Cherokee County

I am writing to ask you to end the County's contract with Flock Safety and have the cameras removed. As deflockcherokee.com has documented:

Flock cameras don't accomplish what they're sold to do. The one peer-reviewed evaluation of a major plate reader expansion found no reduction in violent crime. It doesn't help to solve crime, either: Atlanta's camera network grew eightfold between 2021 and 2026, to over 28,600 cameras, and their clearance rates didn't improve at all.

They get misused. Four Cherokee County Sheriff's Office employees have been fired and arrested for unlawfully searching the county database. Every month, more and more officials are being arrested for misuse: the number state-wide is at least 20.

They get it wrong and distract our police. Roseville, California's own review of 1,427 Flock alerts found 71% were misreads.

The same money has better uses for public safety. A randomized trial found that better street lighting cut nighttime crime by about a third. And the National Institute of Justice rates "focused deterrence" (concentrating on the small number of people driving violence, rather than photographing everyone), as "promising" across 24 studies. Inside the public safety budget, the same money could fund detectives to clear the cases residents already report, training, or victim services.

Please decline to fund any increase for this contract in the FY2027 budget adopted in early October, ask the Sheriff in open session what $317,500 a year buys and what the June audit found, and put the answers in the minutes. The agreement renews itself on November 17th, 2028 unless notice is given 30 days in advance. Decide that in public, rather than letting the date quietly pass.

Respectfully,
[Your name]
[Your street, city, ZIP, so they can see you are a constituent] 

Dear Sheriff Reynolds:

I am writing to you to ask you to end the Sheriff's Office contract with Flock Safety and have the cameras taken down.

Four of your employees have now been fired and arrested for unlawfully searching this database, and what caught them was the audit your own office ran. That was the system working, and you deserve credit for it. But it raises some deep concerns: how comprehensive was this audit, how likely is it that some abusers weren't caught, and what stops the next abuser or hacker from covering their tracks?

As deflockcherokee.com has documented:

Flock doesn't do what it's sold to do. The one peer-reviewed evaluation of a major plate reader expansion found no reduction in violent crime. Nor have crime clearance rates gone up: Atlanta's camera network grew eightfold between 2021 and 2026, to over 28,600 cameras, and its clearance rates didn't improve at all. Homicide clearance rates actually fell, from 53.4% to 48.0%. The 70% figures in circulation are Flock's own marketing, not independent research.

The cameras are inaccurate, too. Roseville, California's review of 1,427 Flock alerts found that 71% came from misreads. Are Cherokee County's officers being misled by the very same inaccuracies?

The money allotted to public safety has better uses. A randomized trial found that better street lighting cut nighttime crime by about a third. The National Institute of Justice rates "focused deterrence" (concentrating on the small number of people driving most of the violence, rather than photographing everyone), as "promising" across 24 studies. Inside the public safety budget, the same money could fund detectives to clear the cases residents already report, training, or victim services.

Respectfully,
[Your name]
[Your street, city, ZIP, so he can see you are a constituent]