Flock cameras being vandalized, stolen in Twin Cities

Our Take

Credit to FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul and reporter Mike Manzoni for documenting what we're seeing pop up in city after city: people are fed up with Flock Safety cameras watching their every move, and some are taking matters into their own hands. Whether it's spray paint, bags over lenses, or cameras disappearing entirely, this isn't random mischief — it's a grassroots reaction to a surveillance dragnet that was installed with little public debate and even less oversight.

We don't encourage property destruction, but we understand the frustration driving it. Flock's pitch to local governments is always the same: a few cameras to catch the bad guys. What residents actually get is a network logging every vehicle's movements, often without clear retention limits, audit trails, or meaningful community consent. When people feel like the only way to push back is to physically remove the hardware, that's a sign the official channels — city council meetings, public comment periods, transparency requests — aren't working the way they should.

If you're in the Twin Cities or anywhere else wondering just how many of these cameras are watching your daily commute, check our camera map to see what's been deployed near you. And if you'd rather fight this through the front door than the parking lot at night, our take-action resources show how to organize, file records requests, and pressure local officials to roll these programs back.