CCC Special: What The FLOCK? | Flock Safety, Crime Prevention & Athens’ Surveillance Debate

Our Take

Credit to the Classic City Crime Podcast for doing what too few local outlets bother with: sitting down and actually unpacking a community's fight over Flock Safety cameras instead of just repeating a press release. Athens-Clarke County's monthslong back-and-forth over ALPRs and a Real Time Crime Center is a microcosm of what's happening in hundreds of towns across the country right now, usually with far less public scrutiny.

What makes these local debates matter is that they're where the actual decisions get made. Council votes, procurement contracts, data-sharing agreements — this is the level where Flock's pitch about 'solving crime' either gets a rubber stamp or gets pushed back on by residents asking who's watching the watchers. Once a network goes live, the footprint rarely shrinks; it expands, often quietly, into neighboring jurisdictions and new use cases nobody voted on.

If you're in Georgia or anywhere else wondering whether cameras like these are already clocking your plate, check our camera map to see what's nearby, and if your own city is having this conversation, our take-action page has tools for showing up before the contract is signed, not after.