WECT INVESTIGATES INSIDER: Flock votes, debates, investigations
The short version: WECT's Connor Smith digs into local Flock fights — votes, debates, and investigations — showing how ALPR scrutiny is finally reaching city councils and statehouses.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: WECT Investigates and reporter Connor Smith are doing the unglamorous work of tracking Flock Safety fights at the local level — the votes, the council debates, the open-records digging. This is exactly the kind of reporting that matters more than another splashy national exposé, because the decisions about whether a network of always-on license plate cameras gets bolted to your street signs are made in county commission meetings and city council chambers, not in Atlanta boardrooms.
Jon Evans' conversation with Smith underscores something we keep hammering on: these systems don't arrive through broad public mandate. They arrive through quiet procurement votes, vendor demos, and grant paperwork, and by the time residents notice the cameras, the contract is already signed and the data is already flowing to a database most people never agreed to be part of. Investigations like this one are often the only moment a community gets to ask hard questions before the hardware goes up.
If you want to see whether this fight has reached your own neighborhood, check our camera map for nearby Flock deployments, and if you'd rather not wait for a local reporter to force the issue, our take-action page has steps for raising it with your own council before the next vote happens.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WECT News 6, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.