Drop Flock resident urges Elk Grove - Flock is not a company that can be trusted'

Our Take

Credit to ElkGroveNews for capturing this clip from the March 25 Elk Grove City Council meeting, where a resident identified as Jennifer T. used her time during a police department presentation to say the quiet part out loud: Flock is not a company that can be trusted. That's not a talking point from a privacy advocacy group — it's an ordinary resident watching her own police department roll out a policy briefing and deciding the company behind the cameras deserves scrutiny, not a rubber stamp.

This is the pattern playing out in city council chambers across the country. A department quietly signs on with Flock, cameras go up on local roads, and only later does a 'policy' conversation happen — often after residents start asking who's watching the watchers. Flock markets itself as a tool for solving crime, but the underlying reality is a private company building a searchable, nationwide vehicle-movement database with minimal independent oversight, inconsistent audit trails, and a business model that depends on cities signing up fast and asking questions later.

Elk Grove isn't an outlier — it's a data point. If you want to see whether ALPRs are already watching your own streets, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your city council to have this same reckoning, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back before the contract gets renewed.