We, the undersigned, ask the Excelsior Springs City Council to immediately suspend the use of Flock automated license plate reader cameras and take the necessary steps to terminate the City's contract with Flock Safety. We believe the privacy and surveillance concerns created by this system outweigh its appropriate role in our community.

This petition is not based on the belief that the Excelsior Springs Police Department is currently misusing these cameras, nor is it an anti-police effort. We understand that Flock cameras can be useful in locating stolen vehicles, identifying vehicles connected to crimes, and assisting law enforcement investigations. Our concern is whether those benefits justify creating a system that routinely photographs and records the movements of ordinary people who are not suspected of committing any crime.

Flock cameras do much more than simply read a license plate when police are looking for a particular vehicle. They continuously collect vehicle images, license plate information, the time and location of each sighting, and other identifying characteristics. That information is stored for a period of time and can become searchable data about where vehicles have traveled.

What concerns many of us even more is that these cameras do not exist in isolation. Flock operates a large network of cameras throughout the country, and law enforcement agencies can share access to information with other agencies. A camera installed in Excelsior Springs therefore has implications beyond simply helping our own police department investigate a local crime.

There have already been cases around the country that demonstrate why these concerns deserve serious consideration. Flock searches have been used across state lines in an investigation involving a Texas woman who had taken abortion medication. Records have also documented an officer improperly using Flock searches to track a former romantic partner, and people have been falsely targeted by police due to ai mistakes. These examples do not mean that our local police department intends to use the system this way. They demonstrate what can become possible once a large, interconnected surveillance network exists.

Our concern is not limited to how the cameras are being used today. Technology changes. Laws change. Policies change. Administrations change. The people who have access to these systems will change. A use that is prohibited today could be authorized in the future, and technology that currently identifies vehicles could eventually be combined with other forms of surveillance and data analysis.

Privacy is difficult to regain once the infrastructure for widespread surveillance has already been built. We do not believe we should have to wait until a system is abused before questioning whether that system should exist in our community.

Some have argued that our phones already track our locations, so Flock cameras should not be a concern. We do not believe the loss of privacy in one area justifies surrendering additional privacy elsewhere. There is also an important difference between voluntarily carrying a privately owned device and a government surveillance network that records vehicles traveling through public spaces regardless of whether their occupants are suspected of wrongdoing.

This is ultimately a question about what kind of community we want to live in and how much surveillance infrastructure we are willing to accept in exchange for increased law enforcement capability. Public safety matters, but so do privacy, freedom of movement, government transparency, and reasonable limits on surveillance.

We believe those questions deserve to be decided by the community, not simply by asking whether the technology is currently legal or whether it has helped solve crimes.

For these reasons, we are asking the Excelsior Springs City Council, which approved the use of the cameras, to suspend their operation and take the necessary steps to terminate the City's agreement with Flock Safety.

We support effective law enforcement. We also believe public safety can and should coexist with meaningful protections for the privacy and civil liberties of the people law enforcement exists to serve.