Skip to content
A Flock Safety sign in a Northern California neighborhood alerts residents and visitors that they’re on camera.

A Flock Safety sign in a Northern California neighborhood alerts residents and visitors that they’re on camera.

Photographer: Sarah Holder/Bloomberg CityLab

CityLab
Government

Suburbs of Surveillance

Law enforcement officials are encouraging private homeowners’ associations to install license plate reader cameras from startup Flock Safety. But are they really keeping neighborhoods safer?

One day last April, a homeowner’s association board in Vacaville, California, convened a Zoom meeting to vote on a new way to automate their neighborhood watch.

The community, located in the Sacramento Valley, already had an active page on the online platform Nextdoor, where residents swapped information on missing packages and mysterious loud booms, and all Vacaville residents had the option of registering their private video surveillance systems like Ring doorbells with the police department to help them follow up on leads.