Flock Safety put a sitting California mayor on its payroll to sell cameras to other cities
The short version: A California mayor reportedly drawing a paycheck from Flock Safety while pitching its cameras to other cities is a textbook case of surveillance-industry capture we can't ignore.
Our Take
The Cincotta Report has surfaced something that should alarm anyone paying attention to how ALPR networks spread from town to town: a sitting California mayor allegedly on Flock Safety's payroll, acting as a salesperson for the very surveillance technology local governments are supposed to be independently evaluating. If accurate, this isn't just an ethics footnote — it's a window into how a private company builds political cover for a nationwide camera network, one local official at a time.
Mayors and council members are supposed to be the last line of scrutiny before a city signs a Flock contract and starts feeding driver location data into a company-controlled, increasingly interconnected database. When the person doing the selling is also the person elected to protect residents' privacy, that check collapses. Constituents deserve to know whose interests their mayor is actually representing when ALPR deals come up for a vote.
We credit The Cincotta Report for digging into this story, and we'll be watching for more documentation as it develops. In the meantime, check our camera map to see how far Flock's reach already extends near you, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back before your own city council takes the bait.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Cincotta Report, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.