Wilmington is under warrantless AI surveillance — every drive past a camera is logged, kept, and searchable. It’s time to act.
Statewide tracker
Flock in North Carolina
Wilmington isn’t alone. Across North Carolina, towns are reading the contracts, hearing their residents, and pulling the plug. Here’s where the state stands — who said no, who’s deciding now, and where the cameras already watch. We keep this honest and sourced; tell us what we’ve missed.
Last updated August 13, 2026
Happening now · Aug 16–22, 2026
The National Week of Action Against ALPRs is here. DeFlock’s nationwide week of action lands squarely on North Carolina’s biggest Flock decisions: the New Hanover and Moore County work sessions on August 17, and days before Davidson County’s August 24 vote. Fourteen North Carolina cities are listed as participating on noalprs.com — Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem, Burlington, Fayetteville, Lumberton, Mooresville, Asheville, Arden, Hendersonville, Pinehurst, and Pinebluff — the widest coordinated pushback the state has seen. DeFlockILM is organizing here in Wilmington around the Aug 17 meeting.
One town reads the fine print, cancels, and tells the next town how. That’s how this ends.
Looking for the cameras rather than the politics? Our North Carolina camera map shows where the 2,819 mapped ALPR readers are, county by county — and the full ranking breaks out which counties have the most by raw count and which are the densest per capita. New to this? Start with what Flock cameras can actually do — and what they can’t.
The statewide backdrop. Two things frame every local fight below. First, the baseline: under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-183.30 et seq., a local agency may operate ALPRs only if it has adopted a written policy and complies with the retention limits — the statutory hook behind the campaign’s campus findings. Second, the 2026 state budget — S.L. 2026-41 (S257), signed July 7, 2026 — made the SBI/NCDOT highway plate-reader pilot permanent and added an annual report to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Justice and Public Safety. And the UNC School of Government flags what moved the other way in the same bill: it repealed G.S. 143B-903, the statute that required collecting the race and sex of every driver stopped. In one budget, North Carolina expanded automated surveillance of all drivers and ended mandatory demographic reporting on traffic stops. (S257, enrolled)
New — portal directory: we now maintain a directory of every North Carolina Flock transparency portal — a link to each, and whether it actually lets the public download the search audit. Most don’t.
The win column
North Carolina Communities That Said No
Each of these started where Wilmington is now — with a signed contract and a worried public. Then they ended it.
| Status | Locality | What’s happening |
|---|---|---|
| Defunded | Macon County (county-level) | Following a discussion with Sheriff Brent Holbrooks, commissioners voted 5–0 on July 15, 2026 to discontinue the $47,000 funding Flock Safety cameras — Commissioner John Shearl moved to “de-Flock Macon County” by opting out of the contract at renewal, then made a second, unanimous motion to remove the cameras (the renewal vote alone did not mandate removal). Sheriff Holbrooks testified the cameras log 1 to 3 million plates a month in a county of ~37,000. Nine days earlier, that same Sheriff’s Office had publicly defended the program. Read the mechanism closely: the board did not cancel the Sheriff’s contract — it ended the appropriation. A county commission holds the money. New Hanover’s board holds the same power over its own $219,000 — roughly 4.7 times what Macon walked away from. (Our analysis: why the mechanism matters.) Update — July 16. WLOS has now published a web article, so this no longer rests on a Facebook post. It also adds facts, and one of them narrows what we said. Twelve county-owned cameras come down immediately — even though the Flock contract does not expire until October. But four cameras on school property will remain, and privately owned Flock cameras in the county are unaffected. This is not “every camera in Macon County.” It is the Sheriff’s Office’s twelve, pulled early, at the Board’s direction. Chief Deputy Derek Jones pushed back after the vote, conceded crime could rise but that he “can’t give you 100%,” and said the office “will respect the view of the public.” Update — July 28. The fallout has taken an ugly turn worth naming plainly. Officials in the Town of Franklin (the Macon County seat) publicly asked residents to stop threatening public officials over Flock, and cleared up a point of confusion: the Town of Franklin has no Flock contract and no plans for one — the July 15 defunding was a county action. We condemn threats of any kind, without reservation. This is exactly why the work belongs at the podium and in the public records, never in someone’s inbox — change came from the appropriation vote, not intimidation, and it always will. (WLOS) On sourcing: first reported by the Smoky Mountain News Facebook page, corroborated by WLOS on July 16, and now documented in full in SMN’s July 22 web article by a reporter who attended — which settles the vote date as July 15, 2026. Whether the $47,000 is annual or the full contract is still not established. |
| Canceled | Hillsborough (Orange Co.) | Ended its two-year, ~$81,500 contract for 10 cameras by unanimous vote in late October 2025, citing Flock’s broad data-sharing terms — the same “good-faith belief” disclosure language in our county’s contract. (Town of Hillsborough) |
| Canceled | Pittsboro (Chatham Co.) | Board of Commissioners voted 4–1 on May 11, 2026 to terminate the contract, with all cameras removed no later than July 1, 2026; local reporting confirms the cameras were switched off ahead of that deadline. Read the sequence closely, because this is the part that transfers. Mayor Kyle Shipp moved first to keep the system through the January 2027 contract end with conditions attached: no new cameras without board approval, standing bans on traffic enforcement, immigration enforcement, reproductive-care investigations, facial recognition and monitoring gatherings, 30-day retention, monthly internal audits, public reporting, and a board review before expiration. That motion failed. Only then did Commissioner Candace Hunziker move to terminate outright and bar FY2026-27 funds from continuing it, seconded by Commissioner John Bonitz, approved 4–1. Pittsboro was offered the guardrails-and-keep compromise and turned it down before it chose cancellation — any board being sold “we’ll just add a policy” should know a North Carolina town already tried that motion and voted it down. On sourcing: WRAL reported the vote 4–2; the Chatham Journal, citing the town’s official release, reports 4–1, which we use. The Journal names Mayor Kyle Shipp and Mayor Pro Tem Jay Farrell as favoring continuation under tighter controls but does not state who cast the single dissenting vote, so we do not name the dissenter until the minutes confirm it. (Chatham Journal · WRAL · Chapelboro) |
| Canceled | Chatham County (county-level) | The county board voted in April 2026 to remove its own Flock cameras — a county action distinct from Pittsboro’s town contract — leaving Pittsboro as the last holdout in the county before it, too, voted to terminate. (Hoodline · Chatham Journal) |
A note on geography: Hillsborough sits in Orange County and Pittsboro in Chatham County — the Triangle’s Orange–Chatham corridor, where Flock has met the most organized resistance in the state. Hillsborough and Pittsboro were town votes; in Chatham, the county board also voted to pull its own cameras — the corridor has now rejected Flock at both the town and county level. Macon County breaks that pattern — it sits in the far western mountains, a five-hour drive from Chatham, and its commissioners voted 5–0. This is no longer a Triangle story, and it is no longer a story about towns.
Decided now
Where the Fight Is Live
| Status | Locality | What’s happening |
|---|---|---|
| Contested | Wilmington / New Hanover Co. | New Hanover County holds the $219,000 Flock contract, which the Sheriff’s Office operates; DeFlockILM is organizing residents, and the petition has passed 2,934 signatures. The scale is not abstract: a WECT investigation found the Sheriff’s Office’s 19 cameras on state roads captured more than 35 million plates in about seven months. Update — late July 2026: the board that holds the money is publicly wavering. In a WECT investigation, Chair LeAnn Pierce said she is “concerned” and wants answers before backing future funding; Commissioner Dane Scalise said “we’re gonna get to the bottom of whether or not Flock cameras are right for New Hanover County,” and told WWAY that residents “are asking completely legitimate questions about these cameras and deserve a transparent review and discussion by the Commission” — a commissioner publicly committing the board to a review; Commissioner Rob Zapple said his “eyebrows are raised.” The same reporting revealed Sheriff McMahon emailed county leaders a memo (subject line “flock”) defending the program — he wrote the data is “retained for a limited period… before being automatically purged unless it becomes part of an active criminal investigation” and that the cameras are “not intended to function as a surveillance system” — which we obtained and answered with the county’s own records. That makes Aug 17 less a routine comment period than a likely board discussion — the same appropriation lever Macon County pulled to defund. Update — Aug. 4, 2026: a new WECT investigation into how the Sheriff’s system is used reports the Office is developing a public transparency portal, and that DeFlock critics are expected to speak at the Aug. 17 commissioners meeting. (WECT, Aug. 4) Update — Aug. 10, 2026: a week before the meeting, Sheriff McMahon read a prepared statement announcing policy changes — retention cut from 90 days to 30, a monthly internal audit (up from annual), and a live public Flock transparency portal (which lists 19 cameras — one of the 20 was stolen, later recovered, no arrests — and 774,174 unique reads in 30 days). He then declined to take questions. The changes are real — and unilateral; camera locations remain undisclosed, and the network audit of which agencies have searched the system is still not released. (WECT, Aug. 10 · the county’s Flock portal) (Where each commissioner stands · WECT · Speak up Aug 17) |
| Contested | Apex (Wake Co.) | A resident-led campaign — DeFlock Apex — is pressing to block renewal of the police department’s 10-camera Flock contract, which expires January 2027. On June 9 the Town Council voted unanimously to refer ALPR policy to its Public Safety Committee; organizers count a one-vote margin. The group has published records showing data-sharing grew past 1,000 organizations and that 26% of APD searches had no documented reason. Its July 12, 2026 audit counts 15,335 department searches of the plate network in a year (July 2025–June 2026) by 31 operators (DeFlock Apex audit). Update — August 5. No ALPR item is on the Aug 11 Town Council agenda, the policy is still sitting in Public Safety Committee, and the 10-camera expansion contract remains unsigned. DeFlock Apex is now demanding the committee meet in open session, with public comment — not decide behind a closed door. The group also pulled FBI crime data for Apex back to 2011: as the town nearly doubled in population, its crime rate fell about 40% — and Apex bought its first Flock cameras in 2023, at the lowest crime levels the town has ever recorded. Whatever made Apex safe, the cameras arrived after it happened. (DeFlock Apex · CBS17) |
| Contested | Asheville (Buncombe Co.) | City Council moved ahead amid hours of packed public comment — roughly 11 city cameras plus private feeds, and a front-row seat to the statewide bill. Update — the cameras were the beginning, not the end. APD is building a Real-Time Intelligence Center on Fusus software, funded by more than $1.1 million in federal money the City Council approved in May 2026, expected fully operational by spring or summer 2027. It pulls Flock plate readers, body cameras, in-car cameras, drones, and voluntarily shared business and residential cameras into what APD’s technology manager calls “one pane of glass.” Read the oversight closely: searches are audited quarterly, internally only — APD confirmed on the record the reviews are not conducted outside the department, and that misuse could become a personnel matter shielded from disclosure under North Carolina law. APD says it blocks search terms tied to immigration and reproductive issues, sets Flock retention to 30 days against the statutory 90-day ceiling, and will not share with federal agencies “short of a court order.” Those are real commitments, made by this administration, reviewable by no one outside it. Update — Aug. 6, 2026: APD put numbers on the oversight — 18 of roughly 200 officers hold search access, every search requires a documented reason, a lieutenant runs quarterly audits (the most recent found 100% compliance), retention is 30 days, and Council approved the $1.14 million RTIC grant on May 12, 2026. (828newsNOW) (WLOS News 13 Investigates, July 8, 2026) Update — Aug. 7, 2026: a Flock camera at Carrier Park on Amboy Road was vandalized — the lens painted over and the camera pulled from its post (since reinstalled); an APD forensics team collected evidence. It is the second WNC vandalism case in a month, after Rutherfordton. (WLOS, Aug. 7) |
| Contested | Garner (Wake Co.) | Residents are pressing the Town Council over a proposed multi-year, ~$449,375 Flock contract — questioning audit logs, data access, and past misuse — at the June 16 public-comment period. (Town of Garner · INDY Week) |
| Contested | Madison County | Residents organized against Flock (the Sheriff’s Office has used it since ~March) — and at a June meeting the board chair refused to let them speak individually: “You will not speak on Flock tonight.” Reporting puts the Sheriff’s use at about 1,200 database searches in a 60-day window — in a county of roughly 20,000 people. (404 Media) We have since sent the Sheriff three public-records demand letters on residents’ behalf. The Sheriff’s own July 14, 2026 production puts the network at 3,302 searches across 33 offense categories — on a system the County only signed for in February. A resident group, madisonforprivacy.org, now documents the Sheriff’s records refusals — which it contends violate the Public Records Law — and organizes public comment at the Board of Commissioners. One fact the calendar makes relevant: Sheriff Buddy Harwood is up for reelection this year. (Madison for Privacy · See the letters and what’s still missing) |
| Contested | Southern Pines (Moore Co.) | At a June 23, 2026 work session the Town Council questioned its 8-camera Flock program as potentially “too intrusive.” Police Chief Nick Polidori acknowledged he was unaware of any independent audit of Flock and that his own agency had never audited the company. The council agreed to keep the conversation going. Update — the July 28 work session passed with no reported ALPR action (local coverage notes only a social-district approval); we’re watching the town’s minutes for any Flock item. (Sandhills Sentinel) |
| Contested | Moore County | Distinct from the Southern Pines town program (above), the county is now contested. At the Aug. 4, 2026 Board of Commissioners meeting, residents used public comment to press the board to reconsider the county’s Flock program — among them Southern Pines resident Megan Spearing, an Air Force veteran and former imagery analyst, who framed ALPR “pattern of life” tracking as a national-security risk to Special Forces personnel living in the county. No vote was taken; Commissioner Kurt Cook said members are doing their own research, and Chairman Nick Picerno announced a public work session with the Sheriff on Aug. 17 at 4:00 p.m., inviting residents to submit questions to the clerk in advance. Venue (updated): a third outlet confirms the session is in the Grand Hall, Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15, West End — not the Rick Rhyne Public Safety Center. (Sandhills Sentinel · Sandhills News, Aug. 5 · Star 102.5) |
| Contested | Davidson County (Lexington/Thomasville) | A resident campaign, DeFlock Davidson County — propelled by a widely viewed video series from resident Mary Todd Boone — is pressing commissioners to end the program. The Sheriff’s Office runs 25 cameras (Lexington PD and Thomasville PD run their own separately). The county approved it unanimously on the consent agenda, Oct. 14, 2024, after the Sheriff’s early-October request — no standalone debate, the same appropriation posture Macon County later reversed. Speakers Mike Price and Benjamin Dosroches addressed the board Aug. 10, and a vote on the program’s future is reported for Aug. 24, 2026 (we’re confirming the date against the county’s posted agenda). (FOX8 WGHP · Thomasville Times) |
| Contested | Erwin (Harnett Co.) | A new town program, now publicly contested. 11 Flock cameras cover Erwin’s intersections and main entrances at $3,500 per camera per year — $38,500 for a town with an 11-officer department. Opposition surfaced organically on a local Facebook group (“get them out of here,” resident Mary Henkes); one resident flagged a camera sited next to her children’s daycare. Police Chief Jonathan Johnson says the department audits usage weekly and credits the system with one arrest via cross-referencing home-surveillance footage. No vote and no agenda item yet — public sentiment only. (ABC11/WTVD, Aug. 12) |
| Contested | Boone (Watauga Co.) | Town Council paused all expansion of its Flock system and ordered a public transparency portal — and as of July 2026 the portal is live. Out-of-state data sharing has been eliminated (except a handful of Tennessee agencies), quarterly audits of officer searches are now formalized, and the system captures only plate, make, model, and color. A partial win: the cameras stay, but the public finally gets the receipts. DeFlock’s map now counts 19 cameras in Boone (up from the ~15 previously described); Boone PD also credits a Flock alert with the July 2, 2026 arrest of a South Carolina murder suspect at the Watauga County Rec Center — the result the department cites for keeping the system. (Boone PD portal · Watauga Democrat) |
| Active | West Jefferson (Ashe Co.) | A Flock ALPR is up near the Lowe’s in West Jefferson. At the Board of Aldermen’s July 2026 meeting, police told the board a Flock camera had assisted an ongoing larceny investigation — a police report to the elected board, not a vote, with no contract figure or camera count disclosed. It puts Ashe County on the map. (Ashe Post & Times) |
| Contested | Jackson County (Sylva / Cullowhee) | Under public review after residents pressed the board. At an Aug. 4, 2026 work session, Sheriff Doug Farmer briefed commissioners to answer questions and rebut what he called “misconceptions” — no vote taken. His own numbers, for June 30–July 30: 4 cameras (2 in state right-of-way, 2 on private property), 1.19 million reads, 563 searches, and 4,652 hotlist hits, with data shared to 280 agencies inside North Carolina. Farmer conceded enforcement cannot rest on an ALPR image alone. (Sylva Herald) |
| Contested | Henderson County (Hendersonville) | A resident-led campaign has formed — the fourth county-level citizen effort on this page, after New Hanover, Apex, Madison, and Moore. Austin Rhodes, a 30-year-old berry farmer from Edneyville, started a DeFlock Henderson County Facebook page and a Change.org petition that reached 937 signatures and 500+ shares within days, and he has already addressed the Board of Commissioners urging them not to renew. The contracts are held by the Sheriff’s Office and the Hendersonville, Fletcher, and Laurel Park police departments, at roughly $3,000 per camera per year; DeFlock’s map counts 33–39 cameras countywide. Sheriff Lowell Griffin issued a written response to the petition and says the office will publish more on social media; a counter-petition supporting the cameras stands at 32. No Flock item is on the commissioners’ agenda yet. (WLOS, Aug. 10 · Hendersonville Lightning) |
| Contested | Granville County (Oxford) | At the July 6, 2026 Board of Commissioners meeting, Sheriff Robert Fountain reportedly asked that a 10-camera Flock proposal — a 2-year contract intended to run at least 5 years, integrated with the statewide network — be pulled from the agenda for further community discussion. We have not independently verified this. Our only source is DeFlockNC.org; no news outlet has reported it and the county has not posted minutes. Treat it as a lead, not a confirmed fact. Update — August 5. We searched the county’s own News Flash feed directly. In the month since July 6, Granville County has published nothing mentioning Flock, ALPRs, license plate readers, or cameras. The silence is not evidence either way — but a proposal pulled “for community discussion” has produced no visible community discussion in thirty days. (DeFlockNC (unverified) · Granville County News Flash) |
| Contested | Rutherford County (proposed — unverified) | Proposed, not yet approved. Sheriff Aaron Hellenburg and Detective Brian Bailey presented commissioners a plan for 8 Flock cameras (6 fixed, 2 portable). Commissioners did not vote — they sent it to budget planning and asked for more legal and NCDOT-permitting detail. This is a county proposal, distinct from the Rutherfordton town PD program already active (below). Sourcing: the only account is an AI-generated meeting-coverage site (CitizenPortal.ai) that would not load on direct fetch — we flag it as an unverified lead pending the county minutes, exactly as we do for Granville. |
| Contested | Lenoir County (Kinston) | After public pressure, the Sheriff’s Office held a community forum in Kinston on July 29, 2026, where residents challenged the program’s privacy, its data security, and the lack of any public input before installation. Sheriff Jackie Rogers conceded on the record: “It was on me… I didn’t consult residents before the cameras were installed.” The hard numbers surfaced for the first time: the system cost $105,750 up front (paid from federal forfeiture funds) and $48,000 a year thereafter (about $3,000 per camera, county-funded), governed by the department’s “909 policy.” A Flock representative attended and fielded questions. The date residents should mark: the contract renews September 10, 2027. Update — Aug. 3, 2026: at the Board of Commissioners meeting (the item was not on the published agenda), Capt. Chrissy Smith briefed commissioners — about 35 of 75 officers trained, 30-day retention, and search records (user ID and reason) kept permanently for audit; she stated no misuse has been detected since operations began Sept. 11, 2025. A commissioner noted the board approved the program by resolution on Dec. 2, 2024 — which sits awkwardly against the Sheriff’s July 29 concession that residents were never consulted. (WITN · Neuse News) |
| Enforcement | Charlotte / Mecklenburg Co. | North Carolina’s first criminal charge for Flock misuse landed here. On July 29, 2026 the SBI charged a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer — Seth Daniel Elliott, 25 — with a misdemeanor, accessing a government computer for a non-law-enforcement purpose (N.C.G.S. § 14-454(b)), for running an unauthorized search through Flock and a state database. Per the affidavit, a “drug target” asked Elliott to run a plate on June 16, 2026 — and the plate belonged to a Watauga County Sheriff’s Office undercover vehicle — part of a WCSO drug operation; the SBI flagged the search to CMPD on June 18. A Charlotte officer had reached across the network into a mountain county’s operation — the failure mode no retention rule can reach. Elliott was released within hours on a $15,000 bond, placed on unpaid administrative leave with his database access revoked, and is due in court in late August; the charge is an accusation, not a conviction. CMPD owns few cameras of its own; its officers reach other agencies’ networks through data-sharing, and that department turns up as a heavy searcher in the audits we hold — 13,733 searches of UNC Charlotte’s cameras in three months alone. The case is the clearest proof yet that access controls fail after the fact, not before. Update — Aug. 4, 2026: under press pressure, CMPD released its Flock memorandum of understanding — signed Feb. 18 by Chief Estella Patterson — which limits searches to “bona fide investigations and evidence gathering” yet grants officers “limited access” to community-owned cameras (businesses, HOAs, schools). That MOU is the instrument that let an officer whose department owns no cameras reach into a shared network. (The charge, and what our records show · WBTV) |
| Enforcement | Mooresville (Iredell Co.) | North Carolina’s second criminal Flock charge in a week — and the first for stalking rather than investigative leakage. On Aug. 5, 2026, Mooresville PD officer Elizabeth Anne Snowman, 36, was arrested on duty and charged with a misdemeanor — accessing a computer for a purpose other than official law-enforcement duties. She was dismissed from the department, posted a $5,000 secured bond, and is due back in court Aug. 27, 2026. Chief Ron Campurciani says she ran the Flock database 31 times (29 of them on duty) to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife. She was caught by a Flock system audit — after the searches, not before. The number that matters most for this page: at an Aug. 5 press conference the Chief said leadership is reviewing ten more potential misuse cases, at least three “problematic” — in a 124-officer department — and that another arrest could come “within days.” Update — Aug. 6: the internal audit now flags 11 officers, and Chief Campurciani says additional criminal charges are possible. In response the department tightened access: officers must now enter a case number and additional justification before any search. MPD also opened its Real-Time Crime Center to the press. (WHKY) (Our write-up & the redacted warrant · WBTV · WFAE) Update — Aug. 7, 2026: Chief Campurciani held a follow-up press availability sharpening his criticism of the former officer; the ten-employee internal review (three “problematic”) remains open. (WBTV, Aug. 7) |
Tracking the misuse, case by case
Two North Carolina officers have now been criminally charged with abusing the Flock network in eight days, and ten more are under investigation in a single department. We keep a running record — every NC case, its status, and the sources, updated as they surface. Open the North Carolina Police Misuse Tracker →
The whole state, at a glance
The Statewide Map
Forty-four counties have a status here because someone requested the records. Fifty-six are grey because nobody has yet.
Open the full North Carolina camera map
The map page carries the legend, the county-by-county status table, the counties with the most cameras by count and per capita, and how to find the readers on your own street. Built from the same data as the tables below, so the two cannot disagree.
Already watching
Where the Cameras Are
Crowdsourced counts from the DeFlock map and agency transparency portals. Numbers shift — check the map for your block.
| Status | Locality | What’s happening |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Raleigh | Roughly 60 Flock cameras across the city, per DeFlock’s crowdsourced map. |
| Active | Durham | About 46 Flock cameras in the city (none owned by Durham PD). Durham separately voted to drop ShotSpotter gunshot sensors. |
| Active | Charlotte (CMPD) | A plate-reader misidentification led to the wrongful detention of teacher Jasmine Horne; a review board ruled it 9–0 a wrongful detention. Residents have since launched a “Block the Flock CLT” petition demanding the city suspend Flock, disclose its data-sharing agreements, and hold a public forum. (Our writeup · petition) |
| Active | Fayetteville | Paid a $60,000 settlement after a license-plate reader helped wrongly arrest Jacqueline McNeill; the city also runs ShotSpotter. (Wrongful arrests) |
| Active | Wake suburbs | 20–30 cameras each in Knightdale and Wake Forest; Garner PD operates ~20; Fuquay-Varina ~16. Correction (July 28): Holly Springs Police run Vigilant/Motorola readers, not Flock, so we’ve removed it from the Flock column. Its chief also confirmed that outside agencies can install ALPRs inside town limits without the town’s approval or notice, and that federal data-sharing MOUs exist. Update — late July 2026: ALPR cameras at E. Carroll Joyner Park in Wake Forest were vandalized and removed by town staff for vendor repair (under investigation, no arrests). Flock has operated in Wake Forest since 2023 — and this is the incident NC departments now cite in their warnings. (CBS17) (Holly Springs Update) |
| Active | Pitt County | The school board voted in April to let the Sheriff install Flock cameras on roadways near two schools; the Sheriff’s Office now runs 30 cameras (28 fixed, 2 mobile) countywide and told WCTI in July 2026 it plans to add four more “based on operational needs.” (WCTI) (WITN) |
| Active | Greenville (Pitt Co.) | Greenville PD announced 10 new Flock cameras on major thoroughfares in July 2026 (~$30,000/yr) — separate from the Sheriff’s countywide network, and on top of the 1,000+ cameras Chief Richard Tyndall says the city already accesses. Residents are split: of ~15 people WITN asked downtown, 9 opposed (“privacy is becoming a privilege instead of a right”). The department’s own release confirms the cameras log roof racks, decals, and bumper stickers. (WITN · Greenville PD FAQ) |
| Active | Rutherfordton (Rutherford Co.) | Rutherfordton PD runs Flock cameras. After one was vandalized, the police chief’s July 7 Facebook post defending the program drew 20,000+ comments — many hostile to the cameras (replacement cost ~$3,500; police say charges are possible). No vote or organized campaign yet, but a raw read on how hostile NC public sentiment has become. (WLOS · Fox Carolina) |
| Active | Burke County | The Burke County Sheriff’s Office runs 10 Flock ALPR cameras, in service since about April 2025 under Sheriff Banks Hinceman. He says the office deletes data at 30 days — tighter than the 90-day statutory cap — asserts the data “belongs solely to Burke,” and says he does not believe ICE has access. Those are claims the audit logs we already hold from other counties could test directly. Stated results: 29 cases closed, 13 arrests, 15 stolen vehicles recovered, and $743,000 in recovered property. At least one camera was knocked down in mid-July. No public vote, contract figure, or organized opposition reported. (The Paper) |
| Active | Haywood County | The counterweight to next-door Macon. On July 21, 2026, Board Chairman Kevin Ensley said the county will keep its ~8 Flock cameras — in use since 2024 — crediting them with a drop in overdose deaths and noting the county has received no complaints. No vote; a direct, on-the-record decision not to follow Macon’s 5–0 removal. We log it because a record that only counts cancellations is not a record. (WLOS) |
| Active | Lincoln County | The Sheriff’s Office installed 30 Flock cameras countywide — rolled out March–June 2025 under Sheriff Bill Beam, funded from drug-asset-seizure funds rather than appropriations, which bypasses the annual funding lever Macon used to end its program. Stated 30-day retention, access limited to ranking officers on felony and missing-person cases. An existing deployment, not a new one. (WCNC · QC News) |
| Active | Brunswick County | Sheriff’s Office confirmed a Flock Safety contract (WECT); the DeFlock map shows readers countywide. We’ve filed an ALPR records request. (the records) |
| Contested | Pender County | Sheriff’s Office confirmed a Flock contract, with cameras on private property for investigative use; we’ve filed an ALPR records request (#26-306). Update — Aug. 6, 2026: answering “rising community questions,” Sheriff Alan Cutler issued a public statement with hard numbers — 8 fixed Flock ALPRs plus 1 mobile, leased, at major ingress/egress points. He states the cameras sit on public and private property under Property License Agreements that Flock holds (not the Sheriff’s Office), and that PCSO is developing a public transparency portal. Not a vote — a defensive posture — but it confirms the camera count our request was chasing. (WECT, Aug. 6 · the records) |
| Active | Wadesboro (Anson Co.) | A small department running an outsized network. Police Chief Michael Childers says Wadesboro PD operates 21 Flock readers, with 30-day retention and a case-number requirement to search, and credits the system with four homicides solved in a year. On Aug. 3, 2026 he issued a public warning that damaging Flock cameras is a criminal offense — prompted, he said, by discovering a “DeFlock Wadesboro” Facebook page; the department reports no threats. The warning, not a crime wave, is what put Anson County on this map. (QC News · FOX8) |
| Active | Columbus County | Sheriff’s Office confirmed a Flock contract alongside its southeastern neighbors — readers now span all five Cape Fear–region counties. Hard numbers now exist: the SBI’s April 2026 report to the legislature puts the Sheriff’s Office at 6 cameras on state-maintained roads that captured 6.8 million plates in roughly seven months. (WECT · WECT) |
| Active | Whiteville (Columbus Co.) | The City of Whiteville runs its own Flock cameras — a municipal contract separate from the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office, which also uses Flock. The SBI’s April 2026 report confirms Whiteville PD runs LPRs, and Chief Paul Rockenbach said an LPR alert on March 5, 2026 flagged a vehicle tied to a Cumberland County warrant and led to an arrest in a homicide case — the county’s demonstration that these systems do sometimes work as advertised. No cost figure or camera count has been reported yet; a records request would establish both, and one is warranted (filed July 1, 2026). (WECT · WWAY) |
| Active | Ocean Isle Beach & Wallace | Two municipal departments we had not named are in the SBI pilot on state rights-of-way: Ocean Isle Beach Police (Brunswick Co.) and Wallace Police (Duplin Co.), both named in WECT’s account of the SBI’s April 2026 report on the 32-agency program. Small departments, state-maintained roads, one statewide network — the exact configuration the budget provision has now opened to every agency in North Carolina. (WECT, July 21, 2026) |
| Active | Lenoir County | Sheriff’s Office began using Flock in September 2025; now roughly 16 cameras, bought with federally seized funds at about $48,000/year. (WCTI News 12) Update — July 29: after weeks of organized resident pushback, Sheriff Jackie Rogers held a public Q&A on the program (July 29, 6 p.m., Kinston) — the county’s program is now publicly contested. (WCTI) |
| Active | Plymouth (Washington Co.) | One of NC’s densest deployments — 28 Flock cameras in a town of ~3,000. The Town Council voted Monday, July 13 on adding 8 more (to 36) — a drawdown of a $325,000 federal Community Project Funding grant awarded in 2024, under Chief Louis Banks. Because it spends money the town already has, it is the kind of vote that ordinarily passes without friction. Update — August 5. We said the July packet should surface in early August. It has not, and the record is thinner than when we first checked. The most recent meeting posted is still June 22, 2026 — no July agenda, no packet, no minutes, twenty-three days after the vote. And the Upcoming Meetings page is entirely blank. The council meets the second Monday at 7:00 p.m., putting the next meeting on Monday, August 10 — with no notice posted six days out. The likely explanation is on the town’s own site, and it is not a conspiracy: Plymouth’s Town Council page currently advertises an Interim Town Manager vacancy — the town is recruiting to fill even the interim role. A town without a manager is a town whose clerk absorbs the manager’s work, and posting lags. That is an explanation. It is not a cure. A town of ~3,000 voted on doubling to 36 federally funded surveillance cameras, and three weeks later a resident cannot learn what their council decided, when the next meeting is, or who is running the town. How to be heard anyway: written comment to publiccomment@visitplymouthnc.com by 3:00 p.m. the day of the meeting is read into the record; to speak live, register with the Town Clerk by 3:00 p.m. that day. We will publish the July packet the moment it posts. (WITN · Recent Meetings · Upcoming Meetings · Town Council) |
| Active | Onslow County (non-Flock ALPR) | Sheriff’s Office runs 12 Plate Ranger cameras countywide — a Flock competitor, begun March 2026. Proof the surveillance is bigger than one brand: the same oversight questions apply to every ALPR vendor. (WITN) |
| Active | Carteret County | A three-vendor county — Flock, Verkada, and Ubiquiti — documented in a July 9, 2026 Carteret County News-Times investigation. Atlantic Beach PD runs Verkada ALPRs in the SBI pilot (30-day retention, 170 database ‘hits,’ no expansion planned). The paper independently confirmed at least eight more readers countywide: one Flock camera on Glenn Abby Drive (the Bay Colony HOA won’t confirm ownership), two Ubiquiti at Bogue Inlet Pier in Emerald Isle, and five at Lowe’s stores (two in Morehead City, three in Cape Carteret). The store-lot pipeline, documented: Cape Carteret’s police chief says his department has no access to the Lowe’s Flock cameras — yet Lowe’s shares that data with the SBI, so it runs past the local department straight to the state. Morehead City’s chief would neither confirm nor deny his own ALPR use. And Emerald Isle approved a June parking ordinance noting a private pier owner’s LPRs could support a future civil citation — private cameras feeding municipal enforcement. The paper’s editorial board called for public oversight. (Carteret County News-Times) |
| Active | Craven County | Sheriff’s Office has run Flock cameras at its ABC stores in Havelock, Bridgeton and Vanceboro since 2022 — and on July 5, 2026 two people were filmed cutting the pole and stealing a reader in Havelock (1200 block of East Main Street, 11:23 p.m.). The Sheriff’s Office released the surveillance video and is seeking to identify them. We don’t condone destroying the equipment — but the resentment it signals is real, and local. Correction: we previously described this as a separate incident in New Bern, after aggregators reported it that way. WITN’s reporting places it in Havelock, and it is the same incident. Confirmed since: WITN reported on July 10 that New Bern, Jacksonville and Kinston police all say they do not use Flock at all — which settles it. (WITN) (WITN) |
| Active | Harnett, Franklin, Person & Vance counties | Not our records — the SBI’s own April 2026 report to the legislature. The Harnett, Franklin and Person sheriffs and Henderson police (Vance Co.) run a combined 40 plate readers on state-maintained roads and had logged 23.3 million drivers by March. Raleigh PD’s three cameras alone recorded 14.8 million drivers and returned 956 ‘hits’ — the report never says whether a single one produced an arrest. These four counties were blank on our map until July 20; they are on it now because the state published the numbers itself. (WRAL · the SBI report) |
On campus
The UNC System Question
This reaches the state’s universities, too — and it is no longer a question. On June 28, 2026 we filed the same ALPR records request with all sixteen UNC System universities. Four have produced. Every one of the four runs plate readers, and no two run the same vendor:
- NC A&T State University — 16 Flock cameras at $51,240 a year. Its Flock network audit for March–May 2026 logs 1,390,776 searches by 3,487 organizations, overwhelmingly out of state, including 974 labeled with immigration reasons. A&T’s own officers ran 261 searches, 77.8% of them traffic infractions. (the audit · the full dataset)
- UNC School of the Arts — not Flock. BriefCam Insights plate recognition on six camera locations, all campus entrances, ~$27,181. It reports no data-sharing agreements and no misuse records. Its ALPR policy took effect June 29, 2026 — the day after our request — and still names “the Huntersville Police Department” in copied-over boilerplate.
- Western Carolina University — three ALPR systems at once: Flock and Rekor for campus police, plus a Genetec parking reader. After a July escalation the University produced supplementally on Aug 4: the Flock system retains data 30 days and shares with no one, and the police LPR policy (G.O. 302) is now in hand. But the parking system’s own configuration sets 365-day retention on “Hits,” over the § 20-183.32(a) 90-day cap — one of several items we’re still pursuing.
- UNC Greensboro — answered that it has no Flock agreements and closed the request. Its own production shows it has run Rekor Scout since December 2020 and renewed 16 licenses for FY27. The request was vendor-neutral; the policy, camera locations, retention schedule and sharing agreements were never produced. § 20-183.31(a) requires a written ALPR policy before a system operates.
Read every response, document by document, in the records repository.
Four campuses, four different vendors, and one shared gap: no campus has yet produced a compliant ALPR policy. That is the finding, and it is ours — not reported, obtained. Earlier reporting had established that UNC–Chapel Hill contracted in February 2026 for roughly 23 readers, through a licensed third party after Flock was blocked in the 2023 licensing fight, amid concerns about campus data reaching ICE. (Daily Tar Heel.) The twelve remaining institutions — including UNC Wilmington, right here, where an ALPR-style camera has been reported at a campus entrance — are pending, deficient, or quoting fees. The campuses that stonewall get named.
Know what’s on your campus? Tell us, and we’ll add it.
The bigger threat
The Statewide Surveillance Bill
Local contracts are one front. The other is in Raleigh. Earlier in 2026, House Bill 206 would have made the State Bureau of Investigation’s highway license-plate-reader program permanent. That provision was stripped out of HB 206 on June 17 — and put into the state budget instead, where it passed (see status below). During the pilot, the system had grown to about 140 cameras across 32 agencies and logged more than 150 million plate scans. And the ask is far larger than the pilot. WCTI reported on July 20, 2026 that the SBI’s own report to the General Assembly records 32 agencies requesting roughly 230 ALPR sites on state rights-of-way, and that SBI Director Chip Hawley has recommended lawmakers fund the highway program through 2028. Of those 32 agencies, the same SBI report shows only 17 have actually installed the roughly 140 cameras, with another 75 approved or pending installation — the near-term pipeline between today’s count and the 230-site ask. (WCTI News 12) (WRAL.) And there is now a date on the calendar: an SBI spokesperson told WECT the bureau is scheduled to present a program update to the General Assembly on October 1, 2026 — the first live legislative checkpoint since the plate-reader provision became law, and unlike the March annual report, an appearance lawmakers can question. The same reporting confirms the program’s ambition in the SBI’s own words: its stated goal is to place cameras at every entrance and exit to the state. (WECT, July 21.) We broke down the fight, and how it ended, in “They Want a Camera at Every Entrance to North Carolina.”
Status — corrected July 17, 2026. It passed. We got this wrong. On June 17, 2026 a Senate committee substitute stripped the plate-reader provision out of HB 206, and HB 206 became law on July 7 without it. We called that a win. It was not. Senate Judiciary chair Danny Britt told the News & Observer the provisions came out of the bill “since they were going to be put into the budget” — and the budget, now law, authorizes NCDOT to agree with the SBI to place plate readers on state-owned land. The systems must be above ground, removable, and free of combustible fuel. The SBI must report annually each March to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee. The provision did not die; it changed vehicles. (N&O via GovTech · our correction, in full)
And thirty of the thirty-two pilot agencies had no rule against watching a protest. WRAL obtained the internal ALPR policies of every agency in the SBI pilot. Only Asheville Police and Raleigh Police restrict using plate readers to surveil political rallies, religious gatherings, or protests. The other thirty have no such language at all — and the statute’s only penalty for misuse is a Class 1 misdemeanor, with no required audit to catch it. The budget provision does not cap the program at those 32; it opens the network to any law enforcement agency in the state, each bringing whatever policy it has written, or hasn’t. (WRAL, July 17, 2026 · our full breakdown)
A related pressure point, stated carefully: North Carolina is the only state of 40-plus that requires Flock to hold a security-systems license — and Flock operated here for years without one. The state’s Security Systems Licensing Board opened an investigation in 2022; Flock argued its cameras aren’t “alarm systems.” In October 2023 a Wake County judge ordered Flock to stop installing cameras in North Carolina unless it used a licensed third party, and the company did not obtain its own license until July 2024. That license — No. 367626-CSA, Class Alarm, held by Ralph Taylor for Flock Safety — issued July 23, 2024 and runs through August 31, 2026. We are not predicting a shutoff, and there is now nothing to predict: the Board told us on July 17, 2026 that Taylor filed his renewal on July 15, that staff asked for a corrected certificate of insurance and continuing-education certificates, and that he has 60 days to cure — with the license valid throughout. (We previously said this license expired July 31. That was wrong. The Board’s own record says August 31, and we have corrected it.) The live lever isn’t the date; it’s that the Board has a complaints process, field investigators, and a documented history of investigating this company. (N&O / Herald-Sun)
And the pilot’s reach already extends beyond public roads. WRAL has reported that the SBI gained access to Flock cameras at Lowe’s Home Improvement stores across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia — a pipeline running from a private retailer’s parking lots into a state database, funded in part by a federal human-trafficking grant. (WRAL Investigates.) More on the store-lot pipeline.
North Carolina law already limits this data: under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-183.32, captured plate data is confidential, is not a public record, may be disclosed only to law enforcement for a legitimate purpose on a written request, and shall not be sold for any purpose. Whether Flock’s contracts and data-sharing honor that limit is one of the open legal questions worth pressing.
In fairness, and with a date: on August 25, 2025, Flock CEO Garrett Langley published a statement saying all federal pilots had been paused and that “moving forward, federal users will not be added to Statewide or Nationwide lookup” (Flock Safety). Flock also began tagging federal agencies in its audit logs, which is how they can now be identified at all. But the commitment covers the lookup pools, not direct shares. Kure Beach’s own records, produced in July 2026, list the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service as direct sharing relationships — one-way, the Town giving and receiving nothing — and the two ran 31,476 searches of that town’s cameras between March and May 2026.
Check your own town
Tools Every North Carolinian Can Use
DeFlock Map
See the crowdsourced map of Flock & ALPR cameras near you
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Have I Been Flocked
Look up Flock search-audit data released for NC counties
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ALPR Analysis
Flock camera coverage and counts, county by county
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ACLU
“Get the Flock Out” — a national toolkit for pressing your city or county
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DeFlockILM
The statewide map — where North Carolina’s 2,819 mapped ALPR cameras are, county by county
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DeFlockILM
Map the cameras watching New Hanover County
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DeFlockILM
Our public records: the contract, the 3M-search audit, the STING Center directive
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DeFlockILM
Talking points to bring to your own town council
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DeFlockILM
The NC records repository & transparency scorecard — file a request, see who stonewalls
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Fighting Flock in another NC town? Tell us.
We’re building this into the state’s clearinghouse. If your community has canceled, is deciding, or needs the records and language that worked here, reach out — and we’ll add you to the map.
Your move
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name, then tell your county commissioners to cancel the Flock contract.