The Asheville, North Carolina City Council voted on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, to terminate the city’s contract with license-plate reader vendor Flock Safety and remove all 11 of its cameras from city streets, according to local reporting from WLOS.
Mayor Esther Manheimer said the decision reflected growing concerns about how Flock manages the data its cameras collect and who can access it, framing the vote as an attempt to balance public-safety utility against privacy risk. Rondell Lance, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police chapter, opposed the removal, arguing the system had given investigators an efficient way to narrow suspect vehicles by characteristics rather than manually checking every potential match.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Contract Reviews
Asheville’s vote follows a period of intensifying scrutiny of automated license-plate reader networks nationally, after Flock Safety itself cut its default data-retention window to seven days earlier this month in response to similar pressure. Other jurisdictions, including communities in the Chicago suburbs, have faced comparable public fights over whether to keep, expand, or cancel Flock deployments amid concerns that plate-reader data could be accessed for purposes such as immigration enforcement or unauthorized personal tracking by officers.
Asheville’s existing contract with rival vendor Axon includes provisions for stationary license-plate readers, though none are currently installed; city officials said any future deployment would require new privacy policies to be established first.
Leave a Reply