Almost all of Covington's Flock cameras have been destroyed
The short version: KING 5 Seattle reports that most of Covington's eight Flock cameras have been destroyed or disabled, a sign of growing public anger at unchecked ALPR surveillance.
Our Take
KING 5 Seattle's report on Covington is a blunt data point in a story we keep seeing repeat across the country: when a city installs automated license plate readers without a real public conversation, some residents eventually decide to have that conversation with bolt cutters instead of ballots. We don't endorse vandalism, but we understand the frustration it signals — these cameras log the movements of every driver, resident or not, and most towns never held a meaningful vote on whether that tradeoff was worth it.
What's notable here isn't just the property damage, it's what it says about trust. Eight cameras, nearly all of them down in a month, suggests this wasn't a lone actor but a community-wide sentiment that local officials either didn't anticipate or didn't take seriously. Flock's pitch is always 'public safety,' but when the public starts quietly dismantling the hardware, that's a pretty clear referendum on whether people actually consented to being tracked.
If you want to know whether Flock or similar ALPR systems are running in your own town, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back through city council meetings and public records requests than power tools, our take-action page has the tools to do it the legal way. Credit to KING 5 Seattle for getting this story on the record.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KING 5 Seattle, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.