Join this petition below to remove FLOCK cameras from Roanoke, Virginia!

Roanoke City boasts itself as a “Welcoming City” as well as a refugee resettlement location. However, did you know our local Government and Police Department are providing data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement? While boasting that they are "strengthening relations with the Hispanic community"—Roanoke City continues to maintain contracts that directly harm our immigrant community?

Roanoke City has five FLOCK cameras across the city that read license plates, scan drivers, and send that data directly to our local police department. They also have businesses directly link their security cameras to RPD systems. This enables direct access to business security cameras for surveillance purposes by RPD. This data is then stored, and can be accessed by law enforcement agencies across the country.

Roughly 6 weeks ago the Roanoke City Police Department posted about the new Real Time Crime Center. This post included statistics of collected surveillance data of Roanoke residents. The post mentioned tens of thousands of collected data sets, all from Roanokers without our consent. The optics were negative so the post was quickly removed, but that doesn’t mean it wasn't viewed. 

RPD has told our community directly that The ROC3 facility is anchored by three core technologies:

License Plate Readers that provide critical vehicle identification for investigations;

Live video feeds that deliver real-time visual intelligence during active incidents;

Force Metrics software, which provides officers with actionable intelligence from numerous internal data sets within seconds.

They claim to prohibit the use of this data for Immigration enforcement. They have diligently tried to convince the community of this assurance. However, we don’t have to search for long to find the falsehood here. Per the RPD’s own website, this data can be accessed by any agency who provides a listed reason to access it. We don’t have to look far to see how this data collected by FLOCK cameras across the state have been used by ICE. 

In July of 2025, WHRO Public Media reported that “At least five Virginia counties shared data collected by Flock Safety automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) with federal authorities for immigration enforcement, despite prohibitions against using the surveillance for such operations, according to law enforcement logs.”

In October of 2025, the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism reported, “As federal immigration officials stepped up deportations, law enforcement conducted nearly 3,000 searches related to immigration enforcement on Virginia’s Flock Safety network over a recent 12-month period, according to an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO.”

Later in October 2025, the ACLU reported that “Flock Can Share Driver-Surveillance Data Even When Police Departments Opt Out.”

These reports and MANY others like them have been widespread. So much so, that our neighbors in Charlottesville just banned the use of FLOCK and canceled their contracts. They weren’t shy in explaining why—Charlottesville City Manager, Sam Sanders said that the City Council’s decision was “driven by concerns over data protection, potential misuse and limits on local control of the system”.

It’s time we demand Roanoke City follow Charlottesville’s lead and put an end to the non consensual collection of our data, while directly harming the vulnerable communities they claim to support!

If you are opposed to ICE targeting your neighbors here in Roanoke, Virginia. Sign this petition below to remove FLOCK from Roanoke!