A $27,500 discount, and the price did not move

Our Take

Magnetic Norse did the unglamorous work of actually reading two Michigan procurement packets line by line, and what they found is a sales trick as old as car dealerships: quote an inflated number, then "discount" it back down to the price you were always going to charge. Waterford Township's police chief tells the Board of Trustees he negotiated a $27,500 discount on Flock's OS-Plus platform. Troy's paperwork shows the same move at a much bigger scale — a $347,500, five-year contract dressed up with an $80,000 "discount" table. The math never changes the bottom line; it just changes how elected officials feel about approving it.

This matters because these discount tables aren't decoration — they're persuasion tools aimed at the exact people who are supposed to be exercising oversight before a mass-surveillance network goes up in their town. If a trustee believes they fought hard and saved taxpayers $27,500, they're far less likely to ask harder questions about data retention, audit logs, or whether 25 fixed cameras plus portables is even necessary for a township this size. Flock's pricing playbook works because procurement packets get rubber-stamped in minutes at meetings nobody outside city hall is watching.

That's exactly why independent channels like Magnetic Norse digging through public records matter, and why we keep pushing readers to look at what's actually been approved in their own backyard. Check our camera map to see if Flock has already landed near you, and if your town is about to vote on a contract like this, our take-action page has what you need to show up and ask where that "discount" really came from.