Flock work session in Fort Collins on Tuesday
The short version: Fort Collins city council held a work session with police on Flock ALPRs — exactly the kind of public airing every city deserves before signing a surveillance contract.
Our Take
Credit to 9NEWS for covering this one, because work sessions like Fort Collins' are where the real decisions get made — usually with far less attention than a splashy council vote. Getting police and Flock reps in a room with elected officials, on camera, is a small but real win for transparency. Most cities never get this kind of scrutiny before the cameras go up on street poles.
What matters here isn't just whether Fort Collins keeps or expands its network — it's whether residents actually get straight answers about data retention, who can query the system, and whether the sheriff's department is quietly sharing plate scans with ICE or out-of-state agencies chasing abortion or immigration cases. Flock's pitch is always the same: stolen cars, Amber Alerts, peace of mind. What rarely gets said out loud in these sessions is that every plate, on every car, of every resident gets logged and stored whether they're suspected of anything or not.
Fort Collins residents who want to know if they're already being tracked can check our camera map for known Flock locations nearby, and anyone who wants to push their own council toward this kind of public accountability should look at our take-action page for a template on how to get it on the agenda.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 9NEWS, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.