Josephine County cancels Flock camera use

Our Take

Credit to NewsWatch 12 for breaking this one: the Josephine County Sheriff's Office has sent Flock a termination letter and ended its camera contract effective immediately. We don't have every detail on what drove the decision, but the fact that a sheriff's office would walk away from a system Flock markets as indispensable says a lot. These contracts get sold as a public safety no-brainer, yet local officials keep discovering that the cost, the data-sharing fine print, or the lack of community buy-in isn't worth the tradeoff.

This matters because every county that cancels proves the surveillance isn't inevitable. Flock's whole business model depends on counties and cities assuming these networks are permanent infrastructure once installed. Josephine County is a reminder that elected sheriffs and commissioners answer to residents, not to a surveillance vendor's sales quota, and that contracts can be unwound when people push back.

If you want to see whether ALPR cameras are already watching your own community, check our camera map, and if you'd rather get ahead of it before your county signs a multi-year deal, our take-action page has the tools to make your voice heard at the next public meeting.