Doraville city leaders spent Wednesday night weighing whether to expand the small DeKalb County city's surveillance network, but the council adjourned without taking a vote on the issue. The discussion centered on whether to invest in Flock license plate reader cameras and other law-enforcement surveillance technology, even as privacy advocates warned the city to slow down and set rules first.
According to FOX 5 Atlanta, which reviewed a recording of the meeting, the Doraville City Council discussed the surveillance question but may decide the matter at a later date. The city isn't starting from scratch — officials have discussed surveillance technology, and according to the City of Doraville's own website, officials are now eyeing a third system, Condor security cameras, for placement around city parks.
Christopher Bruce, deputy executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, urged Doraville to establish strict guardrails through an ordinance before entering any agreements with surveillance technology vendors, per the same FOX 5 Atlanta account. The organization called for a Community Control Over Police Surveillance ordinance, a form of model legislation the ACLU of Georgia says has been adopted in 26 jurisdictions and involves council participation.
What the ACLU Is Asking For
“It is really getting community control over police surveillance,” Bruce said, according to the station's report, describing the policy's core purpose. He added that the policy would let municipal residents know exactly what type of surveillance technology will be used in their city before it's put into service.
The push in Doraville lands amid what the ACLU of Georgia's own national campaign materials describe as broad use of Flock Safety's ALPR system. Atlanta-headquartered Flock Safety now operates more than 120,000 license plate reading cameras across 49 states, logging vehicle make, model, color, and unique features into a searchable nationwide cloud network, the civil liberties group notes.
A Wave of Misuse Cases Across Georgia
That scale has come with scandal. More than 40 law enforcement officers across Georgia have been caught or disciplined for misusing Flock systems for personal reasons as of this month, according to WSB-TV. Just days before the Doraville meeting, neighboring Gwinnett County Police terminated and criminally charged three officers after an internal audit uncovered unauthorized Flock database searches, as detailed by FOX 5 Atlanta in a separate misuse case Hoodline covered this month. Gwinnett police responded by cutting their Flock data retention window from 30 days to 15 and requiring supervisor approval before any search.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported that a new automated audit-assistance tool Flock Safety rolled out in mid-2026 is what actually triggered this statewide reckoning, automatically flagging irregular officer search patterns and prompting departments statewide to run self-audits and refer violations to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. That software, in other words, is the reason so many misuse cases have surfaced at once rather than trickling out individually.
State Law Limits What Residents Can Check
Complicating any local accountability effort, Georgia Code § 35-1-22 explicitly exempts captured license plate reader data from the Georgia Open Records Act, meaning Doraville residents cannot file public records requests to see where their own vehicles have been tracked. The same statute allows agencies to store ALPR data for up to 30 months before mandatory destruction and makes using that data for non-law-enforcement purposes a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature, according to legal documentation compiled by Justia Law.
Other DeKalb County departments have already moved to tighten their own rules. Dunwoody police showcased their Flock safeguards this month, requiring officers to enter a valid case number and specific justification before pulling plate data, per the WSB-TV report. Avondale Estates held its own public meetings on camera access restrictions amid the statewide scandal, a debate Hoodline covered in a recent local report, and Cobb County residents grilled police over Flock cameras after a wrong driver was repeatedly pulled over, with a third community meeting on the issue scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
A Community With High Stakes in the Outcome
Doraville is a city where the surveillance debate carries implications for privacy and civil rights. Advocates have raised concerns about disproportionate impacts on communities of color, a backdrop that adds weight to the ACLU of Georgia's push for binding local rules before Doraville commits to new vendors.
For now, the surveillance question in Doraville remains unresolved. The city council did not vote Wednesday and may take up the matter again at a later meeting, leaving open whether Doraville will adopt an ordinance like the one the ACLU of Georgia presented, or move ahead with new cameras under its existing framework.
