Controversy surrounding automatic license plate reader cameras
The short version: 13News Now reports police are ramping up patrols to protect Flock cameras from vandalism, treating surveillance hardware as more precious than the privacy it erodes.
Our Take
13News Now's segment captures a telling shift: when ALPR cameras get damaged or torn down, the response isn't a public conversation about whether these networks should exist — it's more patrols to guard the equipment. That tells you where the priority sits. The hardware is being protected like critical infrastructure, while the actual infrastructure of accountability — public hearings, audit trails, retention limits — barely gets a mention.
The vandalism itself is a symptom, not the disease. People are frustrated because they never got a real say before these cameras went up on their streets, feeding plate scans into databases that police departments and private companies can query without a warrant. Deploying extra patrol hours to babysit cameras is a strange use of public safety resources for a technology that was supposed to make policing more efficient, not more labor-intensive.
If your town has Flock cameras and you want to know where, check our map before deciding whether you're okay with being tracked block by block — and if you're not, there are concrete steps on our take-action page to push back through city council, not a bolt cutter.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 13News Now, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.