How many license plate readers are in your city? - Today in Ohio

Our Take

Credit to the Today in Ohio crew at cleveland.com for putting a number on what a lot of Northeast Ohioans probably sensed but couldn't confirm: Cuyahoga County is wired with something like 1,700 license plate readers. That's not a handful of cameras watching a few bad intersections. That's a dragnet, stitched together across dozens of municipalities, quietly logging where everyday people drive, when, and how often — all without most of them ever voting on it or being told it was happening.

The scale is the story here. Each individual Flock pole might get waved through by a city council as a tool for solving car break-ins, but nobody on that council is tracking what happens when 1,700 of them talk to each other across county lines. That's how you get a de facto regional tracking network built one small, uncontested approval at a time, with no unified oversight, no consistent retention policy, and no real public debate about whether this is the kind of county Clevelanders want to live in.

If you're in Cuyahoga County, or anywhere else in Ohio, check the map to see what's already watching your block, and head to take action for ways to push back before 1,700 becomes 2,700.