Monterey County residents blast Flock cameras as sheriff and DA push 10-year contract
The short version: Monterey County residents pushed back on a proposed 10-year Flock contract, and a decade-long lock-in should worry anyone who cares about oversight.
Our Take
Credit to KSBW Action News 8 for putting cameras in front of the people who'll actually live under this network. A ten-year contract is the real story here, not just the cameras themselves. A decade is long enough for city councils to turn over three or four times, for state law to change, for Flock's retention and sharing policies to shift, and for whatever promises local officials are making today to be completely unenforceable by the time anyone notices a problem.
That's the pattern we keep seeing with Flock Safety rollouts nationwide: sheriffs and DAs sell these systems as a narrow tool for solving specific crimes, then lock jurisdictions into long contracts before the public has had a real chance to weigh in on retention periods, data-sharing agreements, or who else gets access to the plate reads. Once that ink dries, residents lose almost all leverage. Monterey County pushing back now, before signatures happen, is exactly the kind of friction this technology needs.
If you want to see whether ALPRs are already watching your own streets, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a ten-year contract to get rammed through your county, our take-action page has tools for making noise before the vote, not after.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KSBW Action News 8, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.