KC Shaw

🦔Pflugerville, Texas just killed its Flock Safety contract unanimously after a resident filed a public records request and found 459 outside law enforcement agencies had run 1.6 million searches on the city's 28 cameras in six months. Local police ran 5,078. That's 315 outside searches for every one by Pflugerville PD. The city had told residents nationwide data sharing was turned off. The city manager ordered the lenses physically covered before the council even voted. Pflugerville joins 56 municipalities that have cut ties with Flock in 2026. My Take One resident with a public records form did what the city, the police department, and Flock either couldn't or didn't want to do. That's how thin the oversight was on a system searching 1.6 million plates. Nobody was auditing this. Nobody was checking whether the assurances they gave residents were true. It took a guy filing paperwork to find out. 56 cities have walked away from Flock this year and I think that number accelerates once other communities realize they can file the same request. Flock has $500 million in VC money and contracts in 4,000 cities, and civil liberties groups say under 1% of scanned plates ever connect to a crime. Pflugerville's police chief looked at his own data and wouldn't recommend keeping the contract. Every city still running these cameras is one records request away from finding out what their own ratio looks like, and most of them haven't asked yet. Hedgie🤗