Bill McEwen Examines Fresno Police's Use of Flock License Plate Cameras
The short version: GV Wire's Bill McEwen digs into Fresno PD's Flock camera program, weighing audit practices and privacy concerns against the cities that have already walked away from Flock.
Our Take
Credit to Bill McEwen and the GV Wire team for doing what local outlets should be doing everywhere: asking how a police department actually audits its own license plate reader network, not just accepting the vendor's sales pitch. Fresno's setup is a case study in the pattern we see nationwide — a system quietly expands, oversight is thin or self-reported, and the public only finds out the scope of it when a reporter starts asking pointed questions.
The detail worth sitting with is that other cities have already canceled their Flock contracts. That's not noise — it's a signal that elected officials in multiple places looked at the cost, the data retention policies, and the lack of independent audits and decided the tradeoff wasn't worth it. Fresno residents deserve the same scrutiny, especially since Flock's pitch about 'crime prevention' rarely comes with hard, independently verified numbers attached to it.
If you're in the Fresno area or anywhere else, check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and if you want to push back on a local contract renewal, our take-action page has steps for showing up at council meetings before the next vote.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of GV Wire, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.