Kershaw County joins the growing debate on Flock cameras
The short version: Kershaw County's sheriff pitched Flock cameras to the county council, but explaining a surveillance system isn't the same as justifying it.
Our Take
Credit to News 19 WLTX for covering this one, because the pattern is becoming painfully familiar: a sheriff shows up to a county council meeting with a slideshow about solved crimes, residents raise concerns, and the cameras usually get approved anyway. Sheriff Lee Boan "understanding why some residents" are uneasy is a nice line, but understanding isn't the same as addressing the actual problem — that Flock's ALPR network logs every passing vehicle, law-abiding or not, and stores that data in a system local agencies don't fully control.
These county council debates matter because they're often the only real check these systems get. Once the cameras go up, there's rarely a public vote on data retention policy, out-of-state data sharing, or what happens when ICE or a neighboring department with looser rules asks for a search. Kershaw County residents pushing back at this meeting are doing the work that should be happening everywhere Flock tries to expand.
If you want to see how far this network already reaches in South Carolina and beyond, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your own county council meeting to push back, our take-action page has steps you can use right now.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of News 19 WLTX, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.