Flock Cameras: Are Police Using Fear to Win Public Support?

Our Take

It's worth pausing on who's saying this. Erik Lavigne at Two Cops One Donut isn't some outside agitator — he's coming from inside the tent, and even he's noticing that the pitch for Flock cameras has shifted from "here's how this tool works and here's the oversight around it" to "imagine if it was YOUR kid who got kidnapped." That's not a public safety argument, that's a sales tactic, and it works precisely because nobody wants to be the city council member or the neighbor who says no to catching a hypothetical child predator.

The problem is that fear-based pitches skip the actual questions: who can query these plate reads, how long is the data kept, is it shared with other agencies or federal databases, and what happens when the system is wrong or misused. Departments that lean on worst-case scenarios instead of answering those questions are telling on themselves. If the accountability structure were solid, they wouldn't need to scare anyone into supporting it.

This is exactly the gap we track. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and hit take action if you want to push your local officials toward transparency instead of talking points.