HARRISONBURG BECOMES THE LATEST CITY TO DEFLOCK

Add Harrisonburg, Virginia to the growing list. City Council pledged to remove its Flock cameras and end its contract by late July 2026, following months of sustained pressure from residents who showed up meeting after meeting to demand it. This one matters because Harrisonburg wasn't hiding anything. The city actually ran a Flock Transparency Portal, one of the more forthcoming setups compared to plenty of jurisdictions that keep residents in the dark entirely. Even with that transparency in place, it still wasn't enough. Residents looked at what the portal showed them and decided the underlying surveillance and privacy tradeoffs weren't worth it anyway.

HOW WE GOT HERE

Concerns in Harrisonburg go back to at least March 2026, when residents first showed up in numbers to object to the city's contract with Flock Safety during public comment. That pressure never let up. Through the spring and into summer, citizens organized around "DeFlocking" the city, continuing to show up and speak out at council sessions. When the council finally addressed it, they didn't just tweak the agreement. They surprised a packed chamber by announcing they'd remove the cameras entirely.

PART OF A BROADER VIRGINIA PATTERN

Harrisonburg isn't acting alone. Staunton, Virginia canceled its own Flock contract after the company's CEO sent local police an unsolicited email accusing critics of running a "coordinated attack," a characterization the police chief publicly pushed back on as unfair to residents raising legitimate concerns. Floyd County, Virginia is also set to remove its cameras once its agreement expires at the end of August 2026. That's three Virginia jurisdictions now moving away from Flock in the span of a few months, on top of the dozens of cities nationwide already walking away.

WHY THIS ONE STANDS OUT

The lesson from Harrisonburg is simple: transparency portals and public dashboards are a good first step, but they don't resolve the core problem. Once residents see exactly how much data is being collected and how it moves through a national network, many decide that visibility alone isn't enough. They want the cameras gone, not just documented. That's exactly the standard this petition is asking our own local officials to be held to.