What towns have terminated Flock cameras and which ones decided to keep them?

Our Take

North Kingstown just did something more town councils should be willing to do: hit the brakes and walk away. Matthew McCoy's conversation on "Gene Off Script" is worth a watch not because it's flashy, but because it's a rare example of an elected official publicly walking through the actual reasoning for killing a Flock contract instead of just rubber-stamping a renewal. That kind of transparency is exactly what's missing in most of the hundreds of towns that signed up for this technology without ever asking hard questions first.

What makes this story useful is the contrast baked into the headline itself: some towns terminate, others renew, and the decision often comes down to whether anyone on the council actually dug into the data-sharing agreements, retention policies, and who else gets access to the plate reads once they're logged. North Kingstown apparently found enough red flags to say no thanks. Other Rhode Island communities, and thousands of towns nationwide, haven't had that same reckoning yet, often because nobody's forced the conversation into the open.

Credit to NBC 10 WJAR for giving a local lawmaker the platform to explain a termination decision instead of burying it in a council meeting nobody attends. If you want to see whether your own town is running these cameras, check our map, and if you'd rather be the reason your council has this same debate, our take-action page has what you need to get started.