DeFlock St Pete: Our New Campaign Against Flock Cameras & the Surveillance State in Pinellas County
Cape Coral, Florida. Lincoln, Nebraska. Toledo, Ohio. Decatur, Georgia. Minneapolis, Minnesota. These are just a handful of the municipalities in which vigilantes have taken action to cut down, unplug, set fire to, or otherwise disable the automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras installed by Flock along roadsides across the US.
The spontaneous vandalism of Flock cameras serves as anecdotal evidence of the widespread disdain for this fast-growing network of AI-enabled surveillance technology. But, what exactly do these cameras do?
Flock cameras are marketed to local governments as a tool for public safety. But, what they really do is create a powerful surveillance network capable of recording where and when vehicles travel, with the goal being to build detailed records of people’s movements. That raises serious questions about the ability of law enforcement to track eople without meaningful oversight. It’s also left communities across the country to grapple with the rapid expansion of the technology, and to debate how best to fight back.
Why Should Floridians Care About Flock Cameras?
The Guardian reports that Flock cameras “scan license plates billions of times each month in about 6,000 communities in nearly every state in the US.” As Zach S., a PDSA member and one of the organizers helping launch our DeFlock St. Pete campaign explains:
“These cameras scan the license plate of every passing car and feed this data into a database that can be used by law enforcement to track people’s locations without requiring a search warrant. They also use AI features to record other identifying features of cars like make, model, color, racks, etc. Flock data is also typically shared with thousands of other law enforcement agencies across the country through broad data sharing agreements.
St. Pete started a pilot program in 2022 with 25 cameras, then extended this in 2024 with a $730,000, five-year contract for 50 cameras. This agreement was approved by city council on the consent agenda without any discussion or public input. Due to the limited transparency of St. Pete PD and difficulties acquiring public records, it is very hard to see how Flock is actually being used in the city or what sort of data sharing agreements are in place.”
Did these mass surveillance cameras sprout with any meaningful democratic input from the people being surveilled? Of course not.
Courts have long recognized that certain forms of location tracking require law enforcement to obtain a warrant. For example, courts have ruled that police generally cannot obtain cell phone location data or use GPS trackers to monitor someone’s movements without meeting constitutional requirements.
Flock cameras raise concerns because they can enable a similar form of location tracking without any safeguards. By recording license plates and the locations and times at which vehicles are observed, networks of ALPR cameras can be used to reconstruct where someone has traveled and when.
Anyone who drives through a neighborhood with a Flock camera can have their movements recorded. This isn’t just a civil liberties issue in the abstract; it carries frighteningly real and practical ramifications. Earlier this month, right here in the Tampa Bay area, Haines City Police officer Christopher Goodson was arrested for “misusing” a Flock camera database to stalk his former spouse. As Fox 13 reports, Goodson “logged 717 unauthorized inquiries into his estranged wife’s vehicle between September 2024 and June 2026.”
“Our Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect us from unreasonable search,” Zach added. “Flock is subverting these protections and allows law enforcement to track anyone they want without a warrant. Since the courts are not protecting our Fourth Amendment right, we must take action at the local level to get rid of these cameras so they can not be abused. Until we do so, anyone could be the victim of the[se] abuses.”
Flock Cameras are a Tool of Class & Racial Violence
It shouldn’t go unremarked upon that, wherever these cameras are installed, they can — and will — be used as a tool of racialized class warfare by the ruling class against working people.
“[Flock cameras] are being used to target immigrants, women accessing reproductive healthcare, and political dissidents,” Zach said. “Despite Flock’s claims that ICE is not accessing their data, independent reporting has found multiple times that this is not true. In Texas, a woman was tracked using Flock data for getting an abortion. There are many cases of law enforcement tracking protesters using Flock data.”
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The data sharing agreement is of particular concern when we remember the St. Petersburg Police Department still has a 287(g) agreement in place with ICE. This agreement effectively deputizes local officers to perform federal immigration enforcement functions, including issuing immigration detainers to hold individuals for ICE, as well as identifying, interrogating, and processing suspected non-citizens.
Mayor Ken Welch and Police Chief Anthony Holloway have consistently claimed that the city’s 287(g) is just a formality and that local officers are not actively collaborating with ICE. But, where is our assurance that ICE is not being given access to data from the city’s dozens of Flock cameras? Every ALPR stands as an inherent threat to immigrant communities.
Existing data on real-world use of Flock cameras backs this up. The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism found that law enforcement conducted “nearly 3,000 searches related to immigration enforcement on Virginia’s Flock Safety network” in just a single 12-month period.
The threat is not limited to immigrant communities. An analysis by Christopher Newport University found that majority-Black neighborhoods had four times as many Flock cameras installed compared to majority-white areas. Additional data from Oak Park, Illinois, revealed that 84% of drivers stopped in incidents tied to Flock data were Black, even though Black residents made up only 19% of the local population.
All this shows that Flock cameras are not merely an issue of individual privacy. They are woven into the struggles for racial justice, health justice, international solidarity, and more. This is why, here in St. Petersburg, we’re organizing against the use of Flock cameras and demanding that our city put an end to its contract with the company through our new DeFlock St. Pete campaign.
What are We Asking the City to do?
Our demand is straightforward: remove the cameras. Cancel the city’s contract with Flock and do not replace it with another ALPR vendor.
Dozens of cities and counties around the country have taken action to restrict or end their relationships with Flock. We believe St. Petersburg should join them.
We understand that, in theory, there could be practical applications of ALPR technology. But, the broader question is whether we want to allow a system in which the government can continuously collect information about where ordinary people travel without any meaningful oversight or accountability. This is critical; if we fail to reject this level of surveillance overreach now, then it will be almost impossible to undo later.
Our message to St. Pete city leaders: public safety and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive. We can protect our communities without creating infrastructure that can be used to surveil, over-police, terrorize, and abuse them.
How Can You Get Involved?
This campaign is just getting started, and building a successful movement will require educating and organizing people throughout our community.
We’re planning presentations to local organizations, canvassing, social media outreach, and other public education efforts. We’ll also be reaching out to elected officials and candidates in St. Petersburg to discuss our concerns surrounding Flock cameras and ask where they stand on the issue.
The interest from the community is there. The DeFlock St. Pete campaign kickoff event hosted at the Barack Obama Main Library on August 15th saw an overwhelming turnout; so much so, in fact, that more than two dozen people unfortunately had to be turned away due to capacity issues at the library. This shows that concerns about surveillance extend well beyond our organization, and plenty of ordinary Pinellas County residents are already onboard to #DeFlockStPete!
Organizers have set up dedicated communication channels to help coordinate the campaign. Pinellas DSA members who want to get more involved in the campaign are welcome to join! More information will be available through Discord and, where appropriate, at meetings of our Socialists in Office Working Group.
Flock cameras are already here. The question we now face is: do we allow an expansive surveillance infrastructure to become a permanent part of our community? Or, do we organize now to stop it?
Get involved, talk to your neighbors, and help us demand a St. Petersburg where privacy and civil liberties are protected for everyone! Together, we will DeFlock St. Pete!
