Half of St. Louis County's Flock cameras were stolen. Now the county is dropping the contract.
The St. Louis County Sheriff's Office in northern Minnesota has ended its contract with Flock Safety, following the city of Duluth, which cut its own contract with the company earlier this month.
Flock's cameras are automated license plate readers that photograph every vehicle that passes by and use AI to process the information they capture.
St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay said the decision to end the contract came down partly to cost — five of the county's 10 Flock cameras were stolen this summer — and that the results weren't justifying the expense. The cameras have also drawn criticism nationwide over security and surveillance concerns.
"I think there is a need for the technology," Ramsay said. "We just have to get our community, us, and the vendors together to talk about what's acceptable."
St. Louis County Commissioner Annie Harala said the pushback has come from across the political spectrum and from both urban and rural parts of the region.
"We have folks from all different political spectrums, all different communities across the region — urban in Duluth, in my area, plus rural in northern St. Louis County — reaching out and saying we don't like this," Harala said.
St. Louis County and Duluth aren't alone. Several other Minnesota cities have canceled their Flock contracts, including Columbia Heights and West St. Paul. St. Paul removed its cameras after facing public pressure, and Winona opted not to replace its cameras after several were stolen.
The pullback has been building across the state for weeks. CBS News Minnesota has reported that St. Paul lost access to two Flock cameras after residents raised surveillance and data concerns at a city council meeting, and that Winona chose not to reinstall its cameras after all eight were stolen, citing concerns about public trust in policing. A separate report on the broader statewide fight over Flock cameras noted West St. Paul and Winona ending their contracts outright, while Columbia Heights had earlier covered some of its cameras in bags as a privacy protest.
CBS News Minnesota also reported that Sherburne County announced it would stop using the cameras the same day Flock's CEO announced changes to the system and apologized for cases in which the data had been misused, including reports of officers using it to stalk women.