Independence Township's Board of Trustees voted unanimously, 7-0, last Tuesday to terminate its contract with Flock Safety and pull all automated license plate reader cameras from township roads. The board also approved a motion to pursue legal action if necessary to make sure the cameras actually come down, and ordered the company to permanently purge any township-related data it has collected since the program began in 2024.
The vote came at the September 8 board meeting, according to ClickOnDetroit, which reported that the township currently has eight Flock cameras in operation. Trustees also approved settling any outstanding balances through September and requesting reimbursement for unused credits, while requiring Flock Safety to formally certify the data purge through an affidavit. Township officials say Independence Township owns all data collected through the system, per the same report.
An Invoice Sparked an Audit
The cameras had been running in Independence Township since August 2024, when the township signed a two-year rental agreement to deploy 12 Flock Safety Falcon units in partnership with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, following an initial pitch to the board back in April 2024, according to the Clarkston News. The system was originally sold to officials as an automated tool tied into national databases for amber alerts and stolen vehicle recovery.
The reversal traces back to a $12,000 contract renewal invoice that landed on Township Supervisor Chuck Phyle II's desk, prompting him to dig into the platform's data governance and privacy safeguards instead of simply approving payment, the Clarkston News reports. Phyle inherited the vendor contract when he took office, and he has framed the review as a matter of basic oversight. He said the decision reflects concerns heard from residents and a commitment to reviewing every township expense, according to ClickOnDetroit, and separately said the township will remove the cameras and delete all township-related data.
Budget Pressure Ahead of a November Vote
Independence Township contracts its police coverage through the Oakland County Sheriff's Office rather than running its own department, an arrangement covered under a three-year law enforcement services agreement running from 2025 through 2027 that raised local service costs by more than $1.3 million, per county records cited by the Clarkston News. The township's previous police protection millage expired in 2025, leaving local policing without long-term voter-approved funding.
That funding gap became urgent after township voters rejected two police-related ballot measures in the August 4 Michigan primary — a 3.2-mill police operating proposal that failed 54% to 46%, and a separate School Resource Officer millage — according to FireRescue1. Township officials made the Flock decision while reviewing expenditures and hunting for cost-cutting opportunities as part of broader budget planning, per ClickOnDetroit. Residents will now vote on a modified 0.3718-mill increase to the police protection millage, bringing the proposed rate to 3.2 mills if it passes, on the November 3 ballot.
Independence Township has scheduled two public sessions ahead of that vote: a community discussion on September 23 and a town hall question-and-answer session on October 19, both at 6 p.m. at Township Hall, 6483 Waldon Center Drive in Clarkston. Neither session will include a formal board action on the millage itself, ClickOnDetroit reports.
Part of a Wider Michigan Retreat
Independence Township is not alone. Communities across Southeast Michigan — including Sumpter Township, Monroe County, Clawson, Ferndale, Westland, and Milford — have recently ended, scaled back, or allowed Flock Safety contracts to lapse over privacy and data-sharing concerns, according to Michigan Public. In Wayne County, Sumpter Township abruptly ended a 60-day trial of 11 Flock cameras in August after public pushback and after voters rejected a local police millage renewal by 57 percent, leaving that department facing a potential 40 percent budget cut, as Hoodline previously reported.
Not every Oakland County municipality is heading in the same direction. Waterford Township maintained and defended its 16 Flock cameras through August despite a wave of regional vandalism, including a felony charge filed in March against a 24-year-old Clarkston man accused of smashing $10,000 worth of camera equipment. More than 180 Michigan law enforcement agencies now deploy automated license plate readers, up from roughly 125 at the start of the year, with Flock Safety operating the vast majority of those municipal systems statewide.
The pushback comes as Flock Safety itself faces scrutiny. Following out-of-state officer misconduct cases involving unauthorized driver tracking, the company announced policy changes in August requiring all law enforcement clients to adopt automated system audit tools by the end of 2026, along with automatic account suspensions for abnormal search activity, according to FOX 2 Detroit. For Independence Township, the camera removal and the millage vote are now tied together as officials try to show residents they are cutting costs while still funding the deputies who patrol their roads.
