City of Ashland utilizes Flock cameras
The short version: A local news segment touts Ashland's Flock camera rollout as a safety win without asking who sees the data, for how long, or under what rules.
Our Take
WSAZ's segment on Ashland's Flock Safety cameras follows the familiar local-news playbook: police say the cameras help solve crimes, a city official nods along, and the story wraps in under two minutes. What's missing, as usual, is any mention of retention periods, who can query the database, whether the footage gets shared with other agencies or federal databases, or what happens when the system misfires on an innocent driver. Local coverage rarely asks these questions because the vendor's talking points are the whole story.
This is how ALPR networks expand across small and mid-sized American cities — not through public debate, but through a quiet contract and a friendly news hit. Ashland residents deserve to know how many cameras are up, where they sit, and what policy governs access to their movements, not just that police like the tool.
Check our camera map to see what's been documented near Ashland, and visit our take-action page if you want to push your city council for real transparency before the next "local news" segment becomes the only public record of how this surveillance got approved.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WSAZ NewsChannel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.