UMPD takes down Flock camera due to community concerns

Our Take

Credit to KARE 11 for covering a rare reversal: the University of Minnesota Police Department removed a Flock Safety camera from Minneapolis's Cedar-Riverside neighborhood after community members raised concerns. Cedar-Riverside is a dense, historically immigrant community, and residents clearly understood what a lot of city councils still don't — that a camera logging every plate that passes isn't a neutral safety tool, it's a permanent record of who goes where, when, and how often, sitting in a database that can be queried, shared, or subpoenaed long after the fact.

Stories like this matter because the usual pattern is the opposite: departments install Flock cameras quietly, expand the network, and only face scrutiny after the system's already entrenched and politically hard to unwind. A college police department actually taking a camera down because neighbors objected is the exception that proves removal is possible when people organize and show up to meetings. It's a small case study in what accountability can look like before mass ALPR adoption becomes irreversible.

If you want to see whether there's a Flock camera near you, check our map, and if your neighborhood wants the kind of result Cedar-Riverside just got, our take-action page has the tools to push back.