BREAKING NEWS: St. Paul opts to remove the city's 2 Flock cameras.

Our Take

Credit to KSTP 5 Eyewitness News for getting the mayor and police chief on record fast. This is a real, if partial, win: a city government actually listened to pushback and pulled its two Flock cameras rather than just promising a "review" that goes nowhere. That almost never happens, and it proves these fights are winnable when residents and council members push back on vendor contracts sold as a quiet line item.

But don't mistake this for St. Paul going dark. Ramsey County's sheriff made clear the county's ten cameras aren't going anywhere, and county-owned infrastructure often feeds the same regional databases and interagency sharing agreements that city cameras do. Two cameras gone doesn't mean the surveillance net around St. Paul loosened much — it means the jurisdiction holding the keys changed, which raises its own transparency and oversight questions about who's actually accountable for that data now.

This is exactly the kind of jurisdictional shell game we track across the country: city pulls back, county fills in, and the public loses the thread of who's watching. Check our map to see what's logged near you, and if your city or county has Flock cameras up, use our take-action resources to push for the same kind of public accountability St. Paul just delivered.