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Watch · Our Take

Are Flock cameras coming to your city?

WSAZ NewsChannel 3 · 2 months ago

The short version: WSAZ NewsChannel 3 flags Flock cameras potentially expanding into local communities, underscoring how quietly these networks spread city by city.

Our Take

WSAZ NewsChannel 3 is asking a question that local newsrooms across the country should be asking more often: are Flock cameras coming to your city? That headline alone tells you something important about how this technology rolls out. It's rarely announced with fanfare or public debate. Instead, a city council quietly approves a contract, a police department signs on for a "pilot program," and suddenly every car entering or leaving town is logged, timestamped, and run through a database that outlives any single investigation.

What we appreciate about coverage like this is the framing itself — treating ALPR expansion as news, not just a routine procurement story buried in a council agenda. Most residents genuinely don't know these cameras exist until they spot the solar-paneled pole on their commute, and by then the system is already operational and the data is already flowing to whoever Flock and local law enforcement decide to share it with. Local TV segments that simply ask "is this coming here?" do more to inform the public than most official press releases ever will.

If you're in West Virginia, Kentucky, or Ohio and wondering whether your own street already has one of these cameras, check our map before you take the local PD's word for it. And if you'd rather your city not become the next quiet rollout, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up before the contract is signed, not after.

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.