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In communities large and small, red and blue, all across the United States, residents are filling local council meetings in opposition to the explosive growth of high-tech police surveillance systems.

Local movements to rid city streets of AI-powered surveillance cameras and Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) networks used by law enforcement are growing rapidly amid scandals, mounting privacy concerns, and public backlash to AI and mass surveillance under the authoritarian Trump administration. The cameras and their associated systems are capable of building complex profiles of people and vehicles as they move through public areas.

Last week inside a packed city council chamber in Asheville, North Carolina, residents who had waited hours to share a public comment chanted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as their elected leaders voted 6-1 to build a “real-time intelligence center” for local police. Unless the city changes course, police will soon have a “wall of screens” fed by high-tech cameras to monitor a city of 95,000 people.

In Bandera, Texas, a pro-surveillance councilmember proposed banning “cell phones, the internet, cameras, and nearly all technology” in retaliation after his colleagues in the small town voted 3-2 to end its contract with the surveillance company Flock Safety after months of debate, according to 404 Media. Residents were enraged after the town installed eight Flock license plate cameras with AI, which were damaged by vandals.

In Troy, New York, heated controversy over Flock cameras led the Republican mayor to declare a “state of emergency” to keep using the technology. The city council is now suing the mayor over her declaration as it considers putting legislative limits on the cameras. In Cleveland, Ohio, records unearthed by journalists this week show 160 immigration-related searches in Flock audit logs over a month-long period of the city’s Flock camera and surveillance drone network. The revelation comes months after city officials assured residents that protections were in place to prevent such searches and keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from exploiting the data for President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

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The push against Flock cameras, drones, and AI-powered surveillance in local communities comes in the wake of reported abuses by law enforcement, including the sharing of local surveillance data with the Trump administration to target immigrants for deportation.

In at least 16 recent cases, local police officers lost their jobs after accessing license plate reader data to stalk ex-partners or other romantic interests, according to the Institute for Justice. Internal investigations uncovered the abuse in only a few cases. Most of the cases came to light after victims reported the offending officers’ behavior to other police.

“A year ago, people really hadn’t heard of Flock,” said Patrick Conant, founder of the Asheville-based transparency group Sunshine Labs, in an interview. “But with increased media coverage, and rising concern about surveillance tech in general, a lot more people are all of sudden paying........

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