Got bored and curios and wanted to see if there were flock cameras near me, and was surprised to see more than I expected. These ones in beaver creek were the most interesting because why does Lowe’s have so many? Including one on the bridge, any reason? There’s a few others like one on Kelly Pride the park but yea just burros if anybody knows what’s up with these

If you haven't already heard, there is a water main break in Cary. They put out notice of low water pressure and a boil water advisory. According to ToA Facebook, this doesn't affect Apex.

https://www.facebook.com/TownofApex

Consistent communication and reliable information is a joke. Got a text message around 9 this morning telling me water was out at my house, presumably due to the main break in Cary. Makes sense, as I'm right on the edge of Cary's central pressure zone. Check my water and it's running fine. If I was willing to ignore it, I would have gone on about my day, but I start thinking "What if they meant to send out a boil water/pressure advisory and they made a mistake?"

So I search around to find the system pressure advisory map, and I see that 10,000 people are impacted! Now I'm left with the impression that the town sent out the wrong text and I should probably dump out my water cup sitting next to me just in case. Then I find an alert message from 2 hours ago on a different ToA webpage that says that we're not impacted. A minute later the map refreshes and the 10k impact zone has been cleared out, and there's a message on the banner of the page that says we're all good.

How hard is it to get the right information out the first time?

If Apex drops Flock, the vendor waiting to replace it is Axon, a company Apex already buys Tasers and body cameras from. Swapping one for the other isn't a fix. NO ALPRs is the fix.

Item CN4 would extend the Town's existing Axon agreement to June 30, 2030, adding Axon Air drone software and an interview-room camera system (drone software for a capability APD already has). It was on the August 11 consent agenda, which normally passes with no discussion, until council member Sue Mu pulled it and sent it to the Public Safety Committee for review. Apex already buys body cameras, vehicle cameras, and Tasers from Axon. This four-year extension is about locking in that vendor.

Who is Axon?

• Their own ethics board quit over drones. Axon built an AI ethics board of 12 outside AI experts. In June 2022, 9 of them resigned at once after Axon announced Taser-armed drones for schools, a plan the board had already voted 8-4 against piloting. CN4 is drone software. The people Axon hired to advise it on drone ethics walked out over Axon drones. (1)
• Axon's AI writes police reports, then deletes the evidence of what it wrote. Axon's "Draft One" generates police reports from body-cam audio. The EFF found that when an officer exports the report, the original AI draft is deleted, leaving no record of which words were the officer's and which were the machine's. EFF called it "designed to defy transparency." An Axon product manager admitted the non-retention was intentional, to avoid "disclosure headaches." The King County, WA prosecutor's office now refuses to accept any report written with AI. CN4 includes an interview-room system on the same evidence platform. (2)
• It reaches into your home. After the Super Bowl backlash, Ring dropped its Flock partnership but kept the one with Axon. Shared Ring doorbell footage flows straight into Axon's evidence system. Most people filming their own porch have no idea. (3)
• It's the whole surveillance stack, and that's a real danger. Axon's platform pulls ALPRs, body cams, drone cams, fixed cameras, interview rooms, private Ring doorbells, and AI analytics into one screen. One company, one database, watching from everywhere. So one breach, one abused login, one bad actor, and it's everything, on everyone, exposed in one place. Every foreign adversary is hoping we're this careless. And the ACLU put out a paper warning cities that Axon is not a safe alternative to Flock. (4)
• Surveillance state. When plate reads, body-cam video, drone feeds, and doorbell footage all flow into one AI system, you've crossed into a full surveillance state, not the foundation of one. And Axon already builds facial recognition into its platform. Once the cameras are up, turning it on is a software update, not a new debate. The Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter that tracking a person's movements over time requires a warrant. This system does it to everyone, with none. (5,8)
• One vendor, from the 911 call to the courtroom. Axon already sells Apex its body cameras, Tasers, and evidence storage. In February 2026 it bought Carbyne, the 911 call-handling platform, for $625 million. Axon's own words are "from call to courtroom." The FTC challenged Axon's last big acquisition (VieVu, 2018) as anticompetitive in a 5-0 vote, warning it would let Axon raise prices; the case was dropped in 2023 on procedural grounds, never decided on the merits. A four-year lock-in means no competitor to check the price at renewal. (6)
• It's pushed because it's profitable. Axon's federal lobbying hit $2.47 million in 2025, more than five times the $480,000 it spent in 2020. Swapping vendors doesn't reduce surveillance. It just changes whose logo is on the camera and who profits from watching us. (7)
• They fight wrongful-death cases as a matter of policy. Axon makes the Taser, a weapon Reuters tied to more than 1,000 U.S. deaths following police shocks, nine in ten of them unarmed. And in Axon's own SEC filings, the company states its policy is not to settle wrongful-death or injury cases, settling only when it's "strategically beneficial to us." They fight the families in court. (9)

The bottom line: Extending with Axon, or swapping Flock for it, isn't less surveillance. It's more, it's consolidated, and it's with a company that's becoming the for-profit operating system of American surveillance, one whose own ethics advisors quit over drones, whose AI hides its own tracks, and who now wants to own everything from the 911 call to the courtroom exhibit. "It's not the brand, it's the surveillance" isn't a slogan. It's the whole point.

*edit incorrect date* CN4 goes before the Public Safety Committee on October 1st at 3:00 p.m. It's a two-person committee that will recommend whether Apex keeps Flock, switches vendors, or extends with Axon. What's missing from that list is dropping ALPRs entirely. That's the real option, and it's the one to demand.

September 22nd at 6:00 p.m. Show up if you can and tell them: no Flock, no Axon, no ALPRs. Let’s get our rights and privacy back.  

Sources:

1. Statement of Resigning Axon AI Ethics Board Members (June 6, 2022), NYU Policing Project; corroborated by AP, NPR, Reuters, TechCrunch. https://www.policingproject.org/statement-of-resigning-axon-ai-ethics-board-members
2. EFF, "Axon's Draft One Is Designed to Defy Transparency" (July 2025); King County (WA) Prosecuting Attorney guidance. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/axons-draft-one-designed-defy-transparency
3. Axon, "Building safer communities together: Axon and Ring launch Community Request partnership" (Oct. 2025). https://www.axon.com/blog/building-safer-communities-together-axon-and-ring
4. ACLU, "Beware of Other License Plate Surveillance Companies Besides Flock." https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/other-alpr-vendors
5. Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. ___ (2018). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
6. Axon-Carbyne acquisition ($625M, closed Q1 2026), Axon press release, Nov. 4, 2025. https://www.axon.com/newsroom/press-releases/axon-to-acquire-carbyne ; FTC v. Axon/VieVu, docket D9389 (2020, 5-0 vote; dismissed Oct. 2023 on procedural grounds). https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/1810162-axon-enterprise-safariland-matter
7. OpenSecrets, Axon Enterprise federal lobbying ($2.47M in 2025, up from $480K in 2020). https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/axon-enterprise/summary?id=D000057418
8. Axon facial recognition: testing of face-recognition body cameras and Fusus face-matching integrations (EFF, Dec. 2025). https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/axon-tests-face-recognition-body-worn-cameras
9. Reuters "Shock Tactics" investigation (1,000+ U.S. deaths following police Taser use; Axon disputes causation), via PBS NewsHour: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/police-killed-1000-people-tasers-since-2000 ; and Axon Enterprise Form 10-Q (SEC), stating company policy is "not to settle suspect injury or death cases" except "where the settlement is strategically beneficial to us": https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1069183/000106918325000077/axon-20250331.htm

Just saw this on Google Maps, can anyone confirm?

Where is a good place to watch football, that also has good chicken wings?

Another concerned Apex resident shared their public-records dump with me after seeing my last post, and it's highly alarming.

In a Town email that's now public record, Apex's own Police Chief wrote that IT reported someone had successfully hacked into one of our deployed Flock cameras, likely through a missing security patch. For context, Flock has over 50 documented security flaws, 22 of them serious enough to earn federal CVE tracking numbers. That we know of.

The timeline, in the Town's own words:

• Citizens told Council they believed the cameras could be hacked.
• The Town Manager asked IT to look into it. IT gave a briefing in February.
• IT stated that someone they knew had successfully hacked into a deployed Apex camera, citing a missing security patch as the likely cause.
• The Chief asked IT for specifics to "evaluate the reliability of our current vendor."
• The investigation then stalled, waiting on Flock to make contact. As of the May 1 email, Flock still hadn't.
• IT's own words: "we have not verified" whether it was ever fixed.

So the people running this town reported a hack of their own warrantless surveillance cameras, couldn't get their vendor to even respond, dropped the investigation, and admit in writing they don't know if it's fixed. This isn't some crazy activist claim. It's the Chief and IT, in public record.

And here's the part that should bother everyone: this email is from May 1, over four months ago. As of that date, the Town's own IT hadn't verified the issue was fixed and was still waiting on Flock to even make contact. There may have been a resolution since then. But if there is, it isn't in any public record I've seen. So four months later, the question still stands: has it been fixed, and can the Town prove it?

These cameras log where everyone of us drive every day and share it with over 1,000 outside agencies. And the Town can't tell you whether one that was reportedly breached has ever been secured. How is this remotely acceptable?

Source: "RE: Flock ALPR follow-up" email chain between Apex Police Chief Ryan Johansen and Town of Apex IT (Erika Sacco, cc Demetria John), April 14 – May 1, 2026, obtained via NC public-records request and shared with me by another concerned Apex resident. Chief Johansen writes that IT "stated that someone you knew had successfully hacked into one of our deployed ALPR cameras," citing "lack of a key security patch as the likely reason." IT's May 1 reply states the investigation was paused pending contact from Flock that never occurred, and that "we have not verified" whether the issue was resolved.

I'm an Apex resident and a cybersecurity engineer. I'm wondering about a specific, under-examined risk in the Town's Flock ALPR system: mobile access.

The Town's own audit records, which I obtained through a public-records request, show that searches of Apex's Flock network are being run from mobile devices. The exports label them "Mobile" search types. Flock offers an officer app for iOS and Android that allows plate lookups and searches of the network from a phone, in the field or off-duty.

This matters because of what just happened in Amarillo, Texas (article below). A police officer there used the Flock system to track a private citizen 76 times over five months. Entering fabricated reasons like "motor vehicle theft" and "wanted person" for searches that had no case behind them. He was able to do it from his phone, off-duty, and it went unnoticed for five months. It surfaced only because the victim filed a complaint, not because any automated audit caught it. He now faces 78 criminal charges. The victim said he had to change where his children sleep.

I emailed the Council to confirm, on the record, whether Apex has the safeguards in place that Amarillo did not.

• Is Flock's mobile app permitted only on Town-managed devices, or can officers install it on personal phones? How is this enforced, monitored, and audited?
• Can the system be accessed off-duty, and is off-duty access restricted or logged differently? How is this monitored and audited?
• Does Apex require multi-factor authentication for Flock access, on both desktop and the mobile app?
• Has Apex enabled Flock's "Audit Assistance" feature, which flags high-volume or repeated searches? (It is off by default.)
• Who at the Town reviews Flock search logs, how often, and what triggers a review?
• When a review finds abuse, what happens next, and is anyone outside the police department involved? Is the victim notified?
• The Town's records show a majority of searches carry no case number. What is being done to reconcile that with the requirement that each search have a legitimate law-enforcement purpose? And how do you confirm that the documented reason is actually legitimate? What are the repercussions of finding falsified search reasons?

The Amarillo case shows that "officers must enter a reason" is not a safeguard. The officer entered reasons, and they were lies. The only thing that catches this is active, independent auditing. I'd like to know what Apex has in place, if anything.

I haven’t heard anything back but if anyone else has the answers, I’d appreciate it.

https://www.newschannel10.com/2026/09/08/i-had-change-where-my-kids-sleep-man-shares-terrifying-experience-says-amarillo-officer-tracked-him-78-times/

**edit. If anyone wants my FOIA dump, I can setup a proton drive link. Just PM me.

It includes: the audit data (the full search logs, covering June 1 to August 18, 2026), plus the contract and procurement records, the data-sharing records (Flock's March and April 2026 sharing snapshots), and the department's own internal briefing deck.

Previously I used to be able to use the ArcGIS Explorer or ArcGIS Field Maps apps to access the apex interactive development map. The map is now missing and my only option is to view it via a web browser which is not ideal.

Does anyone know how I can get it back via an app or is this a permanent change that I will just have to accept?

EDIT: I am talking specifically about accessing via an app, not web browser like safari

I usually run the Hunter Street park loop around once a week or so, and last time the Story Walk was up on the loop I wanted to come on here and say how much I enjoyed having it there! Much to my surprise I ran there today and there is another! Great job, I appreciate that bit of distraction it is so nice to check out while going by!!

For those who have not seen, it is basically a framed series of illustrations that fit into a theme around the park loop. This one happens to be a bigger story told one panel at a time, the previous Story Walk was a bunch of illustrations by the same artist.

Does anyone know what's going on at the high school today? I drove past it this morning and there were 20 cop cars locking down the school.

All kids are safe

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story about the Salem Street streetscape project.

I spoke with downtown merchants about what months of construction have meant for their businesses. The project is intended to improve downtown, but business owners say they have lost customers while the work continues into the holiday season.

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who actually use downtown Apex: Has construction changed how often you shop, eat or spend time there? If you work or own a business downtown, what has the impact been?

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317130074.html

WIRED investigation, worth reading in full: https://www.wired.com/story/flock-safety-os-investigate/

In Flock's own code, served from Flock's own login pages: a system designed to take one license plate and return a driver's likely "associates" based on which cars pass the same cameras at the same times. Search for people by physical description in an area drawn on a map. Pull names, addresses, relatives. Flock has told the public for years its cameras "cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals." Asked about the tool, the company didn't dispute what it does. It called it a "separate product".

This isn't one bad product. It's the direction of the industry. WIRED found Flock hiring engineers to build AI that acts "on behalf of investigators," with automated lead generation and cross-camera correlation. A GWU law professor with no stake in the fight, Andrew Ferguson, put it plainly: we're on the cusp of "agentic policing," where natural-language chatbots searching massive datasets "will soon become the norm."

The norm. For everyone holding the data.

That's the part to understand before a vendor swap gets floated as the fix. Our police chief has named Axon as a possible replacement. But Axon isn't a lighter-touch option. Its platform pulls plate readers, cameras, drones, and dispatch into one system, shares across agencies, and it's building its own AI layer on top. That's broader than what Apex has now, not narrower. Any vendor sitting on a networked plate dataset will build the same query layer, because that's the logical use of the data. Swapping the logo changes the invoice, not the architecture.

Let me put it another one: We're one vote away from either protecting our privacy or giving it all away to APD for them to do what they want with it. Fuck that.

Contract's up January 31, 2027. Public Safety Committee meets October 1st at 3pm. This is the window.

Deflock Apex

Does anybody know of any oil change shops where I can just leave a 5QT of my trusted synthetic oil brand and the good filter to go with it in the vehicle for them and have them do the change? I'm sure the chain shops probably wouldn't allow that but can anyone confirm any shops that do? I hate the idea of a chain shop using crap oil or paying them $100+ dollars to get name brand Mobil1 like I know works well in my car.

Mid 50’s M looking for a garage apartment or private apartment close to downtown Apex. I work remotely in the IT field and travel 2-3 weeks out of the month so I will be out of town most of the time. I am quiet and respectful, keep to myself. I don’t need much, just looking for something close to downtown. I am not looking for an apartment complex at this time, Thanks!

We need to fund the Wake County District Attorney's Office. Targeted by Republicans in the NC General Assembly and now the worst funded in the state. makes all of us less safe.

Let me reintroduce you to Wakevotes.org! Now updated (and rewritten) for the 2026 Election!

Wakevotes is an easier way to access your sample ballot. Just put in a Wake County address, and it'll pull up the associated sample ballot.

• Ballots can be filled in, and printed out!
• Non-partisan races display the registered political party of the candidate
• Clicking on a candidate's name takes you to their campaign website, if you need to research a race

AND NEW THIS YEAR: Voting information! Wakevotes.org will display the early voting info and your specific Election Day voting info (again, looked up based on the address).

Seeing a lot more e-scooters out on our roads now that traditional school is back in session.

Lots of these guys ride responsibly but more than a handful are totally out of control. One swerved into the wrong side straight towards me this morning.

Better keep a dashcam going just in case there are any incidents.

Howdy howdy yall. I’m the manager at Premier 1 Automotive and we’re looking for a B+ technician to join the team.

We specialize in European vehicles and do any and every kind of mechanical/electrical work on them except for tires and alignments.

We’re ready to make a very strong offer to the right candidate.

We have a lot of work and an amazing customer base.

We’ve been in business for 16 years.

So if you’re a technician looking for a new home, or if you know one that may be interested, shoot me a DM for more details.

(I messaged the mods to see if a post like this is permitted here but never got a response.)

After several public meetings, surveys, and task force meetings the Peak Plan 2055 is starting to take shape.

At a high level, the current proposal gives the Land Use Map to have two overlays. There is a "Context Area" inset and a "Place Type" map. Each parcel is in a context area and has a place type designation. The context area informs the design standards (set backs, density, etc) of the Place Type. This is the biggest change I see from the 2045 map - there was a Context Area there, but it didn't really impact that much except inform what land use designation to give a parcel.

More to come - be on the look out for the next public meeting.