Cedar City Council Votes to Renew Flock Surveillance Contract: Rex Shipp vs Thomas Loveheart
The short version: Cedar City's council renewed its Flock ALPR contract despite pushback, with resident Thomas Loveheart's clash with Rex Shipp spotlighting how little scrutiny these deals get.
Our Take
Another year, another rubber stamp. According to Thomas Loveheart's account, Cedar City's council renewed its Flock Safety contract, and the friction between Loveheart and council member Rex Shipp is a familiar scene playing out in small towns everywhere: a resident pressing for real answers about camera placement, data retention, and access, and officials treating the renewal as routine business rather than a decision that deserves public debate.
That's the pattern we keep seeing. These contracts get sold as a simple crime-fighting tool, then quietly renewed year after year with little transparency about who can query the data, how long it's kept, or whether the cameras are actually reducing crime versus just accumulating a database of everyone's movements. When a single council member is the loudest voice in the room, it means the public didn't get the debate it deserved before the vote.
Credit to Loveheart for pushing the issue into the open, even if the outcome wasn't what he wanted. If you want to see whether Cedar City or your own town is running Flock cameras, check our map, and if you want to push back before your council's next renewal vote, our take-action guide has the playbook.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Thomas Loveheart, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.