Speak against Flock Expansion in Youngstown

This fall, the City of Youngstown is attempting to increase Flock spending by $84,000. We say FLOCK NO! to putting more unwanted, expensive, ineffective, and easily abused surveillance technologies in our community.

If you live in Youngstown, call or write to your city council member today and tell them why you think they should vote NO on this fall Flock expenditure.

Want to stay in touch about this campaign so we can make sure we stop Flock expansion in Youngstown? Sign up with the campaign here and we'll send you important updates!

What's going on with Flock contracts in. Youngstown this fall?

Mayor Derrick McDowell has asked for a $84,000 expansion of contracts with Flock technologies this fall. In order to do so, he signed an emergency ordinance to try to get the expenditure passed in City Council without the standard council procedure. A day before the meeting they decided to cancel the emergency vote.

Now we want to make sure city council knows: the people of Youngstown do not want the expansion of Flock. The City of Youngstown already pays $168,000 PER YEAR for Flock services, including 56 Flock cameras. Here are the documents about the emergency ordinance & the original Youngstown Flock contract. At the conclusion of this email are a number of local talking points and links to national level resources with many more talking points.



Call or write to your City Council Person and ask them to vote no on Flock contract expansion:


After you've done that, please drop us a line to let us know, or forward us your letter and any responses from your councilperson: deflockmv@proton.me

TALKING POINTS FOR DEFLOCKING MAHONING VALLEY

Talking Point: We live in Youngstown, a community that strives to make people of all races and backgrounds feel safe and welcomed. Flock’s surveillance cameras and the data they collect are known to be used to track immigrants, activists, and even people seeking reproductive health care. Flock undermines Youngstown’s values and puts our friends, neighbors and people passing through our community at risk.

If we want Youngstown to continue to be a place where people come to live because of its values, we need to stand by them.

Flock's safety claims don't hold up.Flock markets their cameras as crime-fighters, but independent research has found that license plate readers are not linked to reductions in violent crime, vehicle theft deterrence, or improved case clearance rates.

Flock has a documented honesty problem.Flock Safety has repeatedly misrepresented its data-sharing practices with ICE and Border Patrol. Yet their standard contract asks communities to trust their "good faith" judgment about when to share your data whenever they decide it's "reasonably necessary."

The cameras cost us. The $84,000 that would be spent to expand the Flock contract could be better spent in other ways.

Other cities are walking away — Youngstown doesn’t have to go the wrong way . More than 30 cities across the U.S. have cancelled their Flock contracts including our neighbors in Hubbard and Cortland, other Ohio cities like Lebanon and Oxford, and even whole counties such as Coshocton and Wyandot Counties. Warren can avoid the controversy, expense, and dangers to civil liberties and show what it truly means to be an inclusive, welcoming community by ending our contracts with Flock, not expanding them.

We also know that Flock is mass tracking:

  • Warrantless Tracking: Flock cameras log billions of vehicle movements per month without requiring a search warrant, turning routine driving into a continuous record of daily habits.
  • Intimate Data Collection: With AI-powered analytics, the system tracks and searches for more than just license plates—recording vehicle makes, models, colors, bumper stickers, and the movements of pedestrians and bicyclists.
  • Sensitive Locations: Critics point out that cameras can track people visiting places of worship, reproductive healthcare and abortion clinics, psychiatric care centers, and political protests.

With documented abuses:

  • Stalking and Harassment: Law enforcement personnel and unauthorized users have misused ALPR data to track ex-partners, stalk citizens, or run discriminatory searches. [
  • Overreach into Political and Social Movements: Investigations by civil liberties groups have revealed instances of police using the network to monitor political protesters, animal-rights activists, and marginalized communities.
  • Data Sharing Across Jurisdictions: Unencrypted or loosely shared local data feeds into a sprawling national network, exposing local residents' travel data to outside agencies or federal immigration crackdowns.

That is inaccurate and ineffective:

  • Low Hit Rates: Critics note that a tiny fraction (often less than 1%) of scanned vehicles are linked to any active crime. [1]
  • High Error Rates: Studies and civil rights audits highlight significant misread rates (such as a roughly 1-in-10 state misread rate), which can mistakenly flag innocent drivers as suspects. [1]
  • Lack of Independent Verification: Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union note that Flock has refused to let independent security testing groups like IPVM properly evaluate and test its hardware.

MORE RESEARCH

Other facts/talking points/ way to combat incorrect & bad faith arguments about Flock and other license place readers:

Local Flock information Boardman 1984

Flock & ALPR Cameras: Quick Reference

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ElMkEiUr1khqhkwCHsyT9TVENybskQpSnNAb5MaiHRI/edit?usp=drivesdk

“Nothing to Hide? (warning, this is a huge research project)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LL6C35ifPVJr61sia_OAAY_zNtBu7ZIO0Gc2OhFJLdI/edit?tab=t.0






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