Pekin approves annual contract with Flock Safety
The short version: Pekin, Illinois joined the growing list of towns renewing Flock Safety contracts with little public debate about what an annual ALPR deal actually locks in.
Our Take
25News WEEK-TV's report on Pekin's Flock Safety renewal is a familiar script: a city council votes yes, a police chief talks about solving crimes, and the cameras keep humming along without much scrutiny of what "annual contract" really means. These deals are designed to auto-renew and quietly expand — more cameras, more data sharing, more agencies pulling from the same network — while the public conversation stays stuck at "it helped catch a stolen car once."
What rarely gets asked in these council meetings is who else can query Pekin's plate data, how long it's retained, and whether residents ever consented to being tracked every time they drive through town. Flock's own audit logs have shown out-of-state and even out-of-agency lookups that have nothing to do with local crime-fighting, and a small-town annual renewal is exactly the kind of low-visibility vote that lets that infrastructure spread unchecked.
Credit to 25News WEEK-TV for putting a spotlight on the vote at all — most of these renewals happen with zero press coverage. If you're in the Pekin area, check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and visit our take-action page for tools to push your local officials for real transparency before the next contract renews itself.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 25News WEEK-TV, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.