Three weeks ago, in Winona, Minnesota, a person or persons unknown cut down and stole every single Flock camera in the city. Four pairs of two cameras each, trained on the roads in and out of town.
The police department posted to their Facebook page to ask for the public’s help solving the crime, only to be flooded by people supporting the vandals.
Last week, in Winona, Minnesota, the police declared their surrender.
Our community’s trust is the foundation of effective policing, and we’ve worked hard to build and maintain that trust. While Flock has been a valuable tool, we believe its use has contributed to growing concerns about trust in policing, both locally and across the state and nation. After careful consideration, [the] Winona PD has decided not to reinstall any Flock cameras in the city of Winona.
And I’ve tracked at least two other jurisdictions that have followed the same pattern.
Social movements are effective specifically when there is solidarity between their broader base and the people who are committing criminal direct action. When social movements stand behind their criminals, they win.
Winona, Minnesota is not an edge case. This year in particular, all over the country (red state, blue state, it doesn’t matter), people have been attacking the surveillance state and being regarded as heroes for doing so.
I genuinely don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more popular crime wave.
I got my tires replaced last week in a rust belt city, and spent awhile talking to the folks working there. The conversation hit upon flock cameras.
“Where are all our corn-fed motherfuckers, they need to do something about this shit,” one man told me.
“You know they have shotguns,” I agreed.
I have good news for the tire guy, in retrospect. With shotgun and angle grinder (and handheld bandsaw), with expanding foam and spraypaint, people really are out there destroying these cameras en masse. A lot of people are getting caught (usually by other cameras), but not everyone is.
On August 13th, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina posted to their official Facebook page asking for the public’s help to track down whoever sprayed expanding foam onto their license plate reader cameras. In doing so, they accidentally acknowledged that these cameras track more than license plates. So far there are more than 70,000 comments on that post, overwhelmingly in support of the destruction of these cameras.
In Monterey, California, a 40-year-old man named Marcus Bee was arrested, accused of simply running three flock cameras over in his pickup truck (that is equipped with bull bars, which help with ramming) and/or attaching a tow strap to pull them out of the ground. He was caught by other surveillance cameras in the area.
On the opposite side of the country, and with the help of essentially the opposite vehicle, a 21-year-old is facing charges, alleged to have climbed atop a Subaru forester with a baseball bat to smash up multiple cameras.
Two weeks ago, The New York Post reported that Long Island has been hit by a wave of vandalism against the cameras, all with different methods of attack (which implies different vandals). Some were cut down. One was run over. Another had its wires unplugged. Two were spraypainted. One was simply pointed the other direction. Even on that rightwing site, the comments are entirely supportive of the vandals.
On July 21st a teenager in Jacksonville Beach, Florida was arrested for spraypainting over the lenses of three cameras.
Houston, Texas reported four cameras cut down in one night after a string of other attacks over the past month. The poles were simply left to lay where they fell.
A 37-year-old independent candidate for the Tennessee House of Representatives, Adam Lee Heimerman, was arrested for allegedly shooting four cameras. One of these times, the story implies, he was at church services and went out into the parking lot and shot down a surveillance camera while others were inside praying.
One prolific (accused) vandal is a 41 year old Air Force engineer, Jeffrey Sovern, who has pleaded not guilty to the destruction of 13 flock cameras in Virginia last year. He is accused of using vice grips to disassemble the poles.
A man named Ed Kahle in Pinal County, Arizona is unrepentant for backing his work truck into a Flock camera. “We live out here cause we want quiet. We don’t want to cause any trouble. Now I am under surveillance?” Pinal County Sheriffs announced that they will not renew the contract for the cameras.
In Fairbault, Minnesota, a 41-year-old man named Justin Lee Campbell is facing three criminal counts for cutting a flock camera’s wires. He was snitched out by some store employees that he’d bragged to about taking down the camera. But elsewhere in the same state, three cameras were painted over in Edina, then in Plymouth two cameras were taken down.
Cameras have been taken down or destroyed in at least five communities in Michigan. In Westland, Michigan, the police have declared surrender as well.
The Flock camera of Ash Grove, Missouri was taken down by persons unknown, who approached it from behind so it was not able to capture footage of the attack.
Alex Rattenborg, 21, of Iowa City has been charged with third degree criminal mischief for cutting down a Flock camera, and was then caught by other surveillance cameras, but police in Iowa are still looking for the vandals responsible for two other destroyed cameras.
The sheriff of Lumpkin County, Georgia, is desperately trying to find whoever took out a camera. His facebook post about it has 17,000 comments supporting the vandalism.
A 3d designer named SquidInk has developed the Flock Sock, a 3d printable cover that can be put on a broom handle and used to cover flock cameras non-destructively.
Maybe the most polite of all of the people taking direct action is a retired 77-year-old Republican in Florida, The Flock Blocker, who spends his ample free time sitting in a camping chair with an anti-flock sign on a 10 foot pole, blocking the cameras.
When I first starting seeing social media videos comparing methods of destroying these cameras, I was struck by two things. First, that the hatred of these cameras is universal. You’ve got a heavily tattooed person like this one who dresses in black bloc and you’ve got a company that makes safety equipment for welders both providing the same kind of content to their presumably different audiences. (Comments on both, however, recommend the pipe cutting speed and quiet power of the handheld bandsaw.)
The other thing I was struck by… when I first saw this sort of content, I worried that it was just performative social media posting. That sure, maybe a couple people might have taken out a camera or two, but I assumed it was not widespread.
But then I started researching.
And these cameras really are being destroyed one by one, two by two, by individuals and small groups, all over the country. Most people are getting away with it. Many people are getting caught, and some people have already done jail time. I’m not yet aware of a single resource that tracks all of these attacks, and/or offers people the chance to support those who’ve been caught, but hopefully something like that will appear (or already exists and will come across my radar).
I was planning, initially, to write more about the origin of ALPRs (automated license plate readers) and Flock and its competitors like Axon. I will in the future. But I trust you enough to understand that these cameras have been abused horrendously, over and over again; that even when cities decide not to share ALPR information with ICE, local police turn over information to their buddies in ICE anyway; incorrect AI information has led to brutal attacks by police already; and that these cameras will likely, if democracy continues in the USA, be found to be in violation of the fourth amendment—most similar technologies now require a warrant to use.
For too long, people in this country have watched the expansion of the surveillance state. It seems like people have really, finally, had enough. And that all the attempts to divide the working class along culture war lines are failing right now, and that is a good thing. Both sides still blame the other for the surveillance—on the New York Post, comments will call these cameras Communism. Elsewhere, people will call them Fascism. What they are is authoritarianism. Which is something that we, collectively, need to destroy.
I will never, ever, encourage people to do things that I am not personally willing to do. I am not out there destroying Flock cameras. But I will publicly state my support for the people who are, so that’s what I’ll ask of you: be forthright and public in your condemnation of the surveillance state and in your support for those who fight against it directly.
I’ve never been a big believer in online activism, but it seems as though “direct and honest support for people who have committed crimes” is the most effective form of it that I’ve ever seen. Luigi Mangione scared the health executives, but not as much as the uproar of support he received.
And these cameras? They come down when a few brave souls cut them down, and they stay down when there’s a massive wave of popular support. When the state realizes its legitimacy is on the line. That’s when they concede to the people.
As Frederick Douglass put it:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
We LOVE to see it. It's one of the reasons I remain hopeful and faithful in us.
This was the first time I've smiled while reading anything related to current events in a very long time.