Voters at next week’s Town Meeting have a choice. They can decide to take up and debate Article 18, or they can take no action by voting to indefinitely postpone it. Either way, the result will be exactly the same: The Wakefield Police Department‘s Flock cameras will be gone.

Article 18 that would have forced the Wakefield PD to terminate its contract with Flock Safety and discontinue its use of automatic license plate readers as a law enforcement tool.

However, after a few anti-Flock activists invoked the specter of Big Brother and made no secret of their intention to mobilize their comrades behind Article 18, WPD decided that discretion was the better part of valor and pulled the plug pre-emptively.

But the beret and keffiyeh crowd weren’t going to let this late move by Wakefield PD derail their plans to use Town Meeting to rail against “mass surveillance” in a “police state.”

So, the same “folks” who once claimed that their opposition to Flock cameras in no way diminished their steadfast support and unwavering respect for the Wakefield Police are now calling for Town Meeting to pass Article 18 to make sure that the WPD doesn’t pull a fast one and replace the Flock cameras with a different brand.

I understand that there are principled civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle who have sincere concerns, but those aren’t the people behind the spread of Flock Derangement Syndrome.

The anti-Flock movement has “defund the police” fingerprints all over it.

The newly emergent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have called for the termination of all contracts between police departments and Flock Safety. Not coincidentally, DSA is also a lead organization in the defund the police coalition. Their official position calls for gradual abolition of police by reducing budgets every year until they get to zero.

As much as the “defund” crowd would love to remove all funding from law enforcement right now, even they know it won’t happen all at once. The strategy has always been to hamper police incrementally by gradually depriving cops of resources until they can no longer function effectively. Flock cameras are just low-hanging fruit.

In case anybody’s interested, this is exactly what defunding the police looks like.

Now, the defunders want to celebrate by wasting Town Meeting’s time debating an article that is already moot, just so they can get up and virtue signal.

But no matter what happens with Article 18, the result will be exactly the same: the Police Department’s ability to use Flock cameras as a public safety tool has been defunded.

And that’s just the beginning.
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[This column originally appeared in the November 12, 2026 Wakefield Daily Item.]