Police defend Flock cameras amid privacy, civil liberties concerns

Our Take

Credit where it's due: WPRI 12 News is covering a rare and important moment — a town actually voting to remove Flock Safety cameras after residents and officials weighed the privacy tradeoffs and said no thanks. That almost never happens. Once these networks go up, they tend to stay up, quietly expanding while nobody asks whether they're working or who's watching the watchers.

Naturally, the head of the state's police chiefs' association is out defending the technology, and that's worth reading between the lines on. Law enforcement groups have a vested interest in keeping these systems running — they make investigative work easier, full stop. But 'easier for police' has never been the only question that matters. The real question is what a town gains against what it gives up: a permanent, searchable record of everywhere every car goes, held by a private company, with audit logs that too often go unchecked and data-sharing agreements that cross state lines without residents ever voting on it.

This is exactly the kind of local pushback we want to see more of, and it starts with knowing what's already installed in your own community. Check our camera map to see if Flock has quietly rolled into your town, and if you want to push back the way Rhode Island residents just did, our take-action page has the tools to get started.