Get the Flock Out
As of May 2025, the Bakersfield Police Department is running a 133-camera surveillance network built by Flock Safety. Nobody voted for it. Nobody held a public hearing. Most people in this town don't even know it exists.
We're the Anti-Capitalist Computer Club, and we're working to end it. Here's everything we've dug up, the tools we've built, and how you can help.
Show Up
Two chances to get in the room this month. One where we do the talking, one where they have to listen.
We're co-hosting with the Kern County Criminal Justice Coalition. What are Flock cameras, why does it matter, what can we do, and what can we demand. Everyone is welcome. No prior knowledge required, so come with questions.
Our first time back at the mic since the June budget hearings. We spent the summer pulling documents and mapping cameras. Now we're asking council to pause any further surveillance technology purchases and to hold town halls so people can actually be heard. Never spoken at public comment before? Get there a little early and find us. We'll walk you through it.
What We're Asking
Three things. None of them radical. All of them the bare minimum a city owes the people it watches.
Cancel
Halt any further expansion. End the Flock contract.
Clarify
Publish camera locations and usage logs. Hold public hearings before any contract renewals.
Change
No more surveillance tech without public hearings, voter approval, and annual audits.
The Receipts
We filed California Public Records Act requests with the city and the county to drag their Flock contracts into daylight. Three drops later, BPD has handed over 30 documents and 1.4 million rows of raw license plate data. All of it is on the Internet Archive. Organizers in other California cities are already using it: when a department won't release its own records, ours shows what requests their departments are making on the wider Flock network.
The Flock platform doesn't just read plates. It tracks groups of cars moving in the same direction, and it lets any officer click on any building and pull up the names, ages, and phone numbers of every resident. Tracking movement patterns and mapping people to their homes has nothing to do with shoplifting. That's what a state grant sold to the public as retail theft prevention actually paid for.
Technology was supposed to liberate us, not put us in a panopticon.
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Public records, drop 1
BPD Flock documents: contracts and amendments
The original 13-document CPRA response: BPD's Flock contracts, order forms, invoices, and the state grant records that show how the deployment got funded.
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Public records, drop 2
BPD Flock documents: second round
17 more documents, including BPD's official ALPR policy manual and the city's written denial of camera location disclosure. Also confirms in writing: no annual audit reports exist.
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Public records, drop 3
BPD Flock documents: search data
1.4 million individual license plate searches logged from October 2021 through February 2026: officer names, plates queried, dates, case numbers, and stated reasons for each search.
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The breakdown
Everything's Flocked
The newsletter issue where we walk through what's actually in the documents from drop 1, in plain English.
The Tools
The city won't tell us where the cameras are. Fine. We'll find them ourselves.
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Built by us
BirdWatch
Spot a Flock camera around Bakersfield? Pull this up on your phone and tap the button. We verify every sighting and add confirmed cameras to the national map.
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National map
DeFlock
The crowdsourced map of ALPRs across the country. Our confirmed Bakersfield sightings live here.
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Check yourself
Have I Been Flocked
See whether Flock's network has logged your plate.
The Zines
We make zines about all of this, because some fights are best picked on paper. Print them, fold them, leave them everywhere.
What's Next
We host Flock Walks. They're like a photo walk, but in reverse. We walk a stretch of Bakersfield together, chat about surveillance technologies, and document the cameras documenting us. Our local piece of the National Week of Action Against ALPRs is the town hall on August 19, up at the top of this page.
Want in? Sign up for our tracker-free newsletter or come find us at the Really Really Free Market.
Bakersfield and Ridgecrest are both fighting Flock ALPRs, so we joined forces to create an announcements-only Signal group for the whole county. We'll send out occasional news, calls to action, and updates. Nothing else. Organizing in your own Kern city, or want to start? We want you in here. The more towns we cover, the harder this gets to ignore.