Judging by the places they advertise, it’s mostly smaller cities/towns. I think the larger cities in the US tend to run their own cameras.
[0] Lab Test here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNWNQb2AvQM
> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.
The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.
I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.
[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
Cities tend to resist public records requests for camera locations.
But Flock is currently in ~5,000 communities around the country. They have managed to spread very quickly, and very quietly, and the public has only become aware of it relatively recently.
There is also a good site at https://eyesonflock.com/ that parses data from the transparency pages that some places publish.
I can't seem to access the audit in question [1] and there are connected articles that seem to also be talking about forest park police using camera readers. Whatever the case, there seems to be reasonable doubt in the trust in Flock Safety. I don't understand how an illegal termination of contract would result in anything other than Evanston having to pay out the remaining fees and maybe a cancellation fee.
[0] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
[1] https://www.ilsos.gov/news/2025/august-25-2025-giannoulias-a...
It is really amazing how much power and impact private company can have on public.
Check your assumptions, the Bay Area and LA are littered with them. They're in Berkeley for fucks sake.
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” — Oscar R. Benavides, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoUOrTJbIu4 [live camera, town square]
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/virginia-police-used-f...
>The answer is going to be "the snooty inner ring suburbs and wealthy rural-ish commuter communities that already had overstaffed PDs harassing teenagers"
TFA is about Evanston, IL[0] which is in Cook County[1] and abuts the city of Chicago.
It is relatively wealthy, but is certainly not a "rural-ish commuter community," in fact it's not suburban either.
If you condone violation of the law, it will become commonplace. Acting like your violations of the law are fine but others' violations of the law aren't fine is a position you can take but considering that you're in the minority on both, I don't think it's going to result in anything. Sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas.
EDIT: And I'll add some facts here and an example to my last statement here:
Luigi Mangione's act is a minority approved act actually https://archive.is/hXNhj
So about 18% approve of his act.
And no, in the US the will of the majority is not sufficient. There are damping influences on time-localized desires by design. A typical example might be that California's Proposition 8 banned gay marriage but was nonetheless struck down by the California Supreme Court. The will of the majority is not irrelevant but it is not paramount.
The problem is that the system doesn't only work on criminals, there's rarely enough oversight to prevent abuse, and it's only going to get more invasive. There's been case after case where cops use it to stalk their ex-girlfriends/ex-wives or similar, for example: https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...