Cleveland City Council to hear evaluation on ShotSpotter, consider Flock Safety proposal
The short version: Cleveland weighs ShotSpotter's mixed track record while city council reportedly considers adding Flock Safety ALPRs, another step toward layered surveillance.
Our Take
WKYC Channel 3 reports that Cleveland City Council is set to review years of ShotSpotter performance data at the same time it's reportedly weighing a Flock Safety proposal. That pairing should raise eyebrows. ShotSpotter has a well-documented history in other cities of flooding officers into neighborhoods for false alarms, and now the same council chambers debating its worth are apparently entertaining a second surveillance system with even broader reach — one that doesn't just listen for gunshots, it logs every car that passes a camera, tagging drivers by location and time whether or not they've done anything wrong.
This is the pattern we track closely at DeFlock: a city adopts one surveillance tool, the results are shaky or unproven, and instead of pausing to ask hard questions, officials pivot to bolt on another system rather than scale back. Flock's ALPR network doesn't operate in a vacuum — it feeds a searchable, retained database that other agencies can tap into, often with little public oversight of how long data is kept or who gets access. Residents deserve a real accounting of whether ShotSpotter actually reduced gun violence before city council green-lights a camera network that will track their comings and goings indefinitely.
If you're in Cleveland or anywhere else where Flock cameras are creeping onto street corners, check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and visit our take-action page for ways to push back before city council votes lock in another layer of surveillance.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WKYC Channel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.