Cleveland City Council to hear evaluation on ShotSpotter, consider Flock Safety proposal
The short version: Cleveland weighs its ShotSpotter track record while City Council considers bolting on Flock Safety ALPRs, expanding surveillance without public buy-in.
Our Take
Credit to WKYC Channel 3 for flagging this before it slides through on a council agenda nobody reads. Cleveland has run ShotSpotter since 2020, a system with a mixed record nationally when it comes to actually reducing gun violence versus just generating alerts and police stops. Now the city wants to bolt Flock Safety's automated license plate readers onto that infrastructure, which is how these surveillance stacks always grow: one system justifies the next, and pretty soon every car movement in the city is logged and searchable.
The pattern is familiar. A gunshot-detection tool with questionable accuracy gets evaluated, and instead of scaling back, the response is to add a camera network that tracks every plate that passes, regardless of suspicion. Flock's pitch to cities is always the same: crime-fighting convenience, with little public debate over data retention, who can query it, or how it gets shared with federal agencies. Cleveland residents deserve that debate before council votes, not after cameras go up on utility poles.
If you're in Cleveland or anywhere else watching this expansion happen, check our camera map to see what's already tracking your neighborhood, and use our take-action resources to push your council members for real transparency before they approve the next system.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WKYC Channel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.