Texoma town cancels Flock camera contract after residents raise privacy concerns
The short version: A Texoma city council reversed course on Flock Safety ALPRs after residents showed up in force to object, proving organized pushback still works.
Our Take
Credit to KXII 12 for covering this one, because it's the story we need more of: a city council actually listening when residents show up and say no to a surveillance contract. Flock Safety's sales pitch is always the same — crime deterrence, missing persons, stolen cars — but it skips the part where every plate on every car gets logged, timestamped, and stored whether you've done anything wrong or not. This Texoma town apparently decided that trade-off wasn't worth it once enough people packed the room to say so.
What makes this notable isn't just the cancellation, it's the mechanism. These contracts get approved in quiet agenda items more often than not, usually with a council that hasn't read the data-sharing fine print and a public that found out after the cameras were already bolted to the poles. When residents get a chance to weigh in before the ink dries, the calculus changes. That's the playbook: show up, ask who else gets access to the data, ask how long it's kept, ask what happens when ICE or a neighboring department requests a pull.
Every town canceling or rejecting a contract is proof this isn't inevitable. Check our map to see if Flock is already running in your area, and if it is, or if a vote is coming up, our take-action page has what you need to make your city council meeting look like this one.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KXII 12 | Texoma Turns To Us, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.