Cheektowaga and Flock Cameras (town hall meeting tonight! 7.14.26)

Our Take

Credit to Dan Whalen for doing the unglamorous work of pointing a camera at the people who are pointing cameras at us. A town hall in Cheektowaga about Flock Safety's ALPR network is exactly the kind of meeting that decides whether a community gets blanket license plate tracking with zero public input, or whether residents actually get a say before the poles go up.

These local meetings matter more than people realize. Flock contracts are usually approved by a handful of town board members after a sales pitch about reducing crime, with little discussion of data retention, who can query the system, or how plate reads get shared with other agencies and federal databases. Once the hardware is installed, it rarely comes back down. Showing up, asking pointed questions, and getting answers on the record is often the only leverage residents have before the vote.

If you're in Cheektowaga or anywhere else watching your town quietly wire up ALPR coverage, check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action page for talking points and public records tools before your own town hall rolls around.