Fort Mitchell has terminated its $34,000 contract with Flock Safety and shut down all five of its automated license plate readers, making it the second Northern Kentucky city to ditch the surveillance technology this summer.

Mayor Greg Pohlgeers announced the termination at a packed city council meeting Aug. 18, then confirmed it in a Facebook post the following day. Residents who filled the room challenged the cameras on privacy, data security and surveillance grounds. The city has already disconnected the cameras from their battery and solar panel sources, and the devices are now dead, City Administrator Edwin King told the Cincinnati Enquirer. Fort Mitchell has notified Flock to collect the hardware.

"We work for the citizens of Fort Mitchell, so we listened to the voices and we made a decision," Pohlgeers told WLWT after the meeting.

The reversal is sharp. At a June 1 council meeting, Pohlgeers called himself a proponent of the cameras, according to city minutes, arguing the city should not "lose the opportunity to find a kidnapped child" because it lacked the technology. Several council members voiced support that night.

Two months later, the room looked different. Residents framed the issue not as a policing question but as a corporate surveillance one. One speaker told council that Fort Mitchell was not renting cameras but renting access to a surveillance platform controlled by a private company in Atlanta that decides what the cameras do, according to WLWT's coverage.

Fort Mitchell signed the two-year Flock contract in 2024 for its police department. By April 2025, only one of the five cameras was operational, with the rest facing installation problems, Police Chief Rob Nader reported at a council meeting that month.

The city is now part of a growing regional wave. Newport ended its Flock pilot in July. Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman announced Aug. 24 that his city will also remove its cameras after residents overwhelmingly opposed them. At least 23 jurisdictions nationwide have canceled Flock contracts or rejected the technology, Fox 19 reported.

Flock Safety has responded by reducing its default data retention period from 30 days to seven and making misuse detection mandatory for all customers, according to WLWT.

Fort Mitchell's cameras are off and the contract is closed. The city is waiting for Flock to pick up the equipment.