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Residents call on Pensacola mayor and council to cancel Flock surveillance contract
Summary
Multiple residents and community leaders urged Pensacola officials to terminate a $108,000 Flock license-plate–reader contract they say was funded from opioid-abatement money and that creates a nationalized surveillance database with inadequate oversight.
Hundreds of residents turned out during the Leroy Boyd Forums at the May 12 Pensacola City Council meeting to demand the city cancel its contract with Flock, a company that provides AI-powered license-plate readers and surveillance services.
Pepper Weimer told the council a Flock contract should be placed on the next agenda and canceled, saying, “A national surveillance network with 83,000 plus cameras, minimal oversight and a track record of abuse is not something that this city should opt into.” She cited public records from other jurisdictions showing Flock employees accessed sensitive camera feeds during sales demonstrations.
Multiple speakers said they believed the mayor executed the Flock agreement without adequate council review and that opioid-abatement funds were used to pay for it. Alexandra Hatley said the contract used $108,000 from opioid-abatement funds and called the devices “mass surveillance AI powered license plate readers,” urging Mayor D.C. Reeves to terminate the contract and “have every camera turned off and removed from all of our communities.”
Hyraso Alfonso likewise criticized the mayor's handling of the contract and said the system "surveils you every single day," arguing the city should remove cameras now rather than wait for renewal or expiration. Declan McGurk and others tied the surveillance tools to concerns about racial profiling and cited recent local and regional incidents in which officers allegedly misused similar systems.
Speakers asked the council to make surveillance-use policies public, list which agencies have access to Flock footage, and to provide audit logs and security protocols. Kinsley Otley asked specifically whether agencies that accessed footage during an Okaloosa County arrest still had access and whether the security protocols promised by the chief would be released to the public.
City officials in this meeting did not vote on the Flock contract. Council members and staff acknowledged the concerns and said staff would follow up on requests for policy documentation and auditing procedures. Mayor Reeves and the council have authority over renewals and contracting processes per city charter and contract rules; the public urged immediate action to end Flock's presence in Pensacola.
What happens next: speakers asked the council to put the Flock contract on a future agenda for formal consideration; no formal council action on the contract was recorded at the meeting.
