Seventeen North Carolina communities have already said no to Flock. Add your name › · The Cape Fear is under warrantless AI surveillance — it’s time to act.
Statewide map
Flock Cameras in North Carolina, County by County
Volunteers have mapped 2,819 ALPR cameras across North Carolina — about 85% of them Flock. This page shows you where they are, which counties carry the heaviest load, and which communities have already ended their contracts. Every number traces to a public record or the crowdsourced map, and we say plainly what the data cannot tell you. New to this? Start with what these cameras can actually do — and who is searching them.
Last updated July 20, 2026
Two maps, two different questions
If you want the street address of a specific camera, use the crowdsourced DeFlock map — it plots individual readers on a real map, block by block.
If you want to know whether anyone in your county is doing anything about it, stay here. The map below tracks status, not pins: which counties have ended their contracts, which are contested, which are active, and — for most of the state — which nobody has examined yet.
Every mapped camera
The Live Statewide Camera Map
This is the crowdsourced DeFlock map, centered on North Carolina. Zoom to your town, click any marker for the vendor and direction it faces, and drag to explore. Every pin was logged by a volunteer — which is why the coverage is uneven, and why adding one is worth doing.
Live crowdsourced map from DeFlock (OpenStreetMap data), centered on North Carolina. Not loading? Open it in a new tab. Found a camera that isn’t here? Add it.
Flock ALPR across the Cape Fear — by jurisdiction
The whole state, at a glance
Where North Carolina Stands
All 100 counties. Green means a Flock contract has been ended; amber means it is contested; red means it is active and unchallenged so far; grey means nobody has examined the records yet. Hover any county for detail. Counties with an organizing group link straight to it.
Tiles are schematic, not to scale — each square is one county, placed roughly where it sits. Where a county holds more than one locality, the tile shows the furthest-along status and the tooltip lists them all.
Fifty counties are grey. That is not a gap in the data — it is the finding.
Fifty counties on this map have a status because someone requested the records, read a contract, or showed up at a meeting. The other fifty are blank because no one has yet. Cameras almost certainly operate in many of them; what is missing is any public accounting of who runs them, what they cost, and who can search them. If you live in a grey county, you can change its color. Our records-request guide has the language, and it takes about ten minutes.
Status, county by county
Every County We’ve Examined
| Status | Locality | County & who’s organizing |
|---|---|---|
| Defunded | Macon County | Macon County |
| Canceled | Hillsborough | Orange County |
| Canceled | Pittsboro & Chatham County | Chatham County |
| Canceled | Wilmington / New Hanover — WON (Sept 8, 2026): the Board of Commissioners voted unanimously, 4-0 to terminate the county’s Flock contract — motion by Vice Chair Dane Scalise, who moved to cancel rather than pause — after a WECT investigation found the network was searched about 2.98 million times and dozens of residents spoke against it with none in favor. Prior context — Aug 17: 41 residents spoke, none in favor; the board committed to review the $219,000 Flock contract and to take the program up again in September, after Chair LeAnn Pierce gets answers on who can access the data, whether it can be sold, and how secure it is; the Sheriff confirms only 19 of the 36 contracted cameras are plate readers, and pegs county-originated searches at 3.9% of the total. A WECT investigation (Aug 18) found the Sheriff’s Flock system was searched about 2.98 million times between January 2025 and June 2026 — a partial answer to the still-unreleased network audit of which outside agencies searched the system, and set against the portal’s 774,174 reads in a single 30-day window | New Hanover County — organizing: DeFlockILM |
| Contested | Apex & Garner (Wake Co.; Raleigh & suburbs active) — the citizen group DeFlock Apex is organizing residents against the town’s Flock program, with 150+ turning out at a recent Town Council meeting. The pressure point mirrors New Hanover’s redaction fight: an Apex Police audit disclosed that two federal agencies — the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and a U.S. Air Force base police unit — had been mistakenly enabled for data sharing, despite federal access being excluded from the town’s arrangement; the USPIS ran three nationwide searches touching Apex data in an embezzlement case, and the Deputy Chief would not say what they returned. The numbers Apex disclosed: a $71,750 contract for 10 cameras (7 installed) through Jan 31, 2027, roughly 60,000 reads a day, data shared with about 1,000 agencies, and 15 million+ scans since October 2025. DeFlock Apex is pressing for removal and a public hearing before any renewal; the Public Safety Committee meets Oct. 1, 2026 to recommend whether the town keeps Flock, switches vendors, or ends ALPRs — the decision point before the Jan. 2027 contract expiry. | Wake County — organizing: DeFlock Apex |
| Active | Holly Springs (Wake Co.) — the Police Department runs Vigilant/Motorola ALPRs, not Flock; Chief Paul Liquorie told residents that outside agencies may install ALPRs on state-maintained roads inside town without the town’s approval — the state-road gap DeFlockILM has flagged (hollyspringsupdate.com, Sept 2026) | Wake County |
| Canceled | Asheville — WON (Aug 25, 2026): after more than an hour of heated public comment, the City Council voted 5–2 to terminate the city’s Flock contract, remove all 11 cameras, suspend city access, searching, and sharing of Flock data, and order a comprehensive surveillance-oversight review. Mayor Esther Manheimer had asked the Council to authorize terminating the contract and removing the cameras. Her mechanism is the transferable point: a moratorium wasn’t enough, because the contract allows removal only by terminating it. She cited reporting that Flock shared data with ICE without contracting cities’ permission, and said the Council’s May 2026 civil-liberties measure (Resolution 26-97) proved insufficient. (Terminating Flock would not end Asheville’s separate $1.14M Fusus real-time intelligence center. And days before the vote, APD publicized using Flock to identify juveniles in a West Asheville paintball-assault case — an investigative win aired on the eve of the decision.) By Aug 20 the Council had drafted a resolution to terminate — a firmer posture than the mayoral call. Councilmember Kim Roney (Manheimer’s opponent in the November mayoral race, and a longtime Flock critic) backs termination but flags the vendor-neutral risk that the city could ‘replace the system with another ALPR company’ — ‘this is the wrong tool to solve the problem’ — and notes no known misuse case in Asheville itself ‘yet’; both mayoral candidates now favor ending the contract. APD’s own dashboard shows 365,000+ plate reads in the last 30 days, 8,000+ of them ‘hotlist’ hits. Note the scale gap: the city owns only ~11 Flock cameras, but a Citizen-Times count found 66 Flock cameras in ZIP 28806 and 62 downtown (28801) once private and other-agency readers are included — the Aug 25 vote ends only the city’s contract, leaving the rest in place. Update (Aug 21): the resolution and contract are now public. The resolution forces early termination of APD’s $72,000 Flock contract (in place since 2025, otherwise set to run through Jan 2027), requests removal of the 11 APD-operated cameras, and bars city staff from accessing, searching, or sharing Flock data after termination. But the catch is the story: APD plans to replace Flock with Axon ALPRs (Interim Chief Jackie Stepp’s Aug 14 memo to council). At the Aug 20 briefing only Roney objected — a vendor swap means ‘we still have a violation of our constitutional-rights problem’ — while Mayor Manheimer called Axon ‘in the pipeline’ and council members Hess, Turner & Ullman defended it. This would be the first NC locality to cancel Flock while planning a same-day vendor substitution — a materially different outcome than Hillsborough, Pittsboro, or Macon. Of the 86 Flock cameras across Buncombe County, only 11 are the city’s, so cancellation removes about 13% of the county network. Update — the vote passed Aug 25, 2026, 5–2 to terminate the city contract and remove all 11 cameras; APD has already lost Flock access, and a Sept. 8 staff study takes up the Axon vendor-swap question. | Buncombe County |
| Contested | Madison County — the Sheriff’s Office quietly amended its Flock contract in June 2026 to remove five cameras, cutting the program from 17 to 12 (about $30,000/yr). Madison holds access to a network of 1,500+ agencies and shares its data with 725. The office has also run a separate Rekor Systems ALPR contract since 2021 — four years before Flock, a second vendor on the same county. On records, Madison for Privacy requested the Flock contract and received only the signature page, and the office told Carolina Public Press that Flock — not the agency — holds some of the requested records (the same custody dodge we have documented elsewhere). At a June meeting, board chair Michael Garrison limited public comment to a single group spokesperson (permissible under NC Open Meetings Law). Commissioner Alan Wyatt has expressed interest in learning more. | Madison County — organizing: Madison for Privacy |
| Contested | Southern Pines & Moore County — no vote. The Sheriff disclosed 10 county cameras plus access to 23 municipal ones, said the system figured in 31 matters in July, and that 99% of captured vehicles are never tied to an investigation. He declined Flock’s new 7-day default, keeping 30-day retention — the first NC agency to refuse the vendor’s own recommendation on the record. The Aug 17 special meeting drew 100+ and adjourned early amid shouting | Moore County — organizing: DeFlock Moore County |
| Contested | Boone | Watauga County |
| Active | Ashe County (West Jefferson) | Ashe County |
| Contested | Jackson County (Sylva) | Jackson County |
| Canceled | Transylvania County / Brevard — a new WNC campaign. A removal petition (‘Stop the use of ALPRs and LPRs in Transylvania County and Brevard’) was created Aug 29, 2026, and — and in early September 2026 the proposal was withdrawn: at the City Council meeting, Police Chief Christy Wentzell pulled her request for three fixed Axon ‘Outpost’ ALPRs after a community-feedback session drew privacy objections (“we asked for the community’s voice and they gave it to us”), though she said she still favors the devices — the same Axon deployment named in our Chapter 74D licensing complaint. Note the vendor-swap hook: Axon had offered the cameras free, bundled with body cameras and Tasers. The City maintains its own ALPR Program page. | Transylvania County |
| Contested | Union County — Monroe & countywide (Charlotte metro): two citizen petitions (Monroe ‘Stop Flock in Monroe’ at 532; countywide ‘Ban Flock in Union County’ at 340), Mayor Pro Tem Surluta Anthony committed on the record to raise Flock at the next Monroe City Council meeting — and on Sept. 8, 2026 Flock reached a Monroe council agenda for the first time (an FAQ/‘transparency’ review only, no vote or moratorium) while Neighbors United/Vecinos Unidos (NUVU) rallied outside City Hall demanding termination; Monroe PD’s portal now lists 16 cameras, 12 of them ALPRs. There is also a Sheriff’s-Office HOA-camera pattern — UCSO owns no Flock cameras but uses roughly seven neighborhoods’ private readers (WCNC). | Union County |
| Contested | Granville County (unverified) | Granville County — organizing: DeFlockNC |
| Canceled | Davidson County (Lexington/Thomasville) — WON. On Aug 24, 2026 the Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to remove the Sheriff’s Office 25-camera Flock program — the cameras turn off as soon as the next day and come down within 30 days. Several commissioners who had approved the program in October 2024 said they changed their minds. The first year ran $90,750 on federal forfeiture funds and about $76,000/yr thereafter; that money will now fund a mobile command unit instead. Sheriff Richie Simmons had defended the cameras as tools for recovering stolen vehicles and finding missing people — he appeared alongside a Flock Safety representative to defend the program and lost anyway. Fourteen residents spoke against during public comment, and Commissioner Chris Elliott framed the board’s reasoning as concern over potential future abuse — or abuse by other agencies — not any misuse by Davidson deputies. | Davidson County — organizing: DeFlock Davidson County |
| Active | Durham | Durham County |
| Active | Charlotte (CMPD) — the city posted RFP 225784 on Sept. 9, 2026 (closes Oct. 5) to replace its decade-old ALPR system with a new state-of-the-art platform — cameras, software, cloud storage, real-time alerting, and vehicle analytics — the largest open NC municipal ALPR procurement. The solicitation requires compliance with § 20-183.31 and a valid NC Alarm Systems License. A CMPD officer was separately criminally charged for misusing Flock. (WSOC · eVP listing) | Mecklenburg County |
| Contested | Mooresville (Week of Action; officer-misuse case) | Iredell County — organizing: DeFlock Week of Action |
| Contested | Fayetteville (Week of Action; ALPR wrongful-arrest settlement) | Cumberland County — organizing: DeFlock Week of Action |
| Canceled | Greenville & Pitt County — WON (Aug 28, 2026): the City of Greenville dropped its planned 10-camera Flock purchase after public outcry, the City Council and City Manager’s Office citing community feedback; the City confirmed GPD owns no Flock cameras. The Pitt County Sheriff’s separate countywide network remains, so the county stays contested. WCTI News 12 Investigates (Sept 2026): the Sheriff’s Office runs about 30 Flock cameras at a reported $200,000+ over two years, with four more planned — a countywide network untouched by Greenville’s cancellation | Pitt County |
| Active | Farmville (Pitt Co.) — a Flock ALPR program reported in the town, separate from the Pitt County Sheriff’s countywide network and Greenville’s canceled purchase (details being confirmed) | Pitt County |
| Contested | Rutherford County (Rutherfordton) — a citizen OpenPetition asks commissioners to remove existing Flock systems and halt all future ALPR expansion or funding — an organized removal campaign (organizer Jonathan Terry, 343 signatures) that was expected before the Board of Commissioners around Sept. 8, 2026 — though the posted Sept. 8 agenda and meeting recap covered Helene finance and a new county manager’s swearing-in with no Flock item, so the petition is not yet formally acted on (awaiting minutes) | Rutherford County — organizing: DeFlock Rutherford |
| Active | Burke County | Burke County |
| Active | Haywood County (vows to keep) | Haywood County |
| Contested | Mount Holly (Gaston Co.) — now contested. A removal petition was filed Aug 25, 2026 to Mayor David Moore and the council; Town Manager Jonathan Blanton says the town has no plans to discontinue its 24 Flock cameras (6,822 alerts reported since installation). Gaston County Police run 10 more. Update — Sept 6, 2026: City Manager Jonathan Blanton defended the program to Spectrum News, citing a recent 24-camera arrest that produced 6 charges, seized fentanyl, and recovered a firearm; he said every search requires a report number and a purpose code, that the city is “pleased with the results,” and “will continue evaluating” the system. | Gaston County — organizing: DeFlock Mount Holly |
| Active | Lincoln County (30 cameras) | Lincoln County |
| Canceled | Town of Catawba (Catawba Co.) — WON: after a 60-day trial of five Flock cameras, the town declined to subscribe on Sept. 8, 2026 and the Town Council denied the Police Department’s funding request — even a scaled-back $3,000 for a single camera. Flock has active work orders to remove the cameras from town limits. Police Chief Brian Bixby still backs the technology and hopes to win approval later. Bixby’s case was not hypothetical: in August, Catawba County deputies used Flock to locate the vehicle of murder suspect Leroy Loper, 54 — charged with murder, first-degree kidnapping, and concealment of death in the disappearance of Robin Doyle, 58, near Claremont. The council heard that argument and still declined to fund the cameras (keeping all five would have run about $15,000) — a board that heard the strongest version of the case and said no anyway is a stronger precedent than one that never did. This is the Town of Catawba only — distinct from the city of Hickory and from any Catawba County Sheriff deployment. (Hickory Daily Record · WHKY · WSOC · Hoodline) | Catawba County |
| Guardrails | Rockingham County — Guardrails, not cameras. On Sept. 8, 2026 the Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted an ordinance regulating ALPR installation (Flock included): any future camera request must come before the commissioners with public comment, and any governing policy must be posted publicly 14 days before a hearing. The county runs no cameras and holds no contract; Chairman Houston Barrow said the rule grew out of a prior ALPR request staff had quietly declined — the decision made in the open, before the cameras, not after. Update — Sept 10, 2026: the Reidsville Police Department ceased use of its Flock cameras and will not renew its contract; Chief Ray Gibson cited residents’ privacy, data-collection, and appropriate-use concerns. Reidsville ran about nine readers — the county’s largest municipal Flock program, now down, on top of the guardrails ordinance. | Rockingham County |
| Contested | Brunswick County — Sep 1, 2026: a Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office employee resigned and is under N.C. SBI review after a routine Flock audit flagged alleged misuse of the plate-reader system (Sheriff Brian Chism). Sept 8, 2026: now contested at the board — Commissioner Pat Sykes pressed Sheriff Chism at the Board of Commissioners and read the Fourth Amendment from the dais; Chism disclosed the county runs 16 Flock cameras (contract begun Jan. 2024, renewed Jan. 2026) — double the 8 in the records production — and vowed to keep them. No vote; Chair Mike Forte said the board will revisit once Sykes gets the records she requested | Brunswick County |
| Contested | Pender County — at the Aug 17 meeting, Commissioner Randy Burton became the first area commissioner to defend the program on the record (‘a great deal of misinformation…’) after Hampstead resident Christopher Lutterloah asked the board to remove several cameras (‘once our citizens’ data goes into a Flock system, we lose exclusive control over it’). Separately, Pender’s ‘transparency portal’ is live but publishes no searchable audit and no sharing list; its policy tab is vendor boilerplate | Pender County |
| Active | Wadesboro | Anson County — organizing: DeFlock Wadesboro |
| Active | Columbus County | Columbus County |
| Contested | Lenoir County (Kinston) — residents raised Flock privacy and transparency concerns (July 2026), and on Aug 19, 2026 the Sheriff’s Office issued a defensive policy statement: retention cut from 90 to 30 days, search access limited to supervisors and detectives only (deputies have none), a case number plus specific reason required per search, routine audits, and multi-factor login — asserting the data ‘belongs to the department.’ Notably, Lenoir is staying at 30 days, not adopting Flock’s new 7-day default — the second NC agency on record (after Moore County) to decline the vendor’s number. Update — Sept 2026 (WCTI News 12 Investigates): the Sheriff’s Office operates 16 cameras and completed its first comprehensive annual audit this month. | Lenoir County |
| Contested | Plymouth (Washington Co.) — the Police Department approved a Flock ALPR program in 2025 (grant-funded by a $325,000 federal Community Project Funding grant). Update — Sept 14, 2026: the Town Council deferred renewal after cop-turned-councilman Shelton warned the cameras ‘cross a constitutional line.’ Records show 17 cameras (4 of 7 are LPRs), 30-day retention, and portal sharing with Acworth GA, Lehigh County PA, Fort Worth and Irving TX; the town attorney warned that cancellation may breach the federal grant. One of six Eastern-NC localities WCTI News 12 Investigates surveyed in Sept 2026 | Washington County |
| Active | Onslow County | Onslow County |
| Active | Craven County — the county runs 3 Flock cameras at county ABC stores since 2022, with out-of-county data sharing (WCTI News 12 Investigates, Sept 2026) | Craven County |
| Active | Carteret County (Flock, Verkada, Ubiquiti) — Atlantic Beach approved a 5-year, $11,125 contract for 2 Verkada ALPRs (Aug 2025), per WCTI News 12 Investigates (Sept 2026). Records produced Sept 15, 2026 (SBI/NCIC MOU; audit log shows 1,222 searches in 3 months); the Town withheld the plate-read log and rejected preservation — Rice Law o/b/o DeFlockILM sent a deficiency response | Carteret County — organizing: DeFlock Carteret |
| Contested | Harnett Co. — four town programs (Dunn, Angier ~6, Erwin, Lillington ~4) per FY24-25 budgets; Erwin contested (camera count disputed, 7 vs 11); Sheriff active | Harnett County |
| Suspended | Franklin County Sheriff — SUSPENDED (indefinite), Sept. 25, 2026. Sheriff Kevin White audited his office’s own Flock system, found Detective Janet Leonard had used it to track “the every movement of a single, private citizen” with no legitimate purpose, fired her, referred the case to the District Attorney, and took the entire ALPR system offline pending review. “I will never allow it to come at the cost of your privacy and constitutional rights.” | Franklin County |
| Contested | Zebulon (Wake Co.) — commissioners scheduled a fuller staff briefing and public review of the town’s third-party-operated Flock cameras, tentatively October 2026, with policy materials published ahead and public comment invited. | zebulon County |
| Active | Person County Sheriff | Person County |
| Active | Henderson Police | Vance County |
| Contested | Lumberton (Week of Action) | Robeson County — organizing: DeFlock Week of Action |
| Contested | Alamance County — Burlington & Graham: the cities’ police chiefs back Flock while residents press privacy concerns at council meetings; no vote yet. The local debate drew comprehensive coverage on Sept. 17, 2026 (Alamance News). Part of the statewide Week of Action organizing. | Alamance County — organizing: DeFlock Week of Action |
| Contested | Greensboro & High Point (Week of Action) — GPD runs ALPRs out of a real-time information center, siting cameras by call volume and power access (WFDD, Aug 17). Guilford counts 63 cameras countywide; Greensboro PD’s own transparency portal shows 20 cameras, 1,232 plate-database searches, 340,097 vehicle records, and a network reaching 212 other agencies. | Guilford County — organizing: DeFlock Week of Action |
| Contested | Winston-Salem & Forsyth County — Winston-Salem PD confirms it runs ALPRs from Verkada and Axon, not Flock (Aug 19) — the state’s fifth-largest city already operating the exact Axon substitution Asheville’s police are proposing in their Sept. 8 study, so ‘canceled Flock’ framing understates real ALPR coverage in the Triad. Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough is running an ‘FCSO on Tour’ series of public-information sessions (Kernersville’s Paddison Memorial Library, Aug. 20; Rural Hall next month, date TBA) — but ALPRs are not on the agenda: he is presenting ‘new technology’ broadly, so residents who want surveillance addressed will have to raise it themselves. Update — Sept 14, 2026: at the Public Safety Committee (File 26-0380), Asst. Chief Jose E. Gomez confirmed WSPD is not pursuing Flock — the January 2023 council approval of 25 cameras was never executed and none were installed — and described a Fusus ‘Real-Time Crime Center’ in which residents and businesses opt in to camera registration and businesses may share live feeds into the RTCC, alongside Verkada and Axon cameras restricted to criminal investigations and missing persons. (agenda packet) Real multi-vendor presence, no organized campaign yet | Forsyth County — organizing: DeFlock Week of Action |
| Contested | Henderson County (Hendersonville) — removal petition past 2,000 signatures (double what it set out for; a rival ‘increase funding for Flock’ petition is also live). The opposition is cross-ideological — organizer Austin Rhodes (conservative) and Tiernan Turner (progressive) first met while speaking against the Sheriff’s cameras at the Aug 3 board meeting. Residents reject Flock’s new safeguards; Hendersonville Police Chief Blair Myhand defends the cameras, citing monthly random-sample audits. Update (Aug 2026): Sheriff Lowell Griffin issued a press release formally rejecting removal, citing crimes solved with ALPRs and Flock’s 30-day deletion — hardening this from a campaign forming to a campaign met with public refusal. The progressive group PERSIST of Henderson County has since joined the coalition. Agency counts are now on the record: Hendersonville PD 15 cameras (~$47k/yr), Sheriff’s Office 13 — 28 agency-owned. The Hendersonville City Council heard Chief Myhand’s presentation Sept. 3 (he defended the cameras — “no surveillance … no tracking of movement” — residents held protest signs; no vote), and the County Commissioners took up the Sheriff’s cameras Sept. 8, 5:15 p.m. — more than a dozen residents spoke against them over an hour, and no vote was taken. | Henderson County |
| Canceled | Kill Devil Hills & Dare County (Outer Banks) — WON (Sept 1, 2026): the Dare County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to remove the Sheriff’s Office’s 14 Flock cameras at seven locations — not merely switch them off; the paid annual lease will not be renewed and the cameras come down within about two weeks. Municipal readers remain (KDH PD’s 6 and other town cameras are outside the county board’s control), so the county is not yet Flock-free. Prior context: at the Aug 17 KDH commissioners meeting, members criticized Flock from the dais (Comm. B.J. McAvoy, a defense attorney, called it ‘ripe for abuse’; Comm. T. Dillon Heikens: ‘I don’t like it’); KDH police disclosed 6 readers in 3 locations and 30-day retention, and — tellingly — have not activated a Flock transparency portal, with officers telling the board they were “uncertain about the workings of the portal” and would report back; the new group ‘DeFlock Dare’ (organizer Andrea O’Donnell) has a removal petition past 750 signatures (it demands full removal plus a public hearing before any future ALPR contract); O’Donnell also sent a formal disclosure demand — camera counts, locations, purposes, outside-agency access, retention, search audits, and known violations — to the County Board, all six town governments, and the county’s legislative delegation, on a 30-day deadline, stating that “not reform alone, but full removal, is our ultimate goal”; KDH has run its 6 readers since July 2024, citing a murder arrest and two runaway recoveries. Dare County counts 48 ALPR cameras countywide — the most reader-dense county in North Carolina, 12.55 per 10,000 residents. Next: DeFlock Dare holds a ‘Get the Flock out of Dare’ rally Sat. Aug. 29 (Colington Rd, KDH); the Dare County Commissioners take up a Sheriff’s Flock presentation Sept. 1, and Nags Head hears its police ALPR briefing Sept. 2 | Dare County — organizing: DeFlock Dare |
| Active | Mitchell County (reported) | Mitchell County |
| Active | Yancey County (reported) | Yancey County |
| Active | Avery County (reported) | Avery County |
The full story behind each entry — votes, dollar figures, contract dates, and sources — lives on the statewide tracker.
Cape Fear coast — the full county pages. We keep a documented page for each local government we’ve examined on the Cape Fear coast — the contract, the numbers, and how to act:
New Hanover County · Brunswick County · Pender County · Columbus County · Onslow County · Carolina Beach · Kure Beach · Wrightsville Beach · Wilmington
Where they’re thickest
The Counties Carrying the Most Cameras
By raw count, the deployment tracks population — the metros lead:
| County (metro) | Mapped ALPR cameras |
|---|---|
| Wake (Raleigh / the Triangle) | 321 |
| Mecklenburg (Charlotte) | 298 |
| Union (Monroe / Charlotte exurbs) | 150 |
| Iredell (Mooresville / Statesville) | 129 |
| Gaston (Gastonia) | 87 |
Normalize for population and the map turns over. Dare County — the Outer Banks — carries 12.55 cameras per 10,000 residents, roughly five times Wake’s rate, followed by Wilson, Vance, Jackson (Cullowhee and Western Carolina), and Caldwell. Small, rural, tourist, and college counties top that list, not cities. (Update — Sept 1, 2026: Dare’s commissioners voted unanimously to remove the Sheriff’s 14 cameras; once down, the county’s count falls to about 34 and its rate to roughly 8.9 per 10,000, still the highest in the state, with the towns’ readers remaining.)
See the full county-by-county ranking — both charts, all the per-capita math, the population figures, and an honest account of what a crowdsourced count can and cannot establish.
Read the count as a floor, not a ceiling
These 2,819 cameras are what volunteers have found and logged on the open DeFlock map. The real totals run higher — agencies are not required to publish camera locations, and many don’t. Treat every figure here as documented minimum, not a complete inventory.
On your own street
Flock Cameras Near Me: How to Find Them
“Are there Flock cameras near me?” is the question we get most, and the honest answer has two halves. Almost certainly yes — 2,819 have been mapped in North Carolina and the real number runs higher. And nobody is required to tell you where. No agency in this state publishes a public map of its own readers. Everything below exists because volunteers built it.
County totals are an argument. An address is a fact you can take to a council meeting. Three ways to get one:
DeFlock Map
Search your address on the crowdsourced map and see every reader logged nearby
Read the story →
DeFlockILM
How to recognize an ALPR camera on the pole — what to look for, with photos
Read it →
DeFlockILM
Map the cameras in your own town — a step-by-step kit for adding what you find
Read it →
Agencies that run Flock often publish a transparency portal listing camera counts and search totals. Boone’s went live in 2026 after residents pressed for it. If your department has one, it is the fastest primary source you’ll find; if it doesn’t, that absence is worth asking about in public.
If the map shows nothing near you, that is not an answer. It means no one has looked yet. Coverage is thinnest in exactly the rural counties where a sheriff’s office can run a dozen readers without a single public meeting about it. The fastest way to find out what is on your own roads is to ask for the records — or to go hunt for the cameras yourself.
What the map doesn’t show
A Camera Count Is Not the Whole Question
How many cameras a county has matters less than who can search them. A single agency’s readers are usually joined to a shared network, and one search can reach across it. When NC A&T produced its Flock audit, its sixteen campus cameras turned out to have been included in 1,390,776 searches over three months by 3,487 different organizations — overwhelmingly out of state. Sixteen cameras. (the audit · how one search reaches a thousand networks.)
So the questions worth asking your own town are not only how many, but: what is the retention period, who is on the sharing list, does an out-of-state or federal agency have access, and has anyone audited the searches? North Carolina law sets some of these limits already — including a 90-day cap on retention that at least one public university has told us in writing it does not follow.
Your move
Change Your County’s Color
Every green square on that map started red. In each case a resident read the contract, asked for the audit, and brought it to a public meeting.
Request the records
The exact language to send your sheriff or police department — and what to ask for
Get the language →
The playbook
How communities have ended Flock contracts, step by step
Read the playbook →
The coalition
Who’s organizing across North Carolina — and how to reach them
See who’s organizing →
Working on this in another North Carolina town? Tell us and we’ll add you to the map. info@DeFlockILM.org
Your move
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name — then tell the officials who represent you to take the cameras down.