Thomas Gaume Public Comment & City Attorney Rebuttal on Flock LPR (July 2, 2026)

Our Take

Credit to Thomas Gaume for doing the unglamorous work of showing up to a city council meeting and putting a hard question on the record: why is Palm Bay letting Flock Safety cameras log every plate that passes, absent a warrant, absent probable cause, absent much of anything except a subscription payment? That's the whole ballgame with ALPR expansion — it rarely gets debated at the state or federal level where it belongs. It gets rubber-stamped in city council chambers by people who trust a vendor's sales pitch more than their constituents' privacy.

The city attorney's rebuttal is worth paying attention to because it's the same playbook every jurisdiction reaches for: cite officer safety, cite stolen-car recoveries, wave away the Fourth Amendment concern by noting plates are 'in public view.' That argument conveniently ignores that a single plate scan is nothing like a networked, retained, searchable database tracking where you drive, when, and how often — which is exactly what Flock's system builds, one camera at a time, city by city.

This is why local meetings matter more than people think. Council members respond to residents who show up, not to op-eds. If you want to know whether your own town already has this infrastructure watching your commute, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back the way Gaume did, our take-action page has the tools to get started.