Flock Safety license plate reader cut down off Highway 41 near Charleston-Berkeley line

Our Take

Someone in the Charleston area took a saw to a Flock Safety pole instead of a public comment form, and honestly, that tells you something about how little input residents feel they had before these cameras went up. ABC News 4 (WCIV) reports the Mount Pleasant Police Department's automated license plate reader near the Berkeley County line was cut down over the weekend — not the first Flock unit in the country to meet this fate, and it won't be the last as departments blanket highways with these things without much public debate.

We don't cheer vandalism; it's illegal, it's risky, and it gives police and Flock a convenient excuse to frame every critic as a criminal instead of engaging with the actual privacy concerns. But incidents like this are a pressure valve. When people have no real say over whether a permanent tracking device gets bolted to a pole on their daily commute, some of them will eventually just take it down themselves. That's a policy failure, not a crime wave.

The better fight happens in council chambers, public records requests, and community organizing — not with a hacksaw. Check our map to see what's tracking your own routes, and hit up take action for ways to push back that don't end with a police report filed against you.