New Hanover County pulls plug on Flock camera contract

Our Take

Credit where it's due: WECT News 6 didn't just run one story and move on. Their months-long WECT Investigates series on New Hanover County's Flock cameras appears to have done what public records requests and city council comment periods alone often can't — it put enough sunlight on the program that commissioners decided to pull the plug. That's the playbook. Surveillance vendors count on short attention spans. Local reporters who stay on a story for months are the exception that actually moves votes.

This matters beyond one North Carolina county. Flock's pitch to local governments is always the same: a quiet contract renewal, vague promises about solving crime, and cameras that quietly network your plate data into a system shared with hundreds of other agencies. Most communities never get a WECT-style investigation shining a light on how that data is actually used, audited, or sold. New Hanover getting out of its contract is proof that these deals aren't permanent — they're political, and they can be unwound when residents and reporters refuse to let them fade into the background.

If you want to know whether your own county has quietly signed up for this kind of network, check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and head to take action for templates on pushing your local commissioners to do what New Hanover just did.