Arizona Towns Already Did This
Removing Flock cameras is not a fantasy and not a big-city thing. Five Arizona communities have already canceled or blocked their contracts. Same state, same network, same company. Here's how they did it, and an honest look at where Safford stands.
Flagstaff — The Template
After roughly nine months of resident organizing, the Flagstaff City Council voted unanimously on December 16, 2025 to cancel its Flock contract. All ~36 cameras were deactivated immediately, and Flock physically removed them by February 2026.
The key lesson for Safford: the police department had already added guardrails, shorter retention, access limited to local agencies, a ban on immigration use. The council canceled anyway, deciding that concern about the company and the network outweighed the benefits. One resident answered the Flock CEO's claim that critics just want "chaos" with the line that summed up the whole fight: "Is it chaos to want checks and balances?"
Sources: Arizona Daily Sun, KNAU, KJZZ, FOX10, GovTech, City of Flagstaff (Dec 2025–Feb 2026).
Sedona, South Tucson, Cochise, Sierra Vista
Sedona
Police had quietly installed 11 Flock cameras without notifying the council. Once the council found out, they held a public meeting, heard residents, and moved to end the contract and remove the cameras. Sedona acted first and helped trigger the Flagstaff fight next door.
South Tucson
The city council voted 5-1-1 to cancel, citing fears the data would be shared with ICE. The closest model to Safford in spirit: a small, working-class city that decided the immigration-surveillance risk wasn't worth it.
Cochise County
A rural Arizona county that blocked Flock cameras rather than letting them in. The fight isn't only about removal after the fact, it's also about refusing the contract before the cameras go up.
Sierra Vista
Wound down its grant-funded Flock cameras rather than renewing. Another small Arizona city, another contract that didn't continue.
Sources: Arizona Free Enterprise Club; KNAU; KJZZ; Tucson Spotlight; KGUN9; AZPM (Sept 2025–2026).
What They Have in Common
- Residents organized first. Flagstaff's win came after nine months of one resident, then many, showing up.
- The contract was the pressure point. Every win happened at a council or board vote on the contract.
- Public comment moved the room. Flagstaff had ninety minutes of comment, almost all against Flock, before the vote flipped.
- Local guardrails weren't enough. Flagstaff canceled even after the police added their own limits, because the network and the company were the problem, not the local officers.
- They backed their police and still voted no. "No reflection on the department" was the repeated refrain. You can respect local officers and still pull the cameras.
The Honest Local Picture
Sheriff PJ Allred, the Safford Police Chief, and a department captain went on the Courier's local program to reassure the community about the Flock cameras. We watched the whole thing. Credit where due: a lot of it was honest. The cameras keep data for 30 days, there's no facial recognition on their system, searches are logged, and they run a monthly audit. They were also careful to limit their "no abuse" claim to Graham County, and as far as anyone has documented, that specific claim is true. We are not accusing local officers of misusing it.
Watch It Yourself
Don't take our word for any of this. Watch the full interview and check our account against it.
Watch the Interview →Where the reassurances don't hold:
- "Only plates, no personal info" — Flock's own product is Vehicle Fingerprint plus people-search by description. Narrower framing than the product deployed.
- "We have policies" — accreditation audits the department's policies, not Flock the vendor's data-sharing, which is exactly where the abuse happened elsewhere.
- "You're on a public road" — one officer seeing one plate once is not a national network logging every plate over time, searchable across thousands of agencies for years.
- "We control who sees our data" — Flock added those controls in 2025–26 precisely because the sharing had already happened without agencies' knowledge. It's a patch after the backdoor was exposed.
- "The monthly audit keeps it clean" — the audit log is how every documented abuse elsewhere got caught. It's a record, not a wall. Which is why the public should request it.
Safford Can Be Next
None of these towns are bigger or richer or more political than Safford. They had the same cameras, the same company, the same network. What they had that we're building now: residents who showed up, receipts in hand, at the meeting where the contract was on the table.