Everything Watching Wilmington: A Surveillance Inventory
Flock isn’t the only camera on the pole. Wilmington and New Hanover County run an overlapping web of surveillance systems — license-plate readers, live-video cameras, a private-camera integration hub, and always-on acoustic sensors. Here they are in one place: the vendor, who runs it, what it costs you, what it captures, and the rules that govern it. Every figure links to a sourced deep dive.
Debates usually happen one system at a time — a Flock renewal here, a ShotSpotter line item there. Seen together, the picture is different: a resident driving through Wilmington can be scanned by a plate reader, watched by a live-video camera, pulled up in a real-time crime center that stitches in private feeds, and recorded by microphones on the utility poles — each run by a different agency, on a different contract, with different rules or none. This page is the whole map, so the conversation can finally happen all at once.
The inventory at a glance
| System | Vendor | Who runs it | Cost to taxpayers | What it captures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flock ALPR | Flock Safety | NHC Sheriff’s Office | ~$219,000/yr (contract #25-0364) | Every passing plate + a vehicle “fingerprint” (make, color, dents, decals) |
| Condor live video | Flock Safety | NHC Sheriff’s Office | 8 cameras, $750 implementation each — inside the same Flock contract | Live, pan-tilt-zoom video feeds |
| STING Center / Fusus | Fusus (Axon Enterprise) | Wilmington Police Dept. | Real-time crime center integration platform | Live access to city, traffic, and private cameras through one “pane of glass” |
| ShotSpotter | SoundThinking, Inc. | Wilmington Police Dept. | ~$433,000/yr, since 2011 | Always-on acoustic sensors on city poles |
| Sheriff’s Fusus | Fusus (Axon Enterprise) | NHC Sheriff’s Office | Separate county program | Camera integration for the Sheriff’s real-time operations |
1. Flock ALPR — about $219,000 a year
New Hanover County pays roughly $219,000 for its Flock license-plate program under contract #25-0364 — up from a $43,750 pilot in 2021, originally paid from controlled-substance tax funds. The cameras photograph every passing plate and build a searchable “vehicle fingerprint.” DeFlockILM’s review of Sheriff’s Office records found the network was searched nearly three million times in about 16 months, with the name of every searching agency and officer redacted. (What it costs; the three-million-searches analysis)
2. Condor live-video cameras — 8 of them, buried in the same contract
The county’s Flock contract doesn’t stop at plate readers. It includes eight Condor cameras — Flock’s live-video product — with a $750 implementation fee billed for each. These are pan-tilt-zoom video cameras, and officials previously indicated none were deployed here. Because the contract shields camera locations, the public may never be told where the Condors sit. (What’s in the contract)
3. The STING Center & Fusus — the pane of glass
Wilmington Police run the STING Center, a real-time crime center built on Fusus, a product now owned by Axon Enterprise (the Taser and body-camera company). Fusus is the integration layer: it lets staff pull live feeds from city cameras, Traffic & Engineering cameras, and private cameras that owners connect — all in one console. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s warning about Fusus networks nationwide applies here: they expand real-time police access to footage that would otherwise require a warrant and a public conversation. The County Sheriff runs a separate Fusus program worth the same questions. (Inside the STING Center)
4. ShotSpotter — $433,000 a year, always listening since 2011
Before you blame Flock for the microphones: Wilmington’s gunshot-detection sensors are a different company’s product. ShotSpotter, made by SoundThinking, Inc., has been listening on city poles since 2011, and the City pays roughly $433,000 a year to keep it on. Its effectiveness is contested — a MacArthur Justice Center study found tens of thousands of dead-end police deployments in Chicago, and Durham declined to renew its contract — and always-on acoustic sensors raise a live question under North Carolina’s electronic-surveillance statute (G.S. § 15A-287). (The full breakdown)
What ties them together
Individually, each system has a story and a sales pitch. Together, they’re an infrastructure — and Fusus is the technology designed to fuse them into a single view. The more feeds that flow into one console, the closer Wilmington moves to continuous, searchable tracking of ordinary people who’ve done nothing wrong. That’s why the honest question isn’t “is this one camera useful?” It’s “what does the whole system add up to, and who can search it, under what rules?” So far, the answer for Flock is: the county won’t even say who’s searching.
Judge each camera alone and every one sounds reasonable. Add them up, and Wilmington is building a surveillance grid no one voted for.
What we’re asking
- A public inventory. The City and County should publish every surveillance system, its vendor, its cost, its retention period, and its sharing rules — in one place, updated annually.
- A warrant standard and audit logs for any system that can track or identify individuals — with the logs open to the public.
- Cancel the Flock contract, which the county can end at any time, without cause, and stop expanding the grid before the rules exist to govern it.
Sources
- DeFlockILM — What New Hanover County pays for Flock (contract #25-0364), citing WECT Investigates and Port City Daily
- DeFlockILM — The Flock contract’s 8 Condor live-video cameras
- DeFlockILM — The STING Center & Fusus, citing the City’s STING Center page, Axon Fusus, and EFF
- DeFlockILM — Wilmington’s ShotSpotter/SoundThinking system, citing the SoundThinking release, The Assembly NC, and MacArthur Justice Center
- DeFlockILM — Nearly three million searches of New Hanover’s Flock network
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.