Shepard Safety - Casa Grande

Our Take

Credit to creator Jacob Petrosky for doing the unglamorous work that actually moves the needle: showing up to a city council meeting and speaking on the record. Whether the vendor is Flock or, in this case, Shepard Safety, the pattern is the same — a company pitches automated license plate readers as a simple crime-fighting tool, and unless someone in the room asks hard questions, the contract sails through on a consent agenda with almost no public scrutiny.

That's exactly why these meetings matter more than most people realize. Council chambers are where the real decisions about surveillance infrastructure get made, often with minimal debate and even less understanding of how the data gets stored, shared, or misused down the line. One resident standing up and saying 'you should ask questions too' can be the difference between a rubber-stamped camera network and a community that actually knows what it's signing up for.

If Casa Grande is getting cameras, it almost certainly isn't the only city in that boat — check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and if you want a template for speaking up like Petrosky did, our take-action page has resources to help you push back before the vote, not after.