[thaumaturgy]

I was one of the main organizers of a community group that successfully got Flock contracts canceled in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. I have also presented several times to city officials in and around Portland, am currently helping groups in other cities around Oregon and elsewhere get started, and I'm working with a state legislative workgroup to begin getting some reasonable legislation in place.

The extent to which Flock manipulates police departments is really incredible. Here's a fun little factoid: Lexipol is a company which sells various pre-written policies to police departments, including an ALPR policy; Lexipol is also a parent company of Police1, which helps police departments find public grant money to purchase Flock subscriptions, and Flock in turn is heavily featured on Police1.

So, if you're a police department, you go to Police1 (Lexipol) for news and product info, they pitch you on Flock, you fill out a form, you sign a contract, and then later you need an actual ALPR policy for your department, and Lexipol sells you that, too. The policy of course is extremely friendly towards vendors like Flock.

Flock exerts a lot of influence with the police departments that subscribe to their platform. We've repeatedly had to respond to the same talking points from PDs (and some city officials) that are very clearly getting all of their info from Flock, and in some cases coached by them.

And YCombinator startup Flock Safety is extremely misleading in many of their product, service, and business statements.

[zbrozek]

It's coming up at the Los Altos Hills city council meeting next week. I would love to know what I should say to try and let our contract expire.

[thaumaturgy]

Email me at [e-mail]. Things are a bit busy the next few days, but we can discuss what's worked for us. Getting a win in one meeting is a long shot, but you never know -- Bend, Oregon also got theirs canceled just the other day!

I'm also spinning up a new team that will be able to more actively help people get efforts started (or keep them going). Their first meeting is coming up this week too.