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When a municipality passes an ordinance prohibiting ALPRs, and the municipal police force refuses to shut off the ALPRs, and the municipality does not then fire the chief (or the muni executive, if needed), then the muni was full of shit about being opposed to the ALPRs in the first place.

I'm deeply involved in municipal politics and was for many years involved in national politics (and, more to the point, discussions of national politics online) and I see this all the time: people crossing the streams between the two, as if the levels of responsibility and accountability were comparable. A municipal sworn law enforcement official that ignores a duly passed ordinance that has gone into effect is breaking the law and their contract and can trivially be fired, not after a long drawn-out procedure but immediately.

I watched us shut our cameras down. As I said: there was no drama, at least procedurally. If our chief had tried to prevent the cameras from coming down, she'd have been out on her ass the next day. I'm sure there are places where there was drama, but I'd need to see the full story before drawing the conclusion that you're drawing. What I see here is the more interesting narrative ("the cameras are impossible to take down, they're a virus!") asserting itself in its natural habitat, the online message board.

I don't know what this story about a misconfigured camera (it strobed an "outage" alert after being deactivated) being reactivated by a technician is supposed to tell me. The theory here is that Flock is running a scam where they're rolling trucks to surreptitiously enable individual cameras?

by mistercheph1 hours ago|

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Flock's value proposition is having a national surveillance network, local PD are not their only customers, here is yet another instance where oops, a camera that they promised was off, turned out to be on in Eugene:

https://www.klcc.org/crime-law-justice/2025-12-09/eugene-pol...

And here is flock getting caught installing cameras in Cambridge after contract termination:

https://www.cambridgema.gov/news/2025/12/statementontheflock...

Here is flock getting caught installing cameras in Evanston after contract termination:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/29/after-evanston-fir...

And obviously these are only the cases where they were caught making convenient mistakes, there is very little incentive for the likeliest parties to know (Flock, law enforcement) to bring to light the fact that flock cameras are still on, being serviced, and the data is still accessible despite local ordinance.

by tptacek1 hours ago|

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I don't know what you think these links are accomplishing for you. I'm not talking about Flock in the abstract; I have firsthand experience with it. I'm part of a group of people who ultimately got the cameras taken down in my municipality, and before that, I spent years helping craft local rules and ordinances limiting them.

There are tens of thousands of Flock cameras all over the country. It would be weird if there weren't misconfigurations. The Evanston story is a great example: the reinstallation of cameras happened the week the contract was expired, and Flock notified the city of Evanston (which, for what it's worth, is our twin sibling city in Chicagoland), at which point Evanston said "you've made a mistake" and Flock said "ok we'll take them down".

by mistercheph1 hours ago|

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You seem a bit distracted by the links instead of the content that can be accessed by clicking on them, they show that in tens of instances, your personal anecdote about how flock removal went don't hold. Flock drags their feet, makes legal threats to cities that cancel, forgets to turn cameras off, turns cameras back on, claims cameras are shut off when they are on, installs new cameras after cancellation, leaves cameras up after promising to take them down, etc. etc.

And you are representing the situation in Evanston disingenuously here's the timeline AFAICT:

- Aug 26, 2025 Evanston issues a termination notice to Flock, effective Sep. 26 2025 after it learns that Federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement are able to access license plate data from the Flock cameras in Evanston, something the city claims Flock lied about. (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/26/evanston-shuts-dow...)

   - Notably at this point EPD believes the cameras are off: An EPD officer: "The last read on an Evanston Flock camera was logged shortly before 1:00 p.m. on August 26th, which is consistent with the City’s request for de-activation,",

- Aug 27, 2025 Flock writes a reply letter claiming that Evanston has no legal basis to terminate the contract. (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...)

- Sep. 8, 2025 Flock has removed 15 of 18 cameras.

- Sep. 18, 2025 Flock reinstalls the uninstalled cameras. Evanston sends Flock a letter asserting that they are in violation of the contract and Illinois law. (https://evanstonroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/25...)

   - Flock did not inform Evanston, a technician unintentionally informed the city: "[City spokesperson] Vargas said the city learned that Flock reinstalled new cameras after a Flock technician called the Evanston Police Department to ask questions on where to find a camera’s power source." (this is from the tribune article I linked above)

- Sep. 23, 2025 Flock says that they are willing to remove the cameras (https://evanstonroundtable.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Ha...)

- Sep. 24, 2025 The city issues a cease-and-desist to flock. (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/09/24/flock-safety-reins...)

    - Despite the city's belief that the cameras have been off since the termination letter on Aug. 26th, RoundTable journalists show that the cameras are still on and logging locations.

- Sep 25, 2025 Evanston covers the cameras with plastic bags (https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/09/25/city-covers-up-flo...)

- Mar 3, 2026 Journalists notice that two of flock's cameras are still up in Evanston and contact Flock asking for comment, Flock does not reply but removes the cameras.