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Chris on July 7, 2026

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Tim smith

BREAKING🚨 Cleveland promised its Flock surveillance cameras couldn’t be used to hunt immigrants. Then the search logs came out. There are about 100 Flock cameras across Cleveland, mounted on poles in high-traffic areas, quietly photographing the license plate of almost every car that passes. The c... View MoreBREAKING🚨 Cleveland promised its Flock surveillance cameras couldn’t be used to hunt immigrants. Then the search logs came out. There are about 100 Flock cameras across Cleveland, mounted on poles in high-traffic areas, quietly photographing the license plate of almost every car that passes. The city pays $250,000 a year for the system. Flock says its national network connects tens of thousands of cameras across the country. And that is where Cleveland’s promise started to fall apart. Residents were told the cameras were not supposed to be used for immigration enforcement. But records reviewed by Signal Cleveland showed immigration-related searches still appearing in the system, including searches tied to agencies outside Ohio. The searches were not just coming from Cleveland police. Agencies from across the country were tapping into Cleveland’s camera network again and again. Houston police, Dallas police, and the California Highway Patrol were among the heaviest users, each searching Cleveland’s database tens of thousands of times. Then nearby Cleveland Heights opened its own records. On just 20 Flock cameras, in a single year, Cleveland Heights found 1,783 immigration-related searches. Three hundred came from Grant County, Indiana. Two hundred seventy-four came from a department in Crowley, Texas. Ohio agencies accounted for only 125. So a camera on a local street in Ohio was not just local. It was part of a national surveillance dragnet. And the system trusted whatever officers typed in. An agency could enter “immigration overstay,” “wanted subject,” or barely any meaningful explanation at all, and the search could still run. There was no real front-end verification that the reason was true. One immigration lawyer who reviewed the issue said there is no real way to police it. Cleveland officials had said an “immigration filter” would block this kind of search. But immigration-related searches still appeared after the filter was supposed to be active. The city blamed a Flock configuration error. Other Ohio cities started finding their own problems. Dayton found roughly 7,100 immigration-related searches and shut its Flock system down. Shaker Heights found hundreds of outside immigration-related searches, then moved to restrict access to its Flock data. Then Cleveland’s contract landed in real trouble. The City Council Safety Committee voted against renewing the Flock contract. But the cameras are still running for now. The contract expired June 29 but police said they will still using the cameras while the fight over renewal continues. -

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July 7, 2026