Greenville Police Dept says 'NO' to flock cameras
The short version: A local PD reportedly rejecting Flock Safety's ALPR pitch shows that pushback on mass surveillance can come from inside the system, not just outside it.
Our Take
Credit to Jessy Mendoza for putting this on record: a police department weighing a Flock Safety contract and apparently deciding the cameras aren't worth it. We don't have the full transcript or the department's internal reasoning, so we're not going to speculate on specifics, but the headline alone is notable. Most of the coverage we see is about departments rushing to bolt these cameras onto every intersection they can find. A department saying 'no' is the exception, not the rule.
That exception matters because it proves the decision is still a choice, not an inevitability. Flock's sales pitch leans hard on the idea that every city is already doing this, that refusing is falling behind on public safety. When a police department pumps the brakes, it undercuts that narrative and hands local activists and city councils elsewhere a concrete example to point to when they ask 'why do we need this?'
We'd love to see the reasoning behind a 'no' get more airtime — cost, data retention, lack of oversight, Fourth Amendment concerns, whatever it is. Communities considering their own ALPR contracts deserve that kind of transparency before, not after, the cameras go up. If you want to know what's already watching your plates, check our camera map, and if your town is facing a similar decision, our take-action resources can help you make the case before the vote happens.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Jessy Mendoza, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.