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During last night’s Marion City Council committee meetings, the guest speaker was a representative of Flock Safety, the company that supplies the city and county’s 34 license plate surveillance cameras that have been in place since 2023.
The contract with Flock will be expiring this year and with both the city and county facing substantial fiscal challenges, unless sufficient grant funds can be procured to cover the cost of the $3,000 cameras (each per year), neither government entity will be able to afford to renew the lease and extend the surveillance service.
After the Flock representative’s presentation, a long line of citizens addressed council to express their opposition to the city’s use of these cameras.
The primary criticism seems to be that there is currently no transparency as to exactly what data is being collected and how it is being used by law enforcement. There is essentially no accountability or oversight of that use, since senior members of law enforcement are the only ones with access to the system and its audit reports. Allegations were also made that these surveillance cameras were used by local law enforcement in 2025 to track attendees of several “No Kings” political rallies.
When it comes to the number of cameras in use in Marion County, a shocking statistic was presented. Marion County, with its population of about 65,000 presently has 34 Flock cameras in use, while the city of Columbus, which has a population of about 1 million, with 2.2+ million living in the metro area and frequenting the city, only has 40.
We shall see what happens with this, but it’s clear that there is a significant potential for abuse with these cameras.
Members of law enforcement claim that they represent a valuable “force multiplier,” but with the lack of oversight and transparency, it’s difficult to argue that they represent a reasonable sacrifice of liberty in the name of security.