Fort Mitchell ended its use of five Flock Safety license plate readers after residents raised surveillance and privacy concerns at the Aug. 17 council meeting. Mayor Greg Pohlgeers ordered the devices shut down and dismantled and said the city would not renew its contract.
Pohlgeers cited growing public concern about mass surveillance, data security and Fourth Amendment violations as the main reasons for ending the program. Several council members also opposed continuing it.
The city had purchased five automated license plate readers for $34,000 under a two-year contract signed in 2024, Link NKY reported. The cameras captured license plates, vehicle make, color and model as cars passed, converting that information into searchable data for law enforcement.
Pohlgeers said he initially supported the technology as a tool for the city's small police department. "There's one thing that's more important than that to me, and that is the public's trust," the mayor said, according to Link NKY.
Greg Given, a Fort Mitchell resident who has worked in information technology for 28 years, told the council he had reviewed the Flock contract and had serious concerns about the cameras' surveillance capabilities.
The shutdown moved fast.
According to Fort Mitchell council minutes from Aug. 31, Police Chief Rob Nader turned off all officer access to the Flock system the morning after the Aug. 17 meeting. Data sharing with other law enforcement agencies was also cut off, and the cameras were unplugged. By the Aug. 31 meeting, the Public Works Department had physically removed all five cameras. Solar panels that powered the devices remained in place but were disconnected.
City Administrator Edwin King said the city would coordinate with Flock Safety to officially end all operations, Link NKY reported.
The reversal was sharp. At the June 1 council meeting, Pohlgeers had told council members he was a proponent of Flock cameras, and council member Deatherage cited a case in Berea where the technology helped police locate a murder suspect within 24 hours, according to city meeting minutes.
By mid-August, Pohlgeers had reversed his position. WLWT reported that Pohlgeers posted on Facebook that the decision came "after carefully considering the concerns and perspectives presented."
Fort Mitchell's move came amid a wave of Northern Kentucky cities pulling back from Flock. Newport ended its program in July. Independence announced it would remove its cameras. Florence suspended its program in September. Most recently, the Southgate City Council voted 3-2 on Oct. 21 to cover its five Flock cameras while Kentucky lawmakers consider legislation regulating automated license plate readers during the 2027 General Assembly session, Link NKY reported.
A WVXU investigation published Oct. 15 found that in three months, Flock went from having more than 100 cameras installed across Northern Kentucky to numerous cancelled contracts and paused accounts. Darrin Wilson, an associate professor of public administration at Northern Kentucky University, told WVXU that many Flock contracts were small enough to bypass a city council vote, allowing the technology to arrive with little public scrutiny.
Amid nationwide backlash, Flock Safety announced in August that it would shorten its standard data-retention window from 30 days to seven and require law enforcement customers to implement misuse-detection auditing by Jan. 1.
