Starke County sheriff cites public opinion, data concerns for ending Flock contract
The short version: A Starke County, Indiana sheriff is dropping his Flock Safety contract, citing public pushback and worries about where ALPR data ends up.
Our Take
Credit to WNDU 16 News Now for getting this on record: a sitting sheriff walking away from Flock Safety isn't a PR stunt pulled off by activists, it's a law enforcement official admitting the math doesn't work anymore. When the people footing the bill start asking pointed questions about who can query a statewide camera network and why, that pressure matters more than any press release from Flock's marketing team.
Data concerns are the real story here. Flock's pitch has always been "just for your county," but the national lookup network means a camera in Starke County can surface in a search run by an agency hundreds of miles away, for reasons that never get explained to local residents. Once a sheriff starts asking who else is touching that data, the trust that sold the contract in the first place tends to evaporate fast.
Indiana is quietly becoming a case study in what happens when communities actually look under the hood of these contracts instead of taking the sales pitch at face value. If your county hasn't had that conversation yet, check our camera map to see what's already watching you, and head to our take-action page for ways to get this in front of your own local officials.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WNDU 16 News Now, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.