Collegedale Commissioners Vote to remove flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to WDEF News 12 for covering this one, because stories about elected bodies actually voting to remove Flock Safety cameras are still the exception, not the rule. Most city councils we track go the other direction: quietly renewing contracts, adding more poles, and expanding data-sharing agreements without ever putting the question to a real public vote. If Collegedale commissioners chose to reverse course, that's worth highlighting as a model for what accountability can look like.

We don't have the full transcript of the meeting, so we won't pretend to know every argument commissioners raised. But the fact that this went to a formal vote at all suggests residents pushed back hard enough that officials couldn't just rubber-stamp a renewal. That's the pattern we want to see more of nationwide: communities asking who has access to the driving histories these cameras generate, how long the data sits in a database, and whether a private company's marketing promises actually match its track record.

Every city weighing whether to keep or cut ALPR contracts needs residents paying attention, showing up, and asking hard questions before the cameras go up, not after. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and if your town is debating a Flock contract, our take-action page has tools to help you organize before the vote, not after the cameras are already bolted to the pole.