Lincoln Park orders all Flock cameras covered and turned off

Our Take

Credit to Click On Detroit | Local 4 | WDIV for the reporting here: when a handful of Flock cameras in Lincoln Park got damaged, the police chief's answer wasn't to quietly swap out the broken units and carry on — it was to cover and power down all 24 cameras citywide. That's a telling response. It suggests these networks are more fragile, and more dependent on public tolerance, than the companies selling them like to admit.

Vandalism isn't a strategy we're pushing, but it's a symptom worth paying attention to. When people start taking matters into their own hands against a surveillance system, it usually means they were never meaningfully asked whether they wanted it watching their streets in the first place. Twenty-four cameras in one mid-sized city is a lot of eyes logging plates, routes, and patterns on everyday residents who committed no crime — and city councils routinely approve these contracts with little public debate.

If you want to know whether Flock or similar ALPR cameras are already running in your own town, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back through your city council than wait for someone to tape over a lens, our take-action page has the tools to get started.