FLOCKINGHELLPUBLIC MONEY / PUBLIC ROADS / PUBLIC SAY
[ DOCUMENTED, NOT ENDORSED ]

PEOPLE ARE CUTTING
THEM DOWN.

Cameras are being spray-painted, sawn off, shot and driven into across the country. It is happening, so this project documents it: how often, where, what people are charged with, what it costs, and whether it achieves anything. That last question has an answer, and it is not the one the act implies.

WHERE THIS SITE STANDS

Flockinghell does not encourage, assist, or celebrate damaging equipment. Nothing on this page is instruction, and no footage is hosted, embedded, or solicited. The reason is practical as much as legal: as the record below shows, the people doing this are collecting felony charges while the cameras go back up, and the deployments that actually ended were ended in public meetings.

Cases documented
6
Cameras affected
19
Cases with a felony count
4
Replacement cost per camera
$800-$2,800

What people are actually charged with

The charge follows the value of the hardware, and the hardware is expensive. Police and prosecutors in these cases put a single camera between $800 and $2,800, which in most states lifts criminal damage from a summary offence to a felony almost immediately. Hitting devices in more than one town multiplies the counts rather than averaging them: one nineteen-year-old was charged across two jurisdictions and admitted damaging cameras in two more, including one in another state.

Documented cases

No names. Everyone here has been charged and, in most of these cases, not tried. They are private individuals, and attaching a permanent search result to someone who has not been convicted adds nothing to the analysis. Age and jurisdiction carry the pattern.

  1. Atlantic Beach and Jacksonville Beach, FloridaFELONY COUNT
    Accused
    Age 19
    Devices
    6
    Charges as filed
    Three counts of criminal mischief over $200 in Atlantic Beach, plus two felony vandalism counts in Jacksonville Beach
    Cost stated
    Atlantic Beach police put replacement at $800 per camera for three cameras.
    Stated motive
    An investigator recorded that he made statements about disliking Flock cameras and not trusting licence plate readers.
  2. Monterey County, California
    Accused
    Age 40
    Devices
    3
    Charges as filed
    Arrested and accused of attacking at least three cameras; held in custody
    Cost stated
    Reported damages in the thousands of dollars.
  3. Lisle, IllinoisFELONY COUNT
    Accused
    Age not reported
    Devices
    5
    Charges as filed
    Each of three men charged with two counts of theft of government property and two counts of criminal damage to government-supported property
    Cost stated
    Prosecutors valued each of the five cameras at about $2,800.
  4. Troy, New YorkFELONY COUNT
    Accused
    Age 25
    Devices
    1
    Charges as filed
    Second-degree criminal mischief, and attempted second-degree criminal mischief
  5. Pocatello, IdahoFELONY COUNT
    Accused
    Age 20
    Devices
    2
    Charges as filed
    Felony malicious injury to property, and failing to report a crash
    Cost stated
    Reported as the first case of its kind in Idaho.
  6. Alexandria, Virginia
    Accused
    Age not reported
    Devices
    2
    Charges as filed
    Arrested for destruction of property

Does it work?

On the evidence so far, no. A destroyed camera is a replaced camera: the hardware is a line item to the vendor and the operator, and the mount usually survives to hold the next one. Nothing in the reporting collected here describes a jurisdiction that ended a programme because devices were damaged.

Set that against the reports desk, where 4 deployments were ended or verifiably removed. Every one of those went through a council vote, a contract decision, or a records-driven review. In Syracuse the readers came down and stayed down. In Newport the contract was dropped before it was signed. Those outcomes are durable in a way a cut cable is not, and nobody involved acquired a criminal record.

There is a second cost that is easy to miss. Damage hands an operator the cleanest possible argument for keeping the system: it converts a debate about warrantless surveillance into a debate about property crime, and it gives officials a reason to stop discussing the contract at all. The roadside safety reporting is the counter-example worth studying, where one person with a camera and a tape measure triggered a company-wide audit.

If you want the cameras gone

The routes that have worked are on this site: find the contract and its renewal date, request the search logs and sharing partners, read what comes back, and turn up when it is on the agenda. The action playbook sets out the sequence, and the ACLU's campaign maintains organising resources.