Monroe City Council votes to end Flock Safety cameras amid privacy debate
The short version: Monroe City Council's vote to ditch Flock Safety cameras shows local pushback on ALPR surveillance can actually win.
Our Take
Credit to WCPO 9 for covering this one, because it's the story we want to see more of: a city council actually listening to constituents and pulling the plug on a Flock Safety contract instead of rubber-stamping another renewal. Monroe joins a growing list of towns that took a hard look at automated license plate readers and decided the trade-off wasn't worth it.
These cameras don't just catch the occasional stolen car. They build a searchable log of everywhere every driver goes, sitting in a database that can be queried by any agency with access, shared across jurisdictions, and vulnerable to misuse with little real oversight. Monroe's decision is a reminder that these contracts are not permanent fixtures — they're line items that councils vote on, which means they're also line items that councils can vote down when residents show up and make noise.
If you want to know whether your own city is running this kind of dragnet, check our camera map to see what's been deployed near you, and head to our take-action page for tools on how to push your own council toward a vote like Monroe just had.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WCPO 9, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.