How to Get Flock Out of Your City

Our Take

Credit to Blood in the Machine for doing something most coverage of Flock Safety skips entirely: moving past the "creepy surveillance" framing and into the actual mechanics of how a city council vote gets reversed. Flock's pitch to local governments relies on officials not knowing what questions to ask, and on nobody showing up to the meeting where the contract gets renewed. A video that walks through what worked in other cities is worth more to organizers than another explainer on how ALPRs work.

We'd add one thing the video can only gesture at: you can't push back on a network you can't see. Before you walk into a council meeting, know how many Flock cameras are already bolted to poles in your town, who's paying for them, and what agencies have access to the data. That's exactly why we built the map — so residents can show up with receipts, not just vibes.

The bigger pattern here matters beyond Flock specifically. Mass ALPR surveillance keeps expanding because it's installed quietly and defended loudly, while removal campaigns have to be loud from the start just to get a hearing. If this video gives you the itch to do something locally, our take-action page has the starting points — public records requests, talking points, and what questions to put to your city council before the next contract renewal sails through unopposed.