City of Sheboygan covers all Flock cameras, leaders call for them to be removed
The short version: Sheboygan leaders moved to cover and remove Flock ALPR cameras citywide, a rare reversal that shows public pressure can actually roll back surveillance infrastructure.
Our Take
When a city government goes from installing automated license plate readers to physically covering them up and demanding removal, that's not a minor policy tweak — it's an admission that the surveillance rollout went sideways. WISN 12's report on Sheboygan is worth watching because it captures something we rarely see: elected officials publicly backing away from Flock Safety's promises after presumably realizing the tradeoffs weren't what residents signed up for.
This matters because Flock's pitch to city councils is almost always the same — a few cameras, a narrow crime-fighting use case, limited data retention. What residents often don't hear until later is how that data gets shared across agencies, how long it's kept, and how little oversight exists once the network is live. Sheboygan's pushback is a reminder that these systems aren't permanent fixtures just because a vendor installed them; local leaders can and do say no after the fact.
Credit to WISN 12 for covering a local surveillance story that national outlets usually skip. If you want to see whether your own city has quietly added ALPR cameras to its streets, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a scandal to force a reversal, our take-action resources can help you raise the issue before the cameras go up.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WISN 12 News, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.