable is the unanimity. This isn't a lone commissioner grandstanding — it's an entire board deciding that a private company logging every vehicle that passes through the county isn't worth the privacy tradeoff, regardless of the sales pitch about crime stats. Flock's business model depends on inertia: get a camera installed, make the data feel indispensable to local PD, and hope nobody asks hard questions about retention, access, or who else gets to query that database. When communities do ask, support can evaporate fast.

If you're in a county watching its own Flock contract come up for renewal, this is the playbook: show up, ask about data sharing and retention, and make commissioners justify the cameras rather than rubber-stamp them. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and hit up our take-action page for tools to push your own local government toward the exit Franklin County just took.