BEAR’S DEFLOCK Grass Valley CA RESPONSE TO DEPUTY GV POLICE CHIEF STEVE JOHNSON
The short version: A Grass Valley resident publicly presses the deputy police chief on Flock ALPRs while asking why Mayor Hilary Hodge has stayed silent.
Our Take
This clip, from creator BaptainsCupboard, captures something we see over and over: a local resident doing the homework that city officials should be doing themselves, then asking pointed questions directly to police leadership about why Flock Safety cameras are going up in Grass Valley. That the mayor appears nowhere in this conversation isn't a small detail — it's the pattern. Police departments sign these contracts, often with little public debate, and elected officials who are supposed to represent constituents on exactly this kind of policy question go quiet when the cameras start recording every car that passes.
Flock's pitch to city councils is always the same: it's just for solving crime, nothing to worry about. But these systems log the movements of everyone, law-abiding or not, build searchable location histories, and get shared across jurisdictions with minimal oversight. When a deputy chief fields public pushback and the mayor stays off camera, that's a governance failure, not just a PR problem. Residents deserve a direct answer from the people they actually elected, not just the department that benefits from the surveillance budget.
If you're in Grass Valley or anywhere else wondering what's already watching your street, check our camera map to see documented ALPR locations near you, and visit our take-action page for tools to push your city council and mayor for real transparency before the next contract renewal.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of BaptainsCupboard, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.