Cities are renegotiating their contracts with Flock Safety, the largest vendor of automatic license plate readers in the United States. Denver ended its contract in February and replaced 110 cameras with a competitor's 50 under tighter terms, Cleveland's council renewed 9 to 6 in July after two reversals while barring a federal fusion center from its data, and the Los Angeles Police Department let its contract lapse on July 11 over civil liberties concerns. One tracker counts 82 terminated contracts across 28 states since 2021, though several of those cities signed with a competitor rather than going dark. The cameras index more than plate numbers, searching vehicle color, damage and stickers, with a 30-day default retention period and automatic alerts when a flagged vehicle passes. No warrant is required, and the one federal ruling directly on a Flock network upheld that in January and is now on appeal.
Why This Matters:
Readiness usually gets measured in supplies, and underneath the supplies is a quieter question about how much say a household has over the systems it depends on. In most communities these cameras went up before residents knew about them, and the terms are being rewritten now only because people showed up to argue about them. The research on whether they reduce crime is thin and mixed, while the strongest evidence still points to police and neighbors who know each other well enough to talk. That kind of local trust is what carries a household through an outage or a disruption, and it takes time to build.
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Source: Tucker Carlson
