South Kingstown to stop using automated license plate readers

Our Take

Score one for the residents of South Kingstown. According to WPRI's reporting, the Town Council voted to terminate its contract with Flock Safety after community members showed up and pushed back on the ALPR program. This is exactly the kind of accountability we don't see nearly often enough — a town actually reversing course once people started asking hard questions about who's watching their movements and why.

What makes this notable isn't just the outcome, it's the process. Flock contracts tend to get rubber-stamped in committee meetings nobody attends, with vague promises about "solving crime" doing the heavy lifting. South Kingstown shows that when residents actually engage — showing up, asking about retention policies, data sharing, and mission creep — elected officials can be persuaded to hit the brakes. That's a template other towns should be studying right now, not a one-off curiosity.

Credit to WPRI for covering a local government story that a lot of outlets skip because it doesn't feel dramatic enough. It should feel dramatic — this is what pushing back against the normalization of mass license plate tracking actually looks like in practice. If you want to see whether your own town has quietly wired itself into this network, check our camera map, and if you're ready to do something about it, our take-action page has the tools to get started.