Part two of WNCW's two-part series on Flock Safety cameras across the Carolinas
By Dylan Henson, WNCW
SPINDALE, N.C. (WNCW) — In part one of this series, Asheville Police and the Spartanburg County Sheriff made the case for Flock Safety's license plate reader cameras — narrower in scope than critics suggest, they argued, and already tied to real arrests and recoveries. Part two is the pushback, and it ends with news: this week, Asheville City Council voted 5-2 to rip out every one of the city's 11 Flock cameras and terminate its contract with the company.
In Rutherford County, that pushback has a name and a face: Jonathan Terry, a land surveyor, pastor, and lifelong county resident who started a petition asking commissioners to suspend the county's Flock contract altogether.
"It made me uneasy," Terry said of seeing the cameras around the county. "And kind of felt like George Orwell's 1984 — seeing these things and just driving by, knowing I'm being recorded."
Terry's objection isn't only about privacy. By his own estimate, the county's 32 or 33 cameras cost somewhere between $80,000 and $99,000 a year combined — money he argues could instead fund two additional deputies. As of our interview, his petition had 343 signatures in 15 days; his goal is 500 before Rutherford County commissioners take it up on September 8.
Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the ACLU's national office, leads the organization's work on Flock and similar automatic license plate readers. He says the technology's footprint has exploded in a matter of months — the ACLU's own estimate put Flock's camera count as high as 100,000 nationally as of a few weeks ago; Flock itself has since put the number at 120,000.
Marlow's sharper concern is what happens to the data those cameras collect. He says Flock's standard contract gives the company a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to use footage "for pretty much any reason they want" — which he says is how it came to light that Flock was sending local data to the Philippines to help train its AI systems. He's equally skeptical of the safeguards departments point to.
"Safeguards in name, they are not really effective," Marlow said, pointing to a Washington Post investigation into police misuse of these systems for personal reasons.
He also points to a growing list of local reversals: Macon County commissioners voted unanimously in July to stop funding the sheriff's office's 12 Flock cameras. Austin, Texas became the first major city to cancel a Flock contract outright, roughly 13 to 14 months ago — a move Marlow says more than 60 other municipalities have since followed.
For Marlow, the core objection isn't about any single bad actor. "It's not every criminal, all the time," he said. "It's every one of us, all the time — even if there's no suspicion that any of us have done something wrong... I happen to think that is just about the most un-American violation of your privacy I can imagine."
Asheville Police technology supervisor James Wingo, who spoke with us for part one, says his department's own audit record undercuts the misuse narrative: "Since we started this in February of 2025, we've not had one instance at all of any issues."
Spartanburg County Sheriff Bill Rhyne notes that Flock itself has tightened its policies under pressure — cutting its default data retention window from 30 days to 7. He says he'd end his county's contract the moment a court ruled the technology unconstitutional: "If a court turns around and says, yes, this is a violation — I'll be the very first person that says we have to end our contracts."
Flock declined an on-camera interview for this story but sent a written statement arguing that more than 40 courts have ruled that using these tools in public spaces doesn't require a warrant, that police agencies — not Flock — own and control their own data, and that every search creates a permanent audit trail. The company says its technology supported more than a million public safety investigations in 2025 and helped locate more than 10,000 missing people.
On the specific question of misuse, the company sent this response from CEO and founder Garrett Langley: "It's a disappointing story when I see it, but I also go, look — this is working. This is showing that if you use a tool like Flock, you should be held accountable, regardless of whether you have a badge or you don't." Langley pointed to a newly launched Audit Assistance Tool designed to flag "potential abnormal activity" for review.
That accountability question isn't hypothetical. In Greer, South Carolina, two police officers were fired this summer after using Flock cameras to track people they knew personally rather than to investigate crimes. Greer has since suspended its entire Flock system for 90 days — cameras and staff access both — while it reviews how the technology has actually been used.
Part of what makes this debate so uneven from place to place is that the law hasn't caught up. There is no federal statute governing automatic license plate readers. South Carolina has none either. North Carolina has a law authorizing police use of the technology with a 90-day data retention limit — but it dates to 2015, years before Flock's rise. Vermont has gone the furthest of any state, though not as far as an outright ban: a law that took effect in 2025 requires license plate data to route through a state-run server, limits active access to seven days, and mandates deletion after 18 months. The rules are strict enough that Flock's system has effectively gone dark in some Vermont towns, including Manchester.
Last week, before any council vote had taken place, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer posted a video announcing her position: "After hearing you loud and clear, and talking with others, consulting with experts, I have decided that what we need to do is ask the city manager to terminate our Flock contract."
The council chamber Tuesday night showed how divided the issue remains. A letter from the Asheville Housing Authority, representing roughly 3,000 residents, was read into the record: "What residents are telling us directly is clear: they want safer communities. They want cameras. They want more security, not less." Council members were split even among those who ultimately voted the same way. One dissenting member said: "Tonight I hear privacy over conviction, privacy over safety, privacy over justice. I haven't really heard strong advocacy for public safety, even community-led safety. So I'll be voting no." A member who voted in favor framed it differently: "Public safety and civil liberties are not opposing values, and I refuse to govern as though we must choose between them."
By that 5-2 vote, council approved a resolution directing the city manager to immediately terminate the Flock contract, remove all 11 cameras, and suspend access to any data already collected. The resolution also bars linking that data to facial recognition and orders a full policy review covering retention, data-sharing, and whether Flock could ever return.
Jonathan Terry hadn't seen the Asheville vote yet when we spoke with him, but he had a guess about what it would mean for Rutherford County: "I think that really sets the stage for our state, especially in western North Carolina, for the precedent of Flock and its use in our county."
Rutherford County commissioners take up his petition on September 8. Greer, South Carolina is roughly 90 days into a review that could go either way. And with no federal law and only a handful of states — Vermont most notably — moving to regulate the technology, the question of whether Flock cameras stay up or come down isn't being settled in Washington, Raleigh, or Columbia. For now, it's being decided one city council and county commission at a time.
More to the Story runs Friday mornings at 7:51 on WNCW, 88.7 FM, and is available to stream on demand on www.wncw.org.
