home / mytown-research

surveillance_spending

A DISCOVERY INDEX of surveillance and police-technology dollar figures found in local government meeting records across 130+ named vendors — NOT a table of confirmed spending, and NOT safe to SUM. An audit on 2026-07-29 found aggregate views were adding amounts that must not be added: the same procurement recurs at committee, council, approval, amendment and renewal stages; "not to exceed" figures are authorization ceilings, not payments. Use the canned query "the CONSERVATIVE total" for any number you intend to publish, and "data-quality report" to see what is flagged. Columns added for this: `amount_type` (stated / ceiling / proposed / recommended / estimated), `dup_rank` (>1 = redundant copy), `geo_suspect` (city disagrees with the source link), `anomaly` (implausible figure), `state_norm` (normalized state). Vendors covered include ALPR (Flock, Vigilant, Genetec), body cameras/tasers (Axon, WatchGuard, Utility, Getac), gunshot detection (ShotSpotter/SoundThinking), face recognition (Clearview AI, DataWorks Plus), fingerprint biometrics (Idemia AFIS/Livescan, filed separately under `sv:biometrics`), data fusion and OSINT (Fusus, Peregrine, LexisNexis Accurint, Thomson Reuters CLEAR), phone forensics (Cellebrite, GrayKey, Magnet), drones (Skydio, BRINC, DJI), cameras/VMS (Verkada, Avigilon), cell-site simulators, CAD/RMS records systems, photo enforcement, jail-call and student monitoring. Every row carries a VERBATIM quote from the minutes and a link to the source document, and a row only publishes if that quote was found character-for-character in the source text. READ THE `ledger` COLUMN: `sv:<category>:<vendor>`. `radio_infra` (two-way radios), `rms` (records/CAD software), `biometrics` (fingerprints) and `not_surveillance` are NOT surveillance sensors — exclude them before quoting any surveillance figure.

Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown

5 rows where ledger = "flock", state = "MN" and vendor = "Flock Safety" sorted by amount descending

✎ View and edit SQL

This data as json, CSV (advanced)

Suggested facets: city, amount, quote, dup_rank, geo_suspect, spend_date (date)

vendor 1

  • Flock Safety · 5 ✖

state 1

  • MN · 5 ✖

ledger 1

  • flock · 5 ✖
Link rowid vendor city state spend_date product amount ▲ quote source_document mytown_record ledger amount_type dup_rank geo_suspect anomaly state_norm
1956 1956 Flock Safety Sherburne County MN 2025-06-24 purchase 54000.0 Approved the purchase of the Flock Safety Platform in the amount of $54,000. https://sherburnecomn.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=2668,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/sherburnecomn/2025/#m814671 flock stated 1 0 0 MN
1509 1509 Flock Safety East Grand Forks MN 2026-06-02 approve quote 28000.0 Consider approving to the quote with Flock Safety for the Installation of four (4) Automatic License Plate Reader and Live Video Systems for a price of $28,000 for two years. https://www.egf.mn/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_06022026-244 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/egf.mn/#m19401 flock stated 1 1 0 MN
1510 1510 Flock Safety East Grand Forks MN 2026-05-19 approve contract/quote 28000.0 Consider approving to the quote with Flock Safety for the Installation of four (4) Automatic License Plate Reader and Live Video Systems for a price of $28,000 for two years. https://www.egf.mn/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_05192026-239 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/egf.mn/#m19404 flock stated 2 1 0 MN
2043 2043 Flock Safety Wyoming MN 2026-08-05 approving a one year contract renewal 12000.0 To consider Resolution 26-08-99 a resolution approving a one year contract renewal with Flock Safety in the amount of $12,000.00 https://wyomingmn.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=1980,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/wyomingmn/#m1015079 flock stated 1 0 0 MN
2270 2270 Flock Safety Little Canada MN 2025-05-28 approve 5000.0 The Acting City Administrator provided background information on Flock safety cameras , noting that this request comes from the Ramsey County Sheriff ’s Office . She stated that this is an unbudgeted expense , just under $5,000 for 2025 . https://www.littlecanadamn.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_05282025-660 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/littlecanadamn.org/2025/#m1516980 flock stated 1 0 0 MN

Advanced export

JSON shape: default, array, newline-delimited

CSV options:

CREATE TABLE surveillance_spending (
  vendor TEXT, city TEXT, state TEXT, spend_date TEXT, product TEXT,
  amount REAL, quote TEXT, source_document TEXT, mytown_record TEXT, ledger TEXT, amount_type TEXT, dup_rank INTEGER, geo_suspect INTEGER, anomaly INTEGER, state_norm TEXT);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_vendor ON surveillance_spending(vendor);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_state ON surveillance_spending(state);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_amount ON surveillance_spending(amount);
CREATE INDEX ix_surv_ledger ON surveillance_spending(ledger);
Powered by Datasette · Queries took 1625.658ms · Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown