Public Safety Technology Committee formed amid concerns over police drone use in Milford
The short version: Milford's pivot from Flock cameras to police drones shows surveillance creep doesn't stop at one technology — it just finds new hardware.
Our Take
WTNH News8 reports that Milford officials have formed a Public Safety Technology Committee after Flock Safety ALPRs stirred up community backlash — and now the same residents are being asked to swallow police drones too. This is the pattern we keep seeing nationwide: a town fights (or quietly accepts) one surveillance tool, and before the dust settles, the next one is already being rolled out. Credit to the WTNH team for actually covering the pushback instead of treating these deployments as routine.
The formation of a committee sounds like accountability, but these bodies often exist to manage public relations around a decision that's already been made, not to genuinely weigh whether a town needs eyes in the sky on top of eyes on every road. Drones raise the stakes even further than fixed ALPRs — they can follow people, hover over private property, and capture far more than a plate number. Once a department owns the hardware, mission creep is nearly guaranteed.
If you're in Milford or anywhere else watching this debate unfold, it's worth checking whether Flock cameras are already logging your plates on our map, and using our take-action resources to show up at that committee meeting before drones get rubber-stamped the way so many ALPR contracts have been.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WTNH News8, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.