Disabled Veteran Speaks Out Against Flock Safety Surveillance | City Council

Our Take

Credit to Metro TXK News for capturing this on camera, because public comment footage like this is exactly what keeps city councils honest. A disabled veteran standing up to tell Texarkana's council that Flock Safety's ALPR network doesn't sit right with him isn't a niche complaint — it's a citizen doing the basic work of democracy that most residents never bother with. When someone who served frames a network of always-on license plate cameras as the kind of overreach he didn't expect to see back home, that lands differently than the usual civil-liberties talking points, and councils should be paying attention.

The concerns raised here — how long data gets retained, who can pull it, and whether there's any real accountability once the cameras go up — are the same questions we keep hearing in city after city. Flock's pitch is always "just a tool for police," but the actual policy, audit logs, and retention periods are where the surveillance state either gets checked or gets a blank check. Texarkana's ongoing records requests and public comment sessions are the slow, unglamorous work of finding out which one it's going to be.

If you're in Texarkana, the ArkLaTex, or anywhere Flock is quietly setting up shop, don't wait for a council meeting to find out your plate's being logged. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action guide to push back before the retention policy is written for you instead of by you.