by Serge S
(Note: This is a corrected version of a previous post.)
Cleveland joined several communities nationwide who are changing their stance on Flock surveillance technology.
During the Cleveland City Council Public Safety Committee’s June 17 meeting, members voted 3 to 1 against renewing their Flock “Safety” surveillance contract which expires on June 29.
Voting against were Stephanie Howse-Jones, Niki Hudson, and Kevin Conwell, leaving Committee Chair Mike Polensek as the sole member to vote for the agreement.
According to News 5 Cleveland, council members, police administrators, Public Safety Director Wayne Drummond, fifteen community members and more than two dozen people from Flock No were involved in the discussion, which lasted nearly two hours.
Flock cameras were first installed in Cleveland during the summer of 2023 and have spread to nearby communities including Euclid, Richmond Heights, Willoughby Hills.
The $250,000 contract would have extended the system for another year.
The fight isn’t over. Although the safety committee declined to renew the contract this time, another council committee may take up the legislation, although no date has been set.
Flock isn’t the only surveillance system in Cleveland. The city also operates 3,400 video surveillance cameras, most of which have AI tracking capabilities.
This isn’t the first time that Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration has tried to sneak funding for surveillance technology through backroom channels. In the past he has bypassed the Safety Committee by extending contracts through the city’s Board of Control which effectively sidesteps council’s ability to review, approve, or deny them.
In one such instance Bibb extended the city’s $850,000 contract with SoundThinking, the vendor of their gunshot-detection technology ShotSpotter in April of 2026.
Several organizations have risen in response to Flock and other tracking systems which have flooded Cleveland in recent years as city’s including Dayton have cancelled or declined to renew contracts with Flock.
One of them, “Flock No CLE” formed last year when the city tried to push an emergency proposal to expand Flock systems and replace their ShotSpotter system in 2025. The legislation would have authorized a $2 million three-year contract with Flock’s version of the “shot spotting” technology by using microphones in their already existing automated license plate readers, according to Signal Cleveland.
According to Axios Cleveland the Cleveland Clergy Coalition spoke in favor of the contract on safety grounds while police argued the technology improves response times and claimed that there has been no misuse of data by Cleveland officers – although there is no way to verify these claims as officers can use a login system that does not always have two-factor authentication – meaning that logins could be shared to avoid tracking.
Sources in order of use:
https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2026/06/18/cleveland-council-flock-contract-renewal-vote
https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2026/05/19/flock-cleveland-bibb-council