One of two disapproving signs that sit on both sides of a Flock Safety pole near the intersection of Marshall Avenue and Exterior Place. St. Paul currently has 11 active Flock cameras operated by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department. (Sydney Baxter/The Crest) 
A Flock Safety automated license plate reader monitors traffic near the intersection of Marshall Avenue and Exterior Place in St. Paul. (Sydney Baxter/The Crest)
As national concerns over Flock cameras persist, St. Paul residents have made their voices heard through a simple message carried on protest signs: Get the Flock out.
The St. Paul Police Department removed two Flock Safety cameras in early September after the city council unanimously passed a resolution urging the city to end their use. Eleven cameras remain active in St. Paul, operated by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Across Minnesota, Flock cameras have been vandalized, defaced or removed by protestors. Some city governments have canceled their contracts with Flock as a response to public backlash.
What are Flock cameras?
Flock Safety is a company that manufactures cameras, referred to as automated license plate readers, that use artificial intelligence to scan license plates and other data associated with traffic.
Regular traffic cameras typically only collect data if an infraction has been detected, such as speeding. ALPRs, on the other hand, collect data on every passing vehicle regardless of if a crime was committed.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups have raised concerns that the cameras allow police to track individuals without a warrant. Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said the cameras have aided his office’s ability to solve crimes, particularly vehicular theft, according to Fox 9.
Flock cameras in St. Paul
In St. Paul, residents have raised concerns about the use of data from Flock cameras and questioned if that data was shared with federal agencies during Operation Metro Surge.
City Council President Rebecca Noecker said in an interview with The Crest that the city signed a contract with Flock Safety in February 2025 without city council input or knowledge.
“It wasn’t until our constituents started asking questions about it and until we sort of started seeing, you know, not just one, not just two, not just 10 emails, but sort of a building wave of this concern, that we started looking into it more closely,” Noecker said.
The Minnesota Government Data Practices Act requires audits of government-collected data at least every other year to determine how the data is used. Over the summer, the ACLU requested an audit that was more detailed than those required by law, according to Noecker.
Noecker said she introduced the city council resolution urging the city to terminate Flock usage in response to growing community concern before official results of the audit were known.
“Bad news came out within days,” said Noecker about the audit.
She said the ACLU audit showed two instances of Flock data being used outside the jurisdiction of the St. Paul City and Police Department.
City Council Member Molly Coleman, who represents Ward 4 in St. Paul, which includes the St. Thomas campus, said that while the city has strong data privacy laws, the ACLU audit showed how the data can be shared more broadly outside of city departments.
“When the data leaves the control of just our city or just our police department, it is able to be shared more broadly, either because of contractual agreements that other entities have in place with federal agencies, or because you have bad actors who are outside of the control of our jurisdiction,” Coleman said.
Despite passing the unanimous resolution advocating to end their use, the city council doesn’t retain jurisdiction over the future of the Flock cameras. Coleman explained that the city council doesn’t trust Flock with the data of residents, but they have no legal authority to stop the St. Paul Police Department or Ramsey County Sheriff from using the cameras.
In response to the city council resolution, the St. Paul Police Department and mayor’s office released a joint statement stating they would take down the two cameras owned and operated by the city.
However, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher’s office still maintains 11 cameras in St. Paul, which will remain up. The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office could not be reached for a comment.
The city has also not cancelled its contract with Flock despite taking down the two cameras operated by the St. Paul police, according to Coleman.
“The much more nuanced and hard conversation lies in technology like this,” Coleman said, “Are we saying that it is this one company, or are we saying that it is this type of technology that’s a problem?”
Surveillance concerns continue
Advocacy groups celebrated the city council resolution and the removal of two cameras, but they have continued to raise broader concerns about surveillance.
Hannah Madison, a St. Paul resident and member of Eyes Off St. Paul, a grassroots advocacy group, said that they started organizing after a Flock camera went up in their neighborhood in April 2026.
“It woke up a lot of folks in the neighborhood to say this is truly a tool of surveillance and it’s not a tool to deter crime,” Madison said.
Madison said Eyes Off St. Paul wants to “push our city leadership to take a bold stance on this technology in hopes that it creates a domino effect and inspires and educates other municipalities to also take action.”
As for the future of surveillance, Madison said she thinks Flock cameras represent “low-hanging fruit” that is easy to identify as problematic. She worries about the expansion of other surveillance technology systems, such as Skydio drones.
Two weeks after the city council resolution on Flock cameras passed, the council revoked an application for a U.S. Department of Justice grant to expand St. Paul Police’s drone program. Noecker said this came because of similar resident concerns over surveillance and data privacy.
St. Thomas students weigh in on the debate
St. Thomas Bridge, a student-run chapter of the national civic dialogue organization BridgeUSA, hosted a discussion about Flock cameras on Sept. 30.
St. Thomas Bridge president Liberty Schultz said the topic of Flock cameras was unanimously chosen in a vote at the club’s previous event.
The roughly 15 students present raised concerns about right to privacy, regulations, an increasing surveillance state and how the technology can be ethically used. When a map of Flock cameras was pulled up on the screen, students reacted with shock at the scale and spread of the technology over the country and state.
Senior Will McDonough attended the Bridge discussion and said that he’s embraced pessimism surrounding Flock and other surveillance technology.
“Let’s stomp this out and let’s get some clear regulations that protect civil liberties before this becomes a partisan issue,” McDonough said.
Schultz said she harbors concerns about Flock cameras not for herself, but for her community.
“I fear it for my family and for my friends that maybe grew up in a different setting and don’t have the privilege that I do,” Schultz said “I feel like it could target people that don’t need to be targeted any more than they already are.”
Abigail Peters can be reached at pete4956@stthomas.edu.
Sydney Baxter can be reached at baxt9124@stthomas.edu.
