Video: Auburn City Councilor Christina Calarco on ending Flock contract
The short version: An Auburn city councilor makes a public case for ditching Flock Safety, showing local officials are willing to push back on ALPR contracts.
Our Take
Credit to The Citizen Newspaper for capturing this moment on camera: a sitting city councilor standing up in an open meeting and questioning why her city should keep paying for a network of license plate readers that logs everyone's movements, guilty or not. That kind of public accountability is exactly how these contracts should be scrutinized — not rubber-stamped in a consent agenda while nobody's watching.
Auburn isn't unique. Councils across the country signed multi-year Flock deals during a wave of "crime-fighting technology" pitches, often without much debate about data retention, audit access, or who else can tap into that surveillance grid — including federal agencies. When a councilor like Calarco goes on record against renewal, it gives residents in other towns a template for the questions they should be asking their own representatives before the next budget cycle locks them in for years.
If your city has a Flock system running and you didn't know it, check our camera map to see what's already been installed near you, then use our take-action guide to show up at your own council meeting the way Auburn residents just did.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Citizen Newspaper, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.