South Windsor town council to review use of flock cameras as police chief stands by their importance
The short version: South Windsor's town council is finally asking questions about Flock cameras six months after deployment, while the police chief insists they're indispensable.
Our Take
FOX 61's report on South Windsor is a familiar script: a department quietly rolls out Flock Safety cameras, months pass, and only after the fact does anyone on the town council ask what these systems actually do and who's accountable for them. April to now is plenty of time for a surveillance network to start feeding data into a national system most residents never voted on or even knew existed.
The police chief's defense — that the cameras are important — is the same line departments give everywhere, and it's rarely backed by hard numbers on arrests tied directly to ALPR hits versus cases where the cameras just added another log to a database. 'Important' isn't a metric. Councils reviewing these contracts should be asking for retention policies, audit logs, who else has access to that data, and whether South Windsor plate reads are being shared with other agencies or federal partners.
Credit to FOX 61 for pushing this into public view, because that's exactly the kind of local accountability this technology needs before it becomes permanent infrastructure. If you want to see whether Flock cameras are already watching your own commute, check our map, and if South Windsor's review has you wanting to speak up locally, our take-action page has the tools to do it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of FOX 61, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.