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Reward, vandalism, protest
A Georgia sheriff, Jarrard of Lumpkin County, offered a $1,000 reward after he said someone damaged a Flock Safety camera in a park, saying, "It was to keep our kids safe."
“A Georgia sheriff is now offering a $1,000 reward”
Sheriff Jarrard said the cameras were placed in the park to catch sex offenders and argued, "It's not watching you," while protesters gathered near a Flock Safety convention in Atlanta to protest what they called mass surveillance.
Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders, said, "Flock is a surveillance system which has taken over Atlanta, and we're protesting because we want to protect people's right to privacy," and he argued, "I think all the information, all the data shows that 99.5% of the people who Flock is surveilling have not committed any crime whatsoever."
Dr. Thaddeus Johnson, a professor in Georgia State University's criminal justice department, said, "It's not the technology. The denominator is us, when mistakes are made with facial recognition or license plate readers."
Reforms vs. backlash
As activists targeted Flock cameras outside City Hall in Atlanta, Al Solove of Indivisible ATL said the coalition was pressing Home Depot to end its relationship with Flock, telling the crowd, "By contracting with Flock Safety, the Home Depot helps ICE and harms our immigrant community," while the company said it uses license plate readers in parking lots to detect and prevent theft.
NPR described a separate, hands-on tactic in Crystal, Minnesota, where Brady O'Rourke blocks a Flock camera with a roof rake and says, "I don’t want to pay to be surveilled."
NPR also reported that Flock held its annual conference amid backlash and that, according to the company, "more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use its technology," while DeFlock said there are "more than 130,000 AI-powered automated license plate readers on American streets."
NPR quoted Flock CEO Garrett Langley saying, "We are so transparent about the business. We don’t own this data. We don’t sell this data," as the company changed features to help prevent abuse.
In Georgia, WABE reported that Decatur Police Chief Scott Richards said two ALPRs were vandalized and are no longer operational, with one spray-painted and another stolen, while the city has a $62,500 annual maintenance contract with Flock Safety that does not cover damage done to the cameras.
Data access, legal fights
Beyond Georgia, Straight Arrow reported that a grand jury in Ohio declined to indict Cody Morelock, charged with felony vandalism for allegedly destroying a Flock automatic license plate reader camera in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, where police estimated the damage at more than $1,000.
“Police estimated the damage at more than $1,000.”
Straight Arrow said police accused Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13, and that the Clermont County grand jury opted not to indict him and the charges were dismissed.
NPR said the expansion of automated license plate readers, combined with cloud centralization, increased the risk of abuse and cited a 2024 analysis by a police department in California that found Flock misread license plates in 71% of the alerts it sent to police.
In Utah, Telemundo Utah reported that Governor Spencer Cox said he has requested a review of Utah's regulations after reports about Flock cameras, and it cited Utah Civic Compact data that the 10 Flock cameras in Weber County were accessed 5.1 million times between 2022 and 2026, primarily by agencies outside Utah.
WABE reported that Decatur city manager Andrea Arnold said abuses are "a violation of public trust," and Richards said the city plans to prosecute people responsible for damaging the cameras, with incidents investigated by the criminal investigation unit.