County reconsidering use of Flock cameras due to public concerns
The short version: A county weighing public pushback on Flock cameras shows local pressure can still force officials to reconsider surveillance contracts before they become permanent.
Our Take
WSAZ NewsChannel 3 reports that county officials are reconsidering their Flock Safety camera deployment after residents pushed back — a reminder that these systems don't have to be permanent once they're installed. Credit to the WSAZ team for putting a spotlight on local pushback that often gets buried under vendor talking points about "community safety."
This is exactly the pattern we track: a county quietly signs a contract, cameras go up on roads feeding into neighborhoods, and only after the fact do residents start asking who's watching the data, how long it's stored, and who else gets access to it. The fact that public concern is enough to make a county board pause and reconsider is a small but real victory — it shows these deployments aren't inevitable, they're political decisions that can be reversed when enough people show up and ask hard questions.
If you want to see whether a Flock camera is already watching your street, check our map, and if you'd rather not wait for a news crew to show up before your local government reconsiders, our take-action page has tools to raise this at your next county meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WSAZ NewsChannel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.