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

4 rows where state = "MN" and vendor = "Flock" sorted by amount descending

✎ View and edit SQL

This data as json, CSV (advanced)

Suggested facets: city, spend_date (date)

vendor 1

  • Flock · 4 ✖

state 1

  • MN · 4 ✖

ledger 1

  • flock 4
Link rowid vendor city state spend_date product amount ▲ quote source_document mytown_record ledger amount_type dup_rank geo_suspect anomaly state_norm
1723 1723 Flock Cottage Grove MN 2025-06-18 approve Flock/LPR camera Master Services Agreement and accept grant 18000.0 1) Approve Flock/LPR camera Master Services Agreement. 2) Accept $18,000.00 from the Automobile Theft Prevention Grant Award over 2 years. https://cottagegrovemn.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=1171,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/cottagegrovemn/2025/#m470502 flock stated 1 0 0 MN
1818 1818 Flock Alexandria MN 2025-07-10 approve installation 17000.0 The Flock agreement would be $17,000 in 2025 for installation and service, with an agreement for $12,000 annually for service in 2026 and then again in 2027. https://alexandriamn.granicus.com/MinutesViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=1760 https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/gr-alexandriamn/2025/#m622820 flock stated 1 0 0 MN
1979 1979 Flock Dayton MN 2024-11-26 reduce 15000.0 15,000 Police (Flock down from 10 cameras to 6) https://www.daytonmn.gov/11-26-24%20Council%20Packet.pdf https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/rz-daytonmn.gov/2024/#m841410 flock stated 1 0 0 MN
1722 1722 Flock Cottage Grove MN 2025-03-05 accept grant donation for lease of Flock cameras 10000.0 Accept the TJX Law Enforcement Grant donation in the amount of $10,000 for the lease of Flock cameras. https://cottagegrovemn.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=1162,plainText=false) https://mytown.theboringparts.com/city/cottagegrovemn/2025/#m470462 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 717.199ms · Data license: CC BY 4.0 · Data source: MyTown