Remember To Take Your Positive Attitude - with guest Eric Walcott
The short version: A Lansing city council budget session is a reminder that ALPR funding often gets buried in routine line items where few residents are watching.
Our Take
Credit to What Lansing Council for doing the unglamorous work of sitting through budget-priority discussions and putting them online. These meetings rarely trend, but they're exactly where decisions about police technology — including license plate reader contracts — tend to get made with minimal public scrutiny. A line item for 'public safety technology' can sail through a budget vote without anyone in the room asking what it actually means for residents' movements being logged.
We don't know yet whether Flock Safety or any ALPR system specifically came up in this Lansing session, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. But the pattern across the country is consistent: budget season is prime time for surveillance expansion, because it's easier to approve a dollar figure than to approve a camera network once people understand what it does. If you live in or near Lansing, this is worth watching closely as the mayor's office finalizes priorities.
That's exactly why we built the map — so residents can see what's already been deployed before the next budget cycle adds more. If Lansing is on the verge of expanding its camera footprint, now is the moment for people to show up and ask questions, not after the contract is signed. Check out take action for ways to push back before it's a done deal.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of What Lansing Council, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.