Why Are People Destroying Flock Cameras?
The short version: Proton's new video digs into the wave of vandalism against Flock Safety cameras, and we think it's a symptom of a much bigger consent problem.
Our Take
Proton's video asks the obvious question everyone's been dancing around: why are people torching, dousing, and dismantling Flock Safety cameras in towns across the country? Credit to their team for tackling it head-on instead of pretending this is a fringe curiosity. When a piece of infrastructure keeps getting attacked in city after city, that's not random mischief — that's a signal that a lot of people never got a say before these cameras went up on their street corners.
We're not in the business of cheering on property destruction, but we understand the frustration driving it. Flock's ALPR network was rolled out in thousands of communities largely through quiet police department contracts and city council rubber-stamps, with little public debate about who gets access to the data, how long it's stored, or how it can be shared across state lines. When residents feel like the only way to be heard is to take a wrench to a pole, that's a failure of the normal channels — public comment periods, transparency reports, actual oversight — not a failure of the residents.
If you'd rather fight this with information instead of a screwdriver, start by checking our camera map to see what's already watching your neighborhood, then head to our take-action page for concrete steps to push back at city council meetings and beyond.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Proton, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.