Addressing city council about surreptitious recording with Flock Safety cameras

Our Take

Credit to Dan Weecks for doing the unglamorous work of showing up to a zoning meeting with his phone propped on a podium and just asking the obvious question: who approved these cameras? What he found is a pattern we see over and over — three ALPR units went up at his neighborhood's entrance, and neither the mayor, other council members, nor the sheriff's department could say they'd authorized them. That's not a conspiracy, it's just how Flock's sales pipeline often works: a department head or private HOA signs a contract, hardware gets bolted to a pole, and the elected officials who are supposed to represent constituents on surveillance policy find out after the fact, if they find out at all.

This is exactly why 'it's just for solving crimes' arguments don't hold up. If the people nominally in charge of a jurisdiction can't tell you who put up a camera recording every car that passes, there's no functioning oversight — no data retention policy debate, no public comment period, no vote anyone can point to. Weecks floated a petition to force these cameras through an actual public process or have them removed, which is precisely the kind of grassroots pressure that has gotten systems pulled in other towns.

If you don't know whether Flock or another ALPR vendor has cameras near you, check our map to see what's already been documented, and if you want to push back the way this resident did, our take-action page has templates for public records requests and council comments that actually get answers.