WSAZ Investigates | Business owners react to Flock cameras
The short version: WSAZ NewsChannel 3 spotlights local business owners questioning Flock cameras, echoing a pattern of communities learning about ALPR rollouts after the fact.
Our Take
Credit to WSAZ Investigates for doing what too few local newsrooms bother to do: asking the people who actually live and work near these cameras what they think. When business owners start raising eyebrows at Flock Safety's license plate readers popping up on their streets, it's a signal that the usual pitch — "it's just for public safety, nothing to see here" — isn't landing the way police departments and city councils assume it will.
This is the pattern we track constantly: a vendor and a police chief announce a contract, cameras go up fast, and the public conversation happens after the fact, if it happens at all. Business owners are stakeholders too — their customers' comings and goings get logged into a searchable database they never agreed to, often with little clarity on who can access that data, for how long, or under what oversight. That's not a minor footnote; it's the whole ballgame when it comes to due process and Fourth Amendment concerns.
We'd encourage anyone in this WSAZ coverage area, or watching from anywhere else, to check our camera map to see what's already been documented nearby, and to use our take-action resources if you want to push your city council for real answers before the next contract gets signed.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WSAZ NewsChannel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.