Flock Cameras in Deer Park

What Deer Park bought, what it costs, and what the record shows

For residents

You are being recorded on your own streets by a system your city funded, and nothing about it has been published — not the contract, not the retention period, not the rules, not who else can search it. This page explains what that means for an ordinary Deer Park household, and what you can do about it in about fifteen minutes.

The short version

Deer Park operates nine automated license plate readers.1 Every time you drive past one, it records your car — reads your plate, logs the make, color and distinguishing features, timestamps it, and files that record in a searchable database.

You are not suspected of anything. That is the point — the system does not distinguish. It records everyone, so that anyone's movements can be looked up later.

What this actually looks like in a small city

Deer Park covers about one square mile. Nine cameras in one square mile is dense coverage, and the practical consequence is that in a city this size, a plate reader network does not merely record that you were "in town." It records patterns.

Consider what a month of reads reveals about a household without anyone doing anything wrong:

  • Which nights you are not home.
  • That you go to a particular church, or the Kenwood mosque, or a synagogue, and how regularly.
  • That you attended a protest, a union meeting, or a council meeting.
  • That you visit a methadone clinic, an oncologist, a divorce attorney, a gun range, or an AA meeting at a church basement.
  • That your teenager's car was parked overnight somewhere they said it wasn't.
  • That you left an abusive partner and where you went.

None of this requires the system to malfunction. This is the system working exactly as designed. The Supreme Court has recognized the underlying principle in a related context: comprehensive location records reveal "the privacies of life," and in June 2026 the Court held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell-phone location information.2,3 Whether that reasoning extends to fixed plate readers is unsettled — we are careful about this on the Ohio law page — but the factual premise is the same one.

What the city has told you

Almost nothing, and we want to be precise about the difference between "not published" and "does not exist."

We checked the City of Deer Park's website on July 29, 2026 — the Police Department pages, the About the Police Department page, the contacts page, the records policy, and the auditor's financial reports. There is no ALPR policy, no camera location list, no retention statement, no audit report, and no copy of the Flock contract anywhere on deerpark-oh.gov.4

That does not prove no internal policy exists. It proves that if one exists, no resident can read it.

Here is the entire public record of the program, from the city's own council minutes:

What Deer Park’s council minutes say about the Flock program, March 2024 – June 20265
DateRecord
Mar 4, 2024A council member asks about cameras near Dillonvale; the chief suggests lighted crosswalks instead.6
Nov 4, 2024Council votes 5–0 to put $14,000 from the courts toward Flock.7
Nov 18, 2024Program start set for 2025; more funds will be needed; a 1-mill levy is floated.8
Dec 2, 2024“the contract with Flock lasts for 2 years, and if we cannot pay the equipment is taken back.” Year two unfunded.9
Jan 20, 2025The levy is not placed on the ballot.10
Feb 3, 2025Two officers trained; cameras go live.11
Apr 20, 2026Asked whether the cameras help with hit-skip reports, the chief says yes.12

That is fourteen months of operation and one sentence of performance information. There was no public hearing on surveillance, no policy adopted, and no report to residents.

Where the cameras are

We cannot give you an official list, because the city has not published one.

What exists is crowdsourced. Volunteers map ALPR locations in OpenStreetMap, and roughly 180 surveillance-tagged nodes appear in the Deer Park / Kenwood / Sycamore Township / Amberley Village area, several inside Deer Park itself.13,14

Who else can see your movements

This is the part we would most want a resident to understand, and it is also the part nobody in Deer Park has answered.

Flock's platform lets agencies share camera access with each other — with neighbors, statewide, or through a national network. Whether Deer Park shares, and with whom, has never been stated publicly.

What is documented is that Deer Park's cameras are already visible outside Deer Park. The count of nine came from a Flock shared-devices list released by a different agency under a records request.1 Your city's cameras appear in another department's system inventory.

And in four other cities, sharing reached further than local officials knew:

  • Federal agencies accessed Mountain View, California data through a setting "enabled without MVPD's permission or knowledge."15
  • Illinois auditors found Customs and Border Protection had been given access to Illinois plate data, and ordered it stopped. Flock's CEO admitted the company "didn't create distinct permissions and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal agency users."16
  • Cleveland's safety director told council that immigration authorities had accessed the city's data without its knowledge, and that the city was withdrawing from national lookup.17
  • Cambridge, Massachusetts discovered Flock had installed two cameras after the city shut the program down, and terminated the contract over what it called a "material breach of our trust and the agreement."18

In every one of those cases, the city learned about it afterward, from somebody else.

What happens when it gets you wrong

Plate readers make mistakes, and the mistakes fall on ordinary people.

Flock says its cameras "accurately capture 93 out of every 100 license plates."19 That is a reasonable number for computer vision. At the volume Flock markets — more than 20 billion reads a month — it also implies over a billion inaccurate readings monthly.19

The Institute for Justice documented at least 27 cases since 2018 in which innocent drivers were pulled over, held at gunpoint, or jailed because of plate-camera errors. In nearly two-thirds, police recognized the mistake only after drawing firearms.19

Two happened in Ohio. In Toledo, a camera read a 7 as a 2 on Brandon Upchurch's Dodge Ram and flagged it stolen. A police dog injured his arm during the stop and he was held for hours. The City of Toledo — not Flock — paid $35,000 to settle.20,21 In Jackson Township, a plate was never removed from a hot list after the reason expired; the driver was stopped and detained anyway.20

The Ohio taxpayers paid the Toledo settlement. If it happens in Deer Park, Deer Park's general fund pays it. More cases and figures are on the accuracy page.

What it costs you

Nobody outside city hall knows, and that is itself the finding.

The one-time $14,000 from the courts is spent.7 Two cities publish Flock's rate at about $2,500 per camera per year, which for nine cameras is roughly $22,500 annually.22,23 We flag clearly that this is arithmetic on another city's published rate, not Deer Park's contract.

Deer Park's finance director told council in December 2024 that year two was unfunded.9 The levy floated to cover it was dropped in January 2025.10 Nothing in the minutes since identifies what replaced it, and the city's published financial reporting stops at September 2022.24 The cost page shows the full arithmetic.

What you can do

Four things, in rising order of effort. None requires expertise.

1. Email your council members (5 minutes)

Six council members and the mayor, all with published city email addresses. One paragraph in your own words is more effective than a form letter. Say you live in Deer Park, say you did not know the city operated surveillance cameras, and ask for the contract and a written policy before any renewal.

Addresses, a suggested script, and the meeting schedule are on the take action page.

2. Make a public records request (10 minutes)

This is the highest-value action any resident can take, because it produces documents rather than opinions.

Ohio's Public Records Act is strong, and Deer Park's own published policy is favorable:

  • Your request does not have to be in writing, and you do not have to give your name or say why you want the record.25 State law backs this up: requiring your identity or intended use "constitutes a denial of the request."26
  • The first 10 pages are free; after that it is five cents a page. Ask for email attachments and there is usually nothing to pay.25
  • The city's own policy states the Act "should be interpreted liberally in favor of disclosure."25
  • If records are wrongly withheld, there is a $25 complaint route through the Court of Claims, and a separate mandamus action carrying statutory damages up to $1,000.27,26 Both have conditions. We set them out on the action page.

The contract, the invoices, the retention setting, the network sharing report, and the ordinance are ordinary public records. One caution: Ohio added an exemption effective September 30, 2025 covering "images and data captured by an automated license plate recognition system that are maintained in a law enforcement database."26 That covers the plate reads themselves. It does not cover the contract, the policy, or the invoices, and whether it reaches a search audit log is unsettled. We explain how to word the request around it.

3. Speak at a council meeting (30 minutes)

Council meets the first and third Monday at 7:00 pm at 7777 Blue Ash Rd.5,28 Public comment does not require you to be an expert. Three sentences from a resident who lives on the street where a camera is mounted carries more weight in a city of 5,700 than any document we can produce.

4. Tell a neighbor (2 minutes)

In Marion, Ohio, more than 90 minutes of public comment on a Flock ordinance came from residents, and the committee held the legislation rather than voting it down.29 That happened because people showed up. Deer Park is a tenth of Marion's size, which cuts in your favor.

A note on the police department

Nothing on this site suggests anyone in the Deer Park Police Department has misused this system. We have no evidence of that and we would say so if we did.

The department adopted a tool that a vendor sold as solving auto theft and hit-skip crashes, which is what the November 2024 minutes describe.7 Our disagreement is with the vendor, the contract, and the absence of any written rule — and the absence of a rule is a problem for officers too, because it leaves them with nothing to point at when someone asks what governs this. We make that case directly to the department.

Sources

  1. Advocacy org. Deer Park Police Department — Automated License Plate Readers (OH0310700ALPR). Atlas of Surveillance, Electronic Frontier Foundation and University of Nevada, Reno. September 2025. atlasofsurveillance.org/a/OH0310700ALPR ↑1↑2↑3Derived from a Flock Safety shared-devices list obtained by public records request from another agency.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  2. Court record Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) (slip opinion). Supreme Court of the United States. Decided June 29, 2026. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf ↑The opinion concerns a geofence warrant for Google Location History data. It does not mention license plate readers or automated license plate recognition anywhere.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  3. Court record Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018). Supreme Court of the United States, via Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. June 22, 2018. www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-402 ↑Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  4. Government record Police Department. City of Deer Park, Ohio. www.deerpark-oh.gov/departments/police ↑1↑2Checked July 29, 2026 for any mention of ALPR, plate readers, Flock, or camera policy. None appears.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  5. Government record City Council Minutes (archive index). City of Deer Park, Ohio. www.deerpark-oh.gov/government/city-council-minutes ↑1↑2All Deer Park minutes cited on this site were downloaded from this index and searched in full.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  6. Government record City Council Minutes, March 4, 2024. City of Deer Park, Ohio. March 4, 2024. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/council-meeting-minutes/Council%20Minutes%20March%204%2C%202024.pdf ↑The city posts this document as a scanned image rather than as searchable text, so the quotations are transcribed from the page and checked word by word against the scan.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  7. Government record City Council Minutes, November 4, 2024. City of Deer Park, Ohio. November 4, 2024. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/council-meeting-minutes/Nov%204th%20City%20Council%20Min.pdf ↑1↑2↑3The city posts this document as a scanned image rather than as searchable text, so the quotations are transcribed from the page and checked word by word against the scan.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  8. Government record City Council Minutes, November 18, 2024. City of Deer Park, Ohio. November 18, 2024. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/council-meeting-minutes/Council%20Minutes%20November%2018t%202024.doc ↑Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  9. Government record City Council Minutes, December 2, 2024. City of Deer Park, Ohio. December 2, 2024. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/council-meeting-minutes/Council%20Min%20Dec%202%2C%202024.pdf ↑1↑2The city posts this document as a scanned image rather than as searchable text, so the quotations are transcribed from the page and checked word by word against the scan.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  10. Government record City Council Minutes, January 20, 2025. City of Deer Park, Ohio. January 20, 2025. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/council-meeting-minutes/Council%20Minutes%20-%20January%2020%2C%202025.pdf ↑1↑2The city posts this document as a scanned image rather than as searchable text, so the quotations are transcribed from the page and checked word by word against the scan.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  11. Government record City Council Minutes, February 3, 2025. City of Deer Park, Ohio. February 3, 2025. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/council-meeting-minutes/City%20council%20Minutes%20Feb%203%2C%202025.pdf ↑The city posts this document as a scanned image rather than as searchable text, so the quotations are transcribed from the page and checked word by word against the scan.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  12. Government record City Council Minutes, April 20, 2026. City of Deer Park, Ohio. April 20, 2026. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/council-meeting-minutes/Council%20Min%20April%2020%2C2026.pdf ↑The city posts this document as a scanned image rather than as searchable text, so the quotations are transcribed from the page and checked word by word against the scan.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  13. Crowdsourced data OpenStreetMap surveillance-node data for the Deer Park area (Overpass API query). OpenStreetMap contributors. Queried July 29, 2026. www.openstreetmap.org ↑1↑2Volunteer-contributed. Positions are approximate, coverage is incomplete, and operator tags are not verified against city records.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  14. Crowdsourced data DeFlock ALPR camera map. DeFlock. deflock.me ↑Volunteer-maintained crowdsourced map built on OpenStreetMap data.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  15. Government record Update on Automated License Plate Reader Program. City of Mountain View, California. January 30, 2026. content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CAMOUNTAINVIEW/bulletins/406f640 ↑The city's own bulletin, distributed through its subscriber notification service. We link this copy because the identical page on mountainview.gov is not publicly readable without a browser session.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  16. News reporting Company violated Illinois law by sharing license plate data with Customs and Border Protection, Giannoulias says. NBC 5 Chicago. August 25, 2025. www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/company-violated-illinois-law-by-sharing-license-plate-data-with-customs-and-border-protection-giannoulias/3814914 ↑Reports a sample audit of 12 Illinois law enforcement agencies and a CBP pilot program. We tried to cite the Illinois Secretary of State's own press release instead and could not open it, on July 29, 2026; it is not in the Internet Archive either, so we quote this reporting of it.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  17. News reporting Cleveland extends Flock contract for 6 months, but seeks transition to new provider. Matthew Richmond, Ideastream Public Media. July 15, 2026. www.ideastream.org/law-justice/2026-07-15/cleveland-extends-flock-contract-for-6-months-but-seeks-transition-to-new-provider ↑Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  18. Government record Statement on the Flock Safety ALPR Contract Termination. City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. December 10, 2025. www.cambridgema.gov/news/2025/12/statementontheflocksafetyalprcontracttermination ↑The city's own statement. Sixteen Flock cameras were deactivated and removed in late October 2025; Flock then told the city two more had been installed by its technicians in late November without the city's awareness, which the city attributes to an outstanding work order that should have been canceled.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  19. Advocacy org. Dozens of Innocent Motorists Have Been Pulled Over, Detained at Gunpoint, or Jailed Due to AI License Plate Camera Errors. Institute for Justice; by Christopher Ingraham. July 1, 2026, updated July 20, 2026. ij.org/dozens-of-innocent-motorists-have-been-pulled-over-detained-at-gunpoint-or-jailed-due-to-ai-license-plate-camera-errors ↑1↑2↑3A review of press coverage and court filings by a public-interest law firm that also litigates against ALPR programs, so it is an interested party. Finds at least 27 cases since 2018, most since 2023; guns drawn in nearly two-thirds; machine misreads about one-third of the mistakes, the rest officer data-entry or misreading. States the count is 'most likely an undercount.' Names Oak Park, Illinois as the only jurisdiction it found issuing routine error reports.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  20. News reporting Case-by-Case: Every Reported Flock License Plate Camera Error to Date. Shawn Henry, The Auto Wire. July 18, 2026. theautowire.com/2026/07/18/case-by-case-every-reported-flock-license-plate-camera-error-to-date ↑1↑2A compilation, not original research; it credits reporting by The Drive and the Institute for Justice and states the list is "very likely incomplete." Individual cases cited on this site are footnoted to their own primary sources wherever one was available.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  21. Government record Ordinance O-457-25: Authorizing the settlement of claims brought in Brandon Upchurch v. City of Toledo, et al.. Toledo City Council. Introduced September 17, 2025; passed October 7, 2025. toledo.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7683298&GUID=A50B871F-4FE3-4168-A8F8-D048B7FB67C9 ↑Authorizes $35,000 from the city's Risk Management Fund. The underlying suit is Upchurch v. City of Toledo, No. 3:25-cv-711 (N.D. Ohio).Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  22. Government record Frequently Asked Questions: How much does a Flock Safety camera cost?. City of Campbell, California. www.campbellca.gov/FAQ.aspx?QID=279 ↑A city's published pricing statement, not an executed contract. States $2,500 per camera per year plus a one-time $250 installation cost, covering hardware, maintenance, footage hosting, cellular service and software updates.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  23. Flock Safety Flock Safety Information (neighborhood and HOA pricing sheet). Flock Safety, hosted by the City of La Porte, Texas. www.laportetx.gov/DocumentCenter/View/11185/Flock-Safety-Information ↑Flock Safety's own marketing sheet aimed at neighborhoods and HOAs, hosted on a city website. Not a municipal contract. States subscriptions are $2,500 per camera per year with a one-time installation fee of $150 to $650 per camera.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  24. Government record Auditor Monthly Fund Reports. City of Deer Park, Ohio. www.deerpark-oh.gov/government/auditor-monthly-fund-reports ↑As of July 29, 2026 the most recent report published is September 2022, so the city's own online financial reporting does not cover the period in which Flock was purchased.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  25. Government record Public Records Policy of the City of Deer Park, Hamilton County. City of Deer Park, Ohio. Effective November 29, 2007. www.deerpark-oh.gov/media/user/residents/PUBLIC%20RECORDS%20POLICY%201%20OF%20DEER%20PARK.pdf ↑1↑2↑3Seven pages, effective date 11/29/2007. Introduction: the Act 'should be interpreted liberally in favor of disclosure.' Section 2.2: a request need not be in writing and the requester need not give a name or reason. Section 2.6: the office limits mailed copies to ten per month absent a written certification of non-commercial use. Section 3.1: first 10 paper pages free, five cents per page thereafter, $1.00 per CD. Section 5 describes the mandamus remedy. Because the policy predates the 2016 creation of the $25 Court of Claims route in R.C. 2743.75 and every subsequent amendment to R.C. 149.43, it should be read as the city's stated posture rather than as a current statement of Ohio law.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  26. Government record Ohio Revised Code § 149.43: Availability of public records for inspection and copying. Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules, Legislative Service Commission. Effective September 30, 2025. codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-149.43 ↑1↑2↑3Current version effective September 30, 2025, latest legislation House Bill 96 of the 136th General Assembly. Division (A)(1)(yy) excludes from the definition of 'public record' any 'Images and data captured by an automated license plate recognition system that are maintained in a law enforcement database.' We verified this is absent from the April 9, 2025 version and present in both the current text and the version effective September 7, 2026. Divisions (B)(4) and (B)(5) bar a public office from conditioning access on the requester's identity or intended use. Division (C) sets out the mandamus route and its conditions, including the three-business-day cure period and the requirement that a written request be sent by hand delivery, electronic submission, or certified mail before statutory damages are available.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  27. Government record Ohio Revised Code § 2743.75: Alleged denial of access to public records. Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules, Legislative Service Commission. codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.75 ↑The $25 Court of Claims route for a denied records request: a special master, mandatory referral to mediation, recovery of the filing fee and costs if you win, and expressly no attorney fees. This is the remedy an ordinary resident would actually use, and it is not the mandamus action Deer Park's policy describes.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  28. Government record City Council. City of Deer Park, Ohio. www.deerpark-oh.gov/city-council ↑The city's City Council landing page. It carries the meeting time but not the roster; the members, terms, emails and Clerk of Council are on the Elected Officials subpages, which we cite separately.Retrieved July 29, 2026.
  29. News reporting Marion residents push back against surveillance tech. Abby Bammerlin, Marion Star (USA TODAY Network), republished by Blue Water Healthy Living. July 22, 2026. bluewaterhealthyliving.com/news/national-news/ohio/marion-residents-push-back-against-surveillance-tech ↑Cited through Blue Water Healthy Living's republication because the Marion Star's own copy is not publicly readable (checked July 29, 2026). Reports that Marion City Council's legislation, codes and regulations committee heard more than 90 minutes of public comment on an ordinance banning Flock and similar technology inside city limits, took no action, and continued the matter to August 3, 2026. The Flock contract belongs to the Marion County Sheriff's Office, which received a grant extending it a year; Marion police have access to the data. If this link does not open, try it again — the site was intermittently unavailable when we checked it, then came back a few minutes later. There is no other public copy: the Internet Archive holds no snapshot.Retrieved July 29, 2026.