Flock cameras escalate the battle between privacy and safety in St. Louis
The short version: St. Louis Public Radio's deep dive into 1,000+ Flock cameras blanketing the region shows how 'public safety' framing keeps outpacing public accountability.
Our Take
Credit to St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU) for putting real numbers on what we keep saying in the abstract: over a thousand Flock Safety cameras and ALPRs now ring a single metro area. That's not a pilot program anymore — that's infrastructure, and infrastructure built this fast rarely gets built with matching oversight. When reporters have to "dig into how police" use a system, that's usually a sign the public never got a clear answer up front.
The privacy-versus-safety framing in the title is the one Flock and local police departments lean on every time, but it skips the actual question: who sees this data, how long is it kept, which agencies can query it, and what happens when the system gets it wrong. A network of a thousand cameras isn't just solving crimes after the fact — it's building a permanent, searchable record of where everyone's car has been, available to whoever has login credentials and a flimsy justification. St. Louis isn't unique here; it's just one of the more densely wired examples of a pattern repeating in metro areas nationwide.
If you're in the St. Louis area, check our camera map to see what's actually been installed near you, and if you want to push back on unchecked expansion, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising this with your city council before the next thousand cameras go up.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU), published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.