Flock license plate reader cameras stolen near Highway 49 in Auburn
The short version: Someone in Auburn, CA ripped three Flock ALPR cameras off their poles, and we can't say we're shedding tears over hardware built to track every driver's movements.
Our Take
KCRA 3 reports that three Flock Safety cameras — two run by Auburn PD and one by the Placer County Sheriff's Office — vanished from their poles along Highway 49. Authorities are treating it as straightforward theft and property destruction, and legally, it is. But the story only makes news because these cameras have become such a visible, almost provocative fixture of daily life that their disappearance counts as local breaking news. That says something about how normalized mass license plate tracking has become in just a few years.
We're not in the business of cheering on vandalism, but we understand the frustration driving it. These devices quietly log the plate, location, time, and travel patterns of every car that passes, feeding a nationwide database that police departments share with each other — often with little public input before installation and even less transparency after. When communities feel like the only way to push back is destroying hardware in the dead of night, it's usually because the normal channels — city council meetings, public records requests, polite objections — got ignored.
If you'd rather fight this with sunlight instead of bolt cutters, that's exactly what we built our camera map for: find out where Flock has installed readers near you, document them, and push your local officials for real oversight. Check our take-action guide for ways to organize that don't end with a police investigation into missing hardware.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KCRA 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.