Cleveland City Council to hear evaluation on ShotSpotter, consider Flock Safety proposal

Our Take

Credit to WKYC Channel 3 for flagging this before it slides through on a quiet council night. Cleveland has run ShotSpotter since 2020, and now that its results are finally up for public evaluation, the city is simultaneously entertaining a Flock Safety proposal. That's the playbook we see over and over: instead of asking hard questions about whether the last surveillance tool actually worked, cities layer on a new one and call it progress.

ShotSpotter has a well-documented history of false positives, high costs, and murky effectiveness data in cities across the country. If Cleveland's own evaluation raises similar red flags, that should be a reason to slow down on Flock, not fast-track it. ALPR networks like Flock don't just listen for gunshots — they log every plate that passes a camera, building a searchable record of where residents drive, when, and how often, regardless of whether anyone's suspected of anything.

Cleveland residents deserve to see the actual ShotSpotter numbers before council signs off on a system that expands tracking citywide. If you want to know whether Flock cameras are already watching your street, check the map, and if you want to push back on this rollout, our take-action page has tools to make your voice heard at the next council meeting.