Folsom reviews Flock cameras amid regional concerns

Our Take

Credit to ABC10 for putting a camera on a story that usually happens quietly in council chambers: a city actually pausing to ask whether a Flock Safety contract is worth keeping. Folsom officials are stopping short of a final decision, but the fact that "regional concerns" are enough to trigger a policy review says something. These systems get sold as a package deal — sign the contract, get the cameras, and questions about data retention, access logs, and mission creep get answered later, if at all. Folsom asking those questions before renewal, not after a scandal, is the right order of operations.

What makes this worth watching is the regional angle. ALPR networks don't respect city limits — Flock's own pitch is that data flows across jurisdictions so agencies can share plate reads. That means one city's decision to walk away, or to add real guardrails, has ripple effects on neighboring departments that assumed the network would just keep growing. If Folsom pulls back, it's a data point other California cities can point to when their own vendors come up for renewal.

We'll keep tracking what Folsom actually decides, because "reviewing" a contract and "ending" one are very different outcomes. In the meantime, check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and if you want to push your own city council toward this kind of scrutiny, our take-action page has the playbook.