STP City Council president speaks on call to end Flock camera use: 'I don't want to take the risk'

Our Take

Credit to KSTP 5 Eyewitness News for getting Council President Rebecca Noecker on camera explaining her reasoning in her own words. It's rare to see a sitting official walk back a surveillance contract instead of defending it on autopilot, and her "I don't want to take the risk" framing cuts right to the core problem with ALPR networks: once that data exists, it can be queried, shared, and abused in ways no local press release ever anticipated.

St. Paul isn't an outlier here — it's the direction more cities are heading once council members actually dig into how Flock's national data-sharing works, who can access it, and how little independent oversight exists once the cameras go up. If you want to see whether your own neighborhood has Flock hardware watching every car that passes, check our camera map before assuming it's someone else's problem.

Ramsey County now has a real decision in front of it, and that's exactly the kind of pressure point communities need to apply everywhere this tech gets installed without a public vote. If you want to push back on a Flock contract near you, our take-action page has the tools to get started.