St. Paul City Council president looking to end Flock camera contracts in city

Our Take

Credit to KSTP 5 Eyewitness News for covering this while it's still a live fight instead of after the cameras are bolted to every intersection. What's notable here isn't just that a council president wants out of Flock contracts — it's that this is happening in a city that already has the gear installed. Most places we track go the other direction: quiet renewals, expanded contracts, more cameras, less debate. St. Paul walking it back, even as a proposal, is the exception that proves how rarely local officials get asked to justify these systems once the invoices start.

The 'safety versus surveillance' framing in the report is the right one, but it undersells how one-sided that trade usually is. Flock and similar ALPR networks log every plate that passes, retained and searchable, with little public accounting for who queries the data, how long it's kept, or whether it's shared with agencies outside the city that approved it. A council debate is a chance to actually surface those numbers instead of taking a vendor's pitch deck at face value.

If you're in the Twin Cities or anywhere else with cameras going up, don't wait for your council to stumble onto this on its own. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to push your own city toward the kind of scrutiny St. Paul is only now getting around to.