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ComputerGurulast Friday at 11:28 PM10 repliesview on HN

Has anyone had success getting their city to take down the Flock cameras? Ours just added them maybe a year and a half ago. They popped up in multiple nearby municipalities around the same time, I'm not sure if it was coordinated action or somehow pulled off at the county level.


Replies

thaumaturgyyesterday at 5:18 AM

I was one of the main organizers of a community group that successfully got Flock contracts canceled in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. I have also presented several times to city officials in and around Portland, am currently helping groups in other cities around Oregon and elsewhere get started, and I'm working with a state legislative workgroup to begin getting some reasonable legislation in place.

The extent to which Flock manipulates police departments is really incredible. Here's a fun little factoid: Lexipol is a company which sells various pre-written policies to police departments, including an ALPR policy; Lexipol is also a parent company of Police1, which helps police departments find public grant money to purchase Flock subscriptions, and Flock in turn is heavily featured on Police1.

So, if you're a police department, you go to Police1 (Lexipol) for news and product info, they pitch you on Flock, you fill out a form, you sign a contract, and then later you need an actual ALPR policy for your department, and Lexipol sells you that, too. The policy of course is extremely friendly towards vendors like Flock.

Flock exerts a lot of influence with the police departments that subscribe to their platform. We've repeatedly had to respond to the same talking points from PDs (and some city officials) that are very clearly getting all of their info from Flock, and in some cases coached by them.

And YCombinator startup Flock Safety is extremely misleading in many of their product, service, and business statements.

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jkestneryesterday at 4:48 AM

Maybe Flock sales was going door-to-door in your area.

Sedona (with a handy timeline of how they accomplished it) https://livefreeaz.com

Bend, OR https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/08/bend-flock-cameras-ai...

Hays County, TX https://www.kxan.com/news/hays-county-votes-to-terminate-flo...

Lockhart, TX preemptively rejected them https://www.kxan.com/news/local/caldwell-county/lockhart-cit...

Working on it in our city. Flock has been their own worst enemy—once people know the name of the company, they start seeing it in the news regularly. Start talking to people, show up at city meetings.

toofylast Friday at 11:34 PM

apparently a bunch of cities across oregon and washington are not renewing.

https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/08/bend-flock-cameras-ai...

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halfmatthalfcatyesterday at 1:13 AM

Evanston, IL did

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maximinus_thraxyesterday at 1:37 AM

Montlake Terrace WA did https://www.heraldnet.com/news/mountlake-terrace-cancels-flo...

My hope is that https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules... will make Flock get the fuck out of Washington state.

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therobots927yesterday at 12:10 AM

First thing to understand, at least in my case, is that the “city” does not manage the contract. The local PD does. Good luck reasoning with them.

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