Vadnais Heights City Council Candidate Forum 9.19.26
The short version: A nonpartisan candidate forum is exactly where Vadnais Heights voters should be pressing city council hopefuls on Flock camera contracts and data policy.
Our Take
Credit to the League of Women Voters of White Bear Lake Area for doing the unglamorous work of putting Vadnais Heights council candidates Katherine Doll Kanne, Craig Johnson, Donald Jorgenson, and Kelly Jozwowski in front of voters and real questions. Forums like this rarely make headlines, but they're often the only public record of where local officials actually stand before they're the ones signing surveillance contracts.
We haven't verified whether ALPRs came up directly in this particular forum, and we're not going to put words in any candidate's mouth. But here's the thing: city councils are where Flock Safety deals get approved, renewed, or killed — usually with little scrutiny and even less public debate about data retention, who gets access to license plate logs, or whether the cameras actually reduce crime versus just normalizing constant tracking of everyone who drives through town. If Vadnais Heights hasn't had that conversation yet, residents should be asking their future council members directly, on the record, before the vote, not after another camera pole goes up.
Check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and if you want to push your local officials for transparency, our take-action page has the tools to get started.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of League of Women Voters of White Bear Lake Area, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.