Taos Defunds 18 Flock Cameras in $54,000 Vote

Our Take

Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for flagging this one — it's the kind of story that doesn't make national news but matters more than most of what does. Eighteen cameras logging nearly every car entering or leaving a town of nine thousand people is not a policing tool, it's a dragnet. When Taos's council voted to strip the $54,000 renewal, they weren't just haggling over a line item — they were making a statement that a private vendor doesn't get an automatic re-up just because the cameras are already bolted to the poles.

The detail worth sitting with is that the money stays with the police department. This wasn't about defunding law enforcement. It was about defunding Flock specifically, which suggests the council did the math on what mass ALPR surveillance actually buys a small town versus what it costs residents in privacy and vendor lock-in. That's a distinction more city councils need to start making, because the sales pitch from Flock is always framed as officer safety, never as "we're building a permanent movement log on every driver in your county."

Taos joins a short but growing list of communities that looked at the contract renewal and said no. If you want to see whether your own town is wired up the same way, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a council vote to happen to you, our take-action guide walks through how to get this same fight started where you live.