St. Paul to remove 2 Flock cameras after council vote

Our Take

Credit to KSTP 5 Eyewitness News for covering this one, because it's a textbook example of why "the city removed its cameras" headlines deserve a second look. St. Paul's council did the right thing by holding a public hearing and voting to pull two city-owned Flock units. That's a win for residents who organized and showed up. But the story doesn't end there: Ramsey County's sheriff has made clear the county-owned cameras in the same area aren't going anywhere.

This is the shell game that makes fighting ALPR sprawl so exhausting. A city council can vote out its own hardware, generate a feel-good local news segment, and the surveillance dragnet barely shrinks because a different government entity with overlapping jurisdiction just keeps its own feed running. Residents in St. Paul may reasonably believe they got their privacy back when, in practice, their plates are still getting logged every time they drive past a county-owned pole. Multi-jurisdictional patchworks like this are exactly why transparency on who owns and operates each camera matters as much as the raw camera count.

If you live in or around St. Paul, don't assume two fewer cameras means you're in the clear — check our camera map to see what's actually still recording near you, and if you want to push back on the county's refusal to budge, our take-action page has tools for making your voice heard at the next hearing.