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How to get Flock and ALPRs out of your community
Every removal on the surveillance map started the same way: a few residents learned how the contract worked, found one person on the council willing to ask hard questions, and showed up. None of it requires being an expert. This is the plan that has actually worked, drawn from the towns that won.
The short version
Surveillance contracts are a procurement decision, not a force of nature. A city signed a contract; a city can end it. The most effective campaigns did not wait for a perfect privacy law. They treated the camera contract like any other purchase the public can question, and they intervened at the moments when it was up for a vote, a renewal, or a budget line. That framing, often called procurement power, is the thread running through nearly every win.
A step-by-step start
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Find out what your community actually has
Start at deflock.org, a crowdsourced map of tens of thousands of ALPR cameras across the country. Search your area to see what is already up, and who the vendor is (Flock, Motorola, Axon, Genetec, and others). If cameras near you are not on the map yet, you can report them. Then confirm with your city: a short public-records request asking for the ALPR contract, the usage policy, and the data-sharing settings is usually all it takes.
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Read the contract for three things
When the contract comes back, look for: the renewal date (many auto-renew every year, so missing the cancellation window locks in another year), the data-sharing settings (whether your local data flows into a national lookup network), and the termination clause (how the city can get out, and whether there is a penalty). These three facts decide your timing and your leverage.
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Find one champion on the council
You do not need a majority on day one. You need a single council or commission member willing to put the question on the agenda and ask it out loud. Most officials know only what the vendor told them. Bring them the contract, the data-sharing facts, and the list of other towns that have already pulled out.
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Demand an audit of who has been searching the data
This is what has flipped councils. Ask for the access logs: which agencies queried your cameras, how many times, and for what stated reason. Town after town discovered federal agencies, out-of-state police, and immigration-related searches they never authorized. If the city cannot produce that log, that absence is itself the argument.
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Organize visible public comment
Not a petition alone. People in the room. One Washington town turned out roughly 200 residents at a single meeting, and the cameras were covered the next day. Sustained, in-person pressure across more than one meeting is what separates the wins from the near-misses.
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Aim for a clean outcome at the vote
The strongest result is a vote to terminate or not renew. A moratorium pending review is a solid intermediate step. Either way, get it in the public record.
Who to contact
- City council or commission members -- they approve and can cancel the contract. Find the one most likely to champion it.
- The mayor and city manager -- often control procurement and can let a contract lapse or direct a pause.
- Your police oversight or accountability board, if your city has one -- a natural venue to request the audit.
- County commissioners and the sheriff -- if the cameras are run at the county level, this is where the decision sits, not city hall.
- State legislators -- for longer-term guardrails (data-retention limits, warrant requirements, bans on out-of-state sharing) that outlast any single contract.
Three things to watch for
The switch. Some cities drop Flock and quietly move the same surveillance onto another vendor, often an Axon contract they already hold, with no public input. Removing Flock is not the goal; removing the dragnet is. Ask what replaces it.
Private and HOA cameras. A city contract usually covers only police-operated cameras. Privately owned ALPRs run by homeowner associations and businesses can keep feeding the same network. Canceling the city contract does not touch those.
Reinstalls and reactivations. More than one town canceled, only to find cameras quietly reinstalled or switched back on. Confirm the hardware is actually down, and keep checking.
Local DeFlock groups
Across the country, residents have started local DeFlock chapters to organize in their own towns. DeFlock keeps the full, current directory of them, and if there is one near you, it is the fastest way to find people already doing this work.
See the full directory at deflock.org/groups →
A few of the active chapters:
- Eyes Off Eugene-Springfield -- Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. Ran the campaign that ended both cities' Flock programs.
- DeFlock SF -- San Francisco, California.
- DeFlock San Diego -- San Diego, California. A regional chapter of deflock.org; find it through the directory.
- DeFlock Tyler -- Tyler, Texas. Gathering signatures to have the city remove its cameras.
- DeflockUA -- Upper Arlington and Central Ohio. Organizing against an expanding camera program.
We link a chapter's own site only where we could confirm it. For the others, and for the most current roster, use the directory above.
Where to go for more
- deflock.org -- the crowdsourced ALPR camera map and a deep well of background on how these systems work and how to push back.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation -- investigations, legal analysis, and the research many local campaigns have leaned on.
- Fight for the Future -- organizing toolkits and sample materials for a local campaign.
This guide is informational and general. Contracts, public-records rules, and council procedures vary by place, so confirm the specifics for your own community.
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