Flock cameras destroyed
The short version: A Suffolk, Virginia man now faces charges after police say pieces of dismantled Flock ALPR cameras turned up in his home, WAVY TV 10 reports.
Our Take
Credit to WAVY TV 10 for the on-the-ground reporting here, because this story is a symptom of a bigger problem, not the problem itself. When people start ripping surveillance hardware off utility poles with their bare hands, it's usually because they feel like they have no other way to push back against cameras that showed up in their neighborhood without a vote, a hearing, or even a heads-up.
We don't endorse vandalism, and destroying a camera doesn't make the network behind it go away — Flock just ships a replacement and the county foots the bill. But the frustration is real and it's spreading. Communities across the country are discovering these poles after the fact, with no say in whether their daily movements get logged and shared with a company database. That's the actual fight: transparency and consent, fought in council meetings and public records requests, not in the dead of night with a wrench.
If you want to know what's watching your own streets, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back the legal way, our take-action page has tools for getting these systems in front of the public instead of hidden on a pole.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WAVY TV 10, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.