Activists call on city of Cleveland to end Flock Safety camera contract
The short version: Cleveland activists with 'Flock No' are pushing city leaders to drop Flock Safety's camera contract before it renews, and they're right to push.
Our Take
Credit to WKYC Channel 3 for covering this one, because it's exactly the kind of local accountability story that gets buried under bigger news. A resident-led campaign calling itself 'Flock No' showed up to tell Cleveland's city leaders not to renew the Flock Safety contract, and that takes real organizing muscle against a company that has made itself nearly invisible in most communities while its cameras log every plate that passes.
This is the pattern we see over and over: a city signs on for 'public safety,' nobody outside a council chamber hears about the renewal timeline, and suddenly a surveillance network tracking thousands of residents' daily movements is just a permanent fixture of the landscape. The fact that Clevelanders had to organize a named campaign just to get a public conversation about whether this contract should continue tells you how little transparency these deals usually get. Renewal votes are exactly the moment when public pressure can actually work, because the alternative is quiet auto-renewal forever.
If you're in Cleveland or anywhere with these cameras on your streets, check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and head to our take-action page for tools to raise this with your own city council before the next contract vote sneaks by unnoticed.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WKYC Channel 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.