Site index · 20 pages

Everything on this site.

Every page, grouped, with a line on what is in it. Nothing here is hidden behind a menu. If you are a reporter on deadline, start with the press kit. If you are an Apex resident with three minutes, start with Speak to Council.

Resident, short on time
Speak to Council
Tuesday, October 13. Three minutes. We will draft it for you.
Reporter on deadline
Press Kit
Facts, quotes, charts and documents. Free to republish.
Newest
The court ruling
A warrantless Flock search just cost a federal prosecution.
Start hereIf you only read three things

These are the live decisions. The committee returns December 3 and the contract ends January 31.

Speak to CouncilTake action/speak
The next regular Council meeting with a guaranteed right to speak is Tuesday, October 13. Three minutes, no expertise needed, and this page will draft your comment for you.
A Flock search just cost a federal prosecutionNew/fourth-amendment
October 1, 2026: a federal judge threw out every piece of evidence in a drug case because a deputy ran a plate through Flock without a warrant. The holding, the quotes, and the honest limits.
About That 60%New/sixty-percent
The Chief told the committee vehicle thefts are down 60% since the cameras arrived. We checked it against the FBI’s own agency files. The decline is real; the attribution is not.
The evidenceWhat the records actually show

Everything here comes from public records, most of it obtained from other towns because Apex has never released its own search log.

What the Audit Log Reveals/audit.html
At least 4,506 Apex PD searches in twelve months, reaching up to 100,075 cameras, every one recovered from another department’s public records.
The Research Is In. ALPR Doesn’t Work./alpr-evidence
Peer-reviewed studies find no significant crime reduction from plate readers. The evidence on effectiveness, displacement and privacy, cited and sourced.
Request the Flock RecordsTake action/records-request
Generate your own North Carolina public records request for the Town and the Police Department. Free, about two minutes, and the template is yours to reuse.
Apex Police Want Credit. They Haven’t Shown Their Work.Archive/june-9-analysis
A line-by-line reading of APD’s June 9, 2026 presentation to Council, and what it leaves out.
They Had to Open the Third FloorArchive/council-2026-08-11
August 11, 2026: the chamber overflowed, eight residents spoke against surveillance technology and one spoke in favour, and Council pulled the Axon amendment off the consent agenda.
Apex got safe before the camerasArchive/crime-vs-cameras
One chart. The index crime rate fell about 40% while the town nearly doubled in size, hitting its lowest recorded levels before any camera was in service.
The systemWhat was bought, and where the data goes

A plate read does not stop at the camera. This is the hardware, the software, the vendors and the onward flow.

The Cameras in Apex/cameras
What the contract actually bought: 5 Falcon and 5 Falcon Flex readers, FlockOS and Advanced Search, plus the search filters Apex operators really used.
Where Your Plate Actually Goes/alpr-industry
Vendor clouds, commercial aggregators and identity brokers, and the buyers who could not obtain the data directly. Also what the courts have said, in both directions.
Settings Are Not Safeguards/flock-updates
Flock announced shorter retention and new audit tools in August 2026. Every change is a setting the company or a chief can reverse, and none of them reached Apex.
The Town Never Checked/camera-security
Apex Police asked IT which camera was hacked. IT replied that the investigation was parked and nothing had been verified. The record, and the vendor’s security history.
Who Apex Is Actually Buying From/axon
Apex is being asked to extend its Axon contract to 2030 for drone software and interview room systems. Who Axon is, and what happened to its AI ethics board.
A Police Drone Program, on the Consent Agenda/cn4-drones
Item CN4 added drone software and an interview room camera system to the Axon contract and ran it to June 2030, in a single motion with no discussion.
Beyond ApexThe same fight everywhere else

Apex is not an outlier, and the state has already moved further than the town has.

Who has already said noNew/who-said-no
Seventeen North Carolina governments have ended a plate reader contract, declined one, paused a program or regulated it. Exactly one has banned the technology. Asheville voted out 11 Flock cameras and kept 162 Axon ones, and Pittsboro was offered the middle ground and voted it down.
North Carolina Already Decided/nc
Section 43.26 of the 2026 budget made the statewide highway plate reader program permanent, opened it to every agency, and authorised cameras across 78% of state roads. Includes a model ordinance.
Nobody Wants These/polling
Polling, peer-reviewed research and department reversals. 58.3% opposed in a Republican-leaning Tennessee county. 63% opposed in Arizona.
OVERWATCH/overwatch
A parody surveillance dashboard that aims the same plate tracking Apex runs on residents back at the officials who approved it. All detection data is fabricated, and that is the point.
PracticalThings you can actually do
Protect Your Privacy from Data BrokersTake action/privacy
A practical, source-backed guide to pulling your name, address, phone and family off people-search sites. What works, what it costs, and what it cannot touch.
Press Kit/press
Key facts, a timeline, a quote bank, story angles nobody has covered, charts free to republish and every source document. No embargo, no conditions.

Where the decision stands

The Public Safety Committee took up the camera program on October 1, 2026 and recommended nothing. It returns December 3. The Flock contract ends January 31, 2027 with no automatic renewal. Four regular Council meetings fall before December 3, and they are the only places a resident has a guaranteed right to speak. The full timeline →

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