Mayor Bill Collins in Marion Ohio vetoed the flock ban!
The short version: Marion's city council voted 5–4 to ban Flock ALPR cameras, but Mayor Bill Collins vetoed the ban, keeping surveillance alive in a closely watched local fight.
Our Take
Credit to Think Marion for putting a face and a vote count on something that's playing out in city halls across the country: elected representatives listen to constituents, pass a ban, and then a single executive signature tries to undo it. A 5–4 council vote isn't a landslide, but it's a majority saying no to a private company harvesting plate data on every car that passes a fixed point in their town. A mayoral veto overriding that is exactly the kind of move that should make residents ask who this technology is really serving.
Marion is now a case study in how fragile local wins against mass surveillance can be. Flock Safety's pitch to city leaders is always about solving crime, but the actual debate councils are having is about due process, data retention, who gets access to driving patterns, and whether a company's cloud-stored dragnet belongs in a small Ohio city at all. A veto doesn't end that conversation — it just moves it to whether council can muster the votes to override, or whether residents keep the pressure on at the next election.
If you're in Marion or anywhere else watching this fight, check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and head to take-action for concrete steps on pushing back before a veto pen decides it for you.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Think Marion, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.