St. Clair Shores pauses Flock camera program amid privacy concerns over data sharing
The short version: St. Clair Shores hits pause on its Flock ALPR program after residents and officials balk at how license plate data could be shared beyond city limits.
Our Take
Credit to WXYZ-TV Detroit for catching this one: a Michigan city council actually hitting the brakes on Flock Safety instead of rubber-stamping another camera contract. St. Clair Shores officials are reportedly wrestling with the same question that keeps coming up in town after town — once your plate data flows into Flock's network, who else gets to see it? That's not a hypothetical. Flock's system is built around data sharing between agencies, and once a city flips that switch, local control over the data gets a lot blurrier than the sales pitch suggests.
This pause matters because it's rare. Most councils approve these systems with a few minutes of discussion and a vendor demo, never grappling with retention periods, audit logs, or the fact that a federal agency or an out-of-state department could query local plate reads without anyone in St. Clair Shores ever knowing. Residents pushing back here are doing the due diligence their council should've done before the cameras went up, not after.
If you want to see whether your own neighborhood has quietly joined this network, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your city pause before it plugs in, not after, our take-action resources walk you through how to make that case at your next council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WXYZ-TV Detroit | Channel 7, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.