Get the Flock OUT! Monterey County, CA with Roots of Resistance from Courthouse to Salinas City Hall
The short version: Monterey County residents and Roots of Resistance organizers rallied from the courthouse to Salinas City Hall to oppose the Sheriff's push to expand Flock camera coverage into unincorporated areas.
Our Take
Credit to John Doe13k for getting a camera on the ground in Monterey County, where local organizers with Roots of Resistance turned a routine agenda item into a public reckoning. A sheriff's office quietly asking to blanket more unincorporated roads with ALPRs is exactly the kind of mission creep we track nationwide: start small, say it's just for stolen cars, then keep adding cameras until every commute is logged.
What makes this fight worth watching is the venue-hopping — courthouse to city hall — because that's where these contracts actually get decided, usually with little public input until someone shows up with signs and hard questions. Monterey County isn't unique; it's the same playbook county boards and city councils run across the country, hoping nobody checks the vendor invoices or asks who else gets access to the data.
If you want to see whether your own neighborhood already has these cameras watching your plates, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a protest to catch your local government off guard, our take-action page has the tools to get ahead of it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of John Doe13k, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.