The Vote Was the Easy Part. The Cameras Are Still on the Poles.

On September 8, 2026, the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners voted 4–0 to cancel the Sheriff’s Office contract for the stationary Flock automated license-plate readers. Residents understood that to mean the cameras would come down. It is now October 30. Fifty-two days have passed, and as far as anyone driving past them can tell, the cameras are still up.

Flock — not the County — owns the hardware and controls removal. After the vote, the company estimated that taking the cameras down would take about 60 days, and County Manager Chris Coudriet relayed that the process “could take some time.” Sixty days from the vote lands around November 7. So the County is not yet past that window — but with roughly a week to go and the cameras still on the poles, the Board should make sure the last step actually happens, on a date certain, and does not quietly slip.

On October 30 we wrote the Board to ask for exactly that. (Read the letter.)

Why the follow-through matters

Across the country, a cancellation vote has repeatedly turned out to be only as strong as the follow-through — because the vendor, not the local government, controls the equipment on the poles:

• Plymouth, Minnesota. Flock did not act on the city’s cancellation, so the police chief personally unplugged and removed the cameras and poles himself — and a month later Flock still would not say when it would retrieve the hardware.
• Dayton, Minnesota. Flock acknowledged the cancellation, quoted 60 days — and then reinstalled cameras after the city had ended the contract.
• Grass Valley, California. The city canceled and removed its cameras, only to discover two had been reinstalled.
• Lebanon, Ohio. Flock removed six cameras without the city’s knowledge, later calling it an error.
• North Liberty, Iowa. The city attorney advised that under Flock’s contract the city is not even permitted to remove the cameras itself.

And it is not hypothetical next door. In Brunswick County, Flock cameras the public never voted for remain on the roads, part of a program the county is still fighting to rein in. The pattern is consistent: getting the vote is one thing; getting the cameras physically gone is another.

There is a better model. Alexandria, Virginia is ending its program with the data turned off within 48 hours and every camera out by year-end. Quincy, Massachusetts switched off its 50 cameras. These jurisdictions set a date and confirmed the result rather than trust the vendor’s calendar.

What we asked the Board to do

Through the County Manager, we asked the commissioners to:

1. Obtain and share the date Flock will complete removal of every camera under the canceled contract;
2. Confirm in writing when removal is complete, camera by camera, and that the stored plate data has been deleted;
3. Cover the cameras in the meantime, so they are not capturing and storing residents’ movements during the wait; and
4. Address the eight Flock “Condor” PTZ cameras in county parks that the September 8 vote did not reach — and tell residents whether the Board intends to take those down as well.

That last point is the one most people do not realize. The September vote cancelled the stationary plate readers. It left in place eight pan-tilt-zoom “Condor” cameras that record live video of people in New Hanover County parks — the cameras we have asked the county to take down alongside the plate readers, and the subject of our refund questions.

The vote was the right call, and we commend it. The cameras being physically gone — and staying gone — is what makes it real. Residents are paying attention to that last step.

DeFlockILM is a citizen-led privacy effort in the Cape Fear. This post describes correspondence we sent to the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners; it is general information, not legal advice.