
Cabot's mayor suspended the city's Flock cameras and had police cover them with bin bags
Mayor Ken Kincade announced on 7 August that Cabot was suspending its Flock deployment immediately, saying he had heard residents' privacy concerns. The following morning Cabot police drove around town, disconnected all nine cameras from their solar generators and covered them with rubbish bags. The city says the pause is for a review with public input, but has set no date for either. Two things make this one worth watching. It is the third Arkansas city to back away from Flock this summer, which is a pattern rather than an incident. And it is the first of the three where the decision came from the mayor rather than the police chief, which is a different route to the same outcome: an elected official acting on constituents rather than a department reassessing a tool. The cameras are disabled, not gone, and the contract still stands.
From the reporting
- Nine cameras, disconnected from their solar generators and physically covered on the morning of 8 August.
- The suspension was announced by the mayor in a Facebook post, not by the police department.
- Third Arkansas city to pull back from Flock this summer; the first where the mayor made the call.
- No timeline has been set for the public input period or for how long the cameras stay off.
- Filed as a partial win: use is suspended, the agreement is not cancelled.
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