Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Jeff Merkley introduced a bill Friday to bar federal use of Flock Safety cameras and strip funding from states and cities that keep them.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., introduced legislation Friday dubbed the Ban Flock Act.
The bill would prohibit the federal government from using Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader cameras. It would also bar federal agencies from using or accessing data collected by automated license plate readers, known as ALPRs.
ALPRs are camera systems that scan and log vehicle license plates. The progressive trio wants that technology off federal property and out of federal hands.
The measure does not stop at Washington. It would cut off federal funding for state and local governments that use the technology and block federal grants from going to those agencies.
That funding cutoff is the real muscle. Local police and sheriffs who rely on Flock Safety gear would face a choice: drop the cameras or lose federal money.
The bill’s sponsors are a familiar progressive lineup. Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have campaigned together to boost left-wing candidates and causes.
Merkley joins them in putting the Ban Flock Act on the table as a direct strike at one company’s hardware and the agencies that buy it.
No bill number, formal findings, or sponsor quotes were laid out in the initial report. The core is plain: ban federal use of Flock Safety ALPRs, lock federal agencies out of the data, and yank grants from any state or local government still running the systems.
State and local governments would feel the squeeze first. The legislation treats use of the cameras as a disqualifier for federal support, not a local equipment decision.
That approach fits a broader pattern around Ocasio-Cortez, whose brand of politics has left even moderate Democrats wary in competitive races.
Sanders, the independent from Vermont, remains the movement’s senior partner. Together with Merkley, the three framed Flock Safety’s product as the named target of a federal prohibition and a funding wall.
The bill would reach every federal agency that might mount the cameras or tap the plate data. It would also reach every state or city shop that takes federal grant money while keeping the technology in the field.
Flock Safety is the company singled out in the short description of the Ban Flock Act. The reporting ties the ban and the funding cutoff to that firm’s automated license plate reader cameras and to ALPR data more broadly.
What the public package did not include is also telling. There were no sponsor floor speeches, no detailed enforcement timeline, and no published statutory text beyond the summary of the ban and the grant prohibition.
Ocasio-Cortez has stayed in the middle of progressive fights and public controversies, from campus politics to national stage clashes, including episodes that drew a direct rebuke from Trump.
Her record with donors and high-end spending has also drawn scrutiny in separate reporting on progressive members’ use of campaign cash at upscale restaurants, another window into the same political brand now attached to the Ban Flock Act.
Here the target is hardware used by governments. The method is a federal ban paired with a funding penalty for any state or local partner that refuses to drop the gear.
Friday’s introduction puts the choice in Congress. If the Ban Flock Act advanced, federal agencies would lose access to Flock Safety cameras and to ALPR data. States and cities that kept the systems would lose a path to federal grants.
That is a top-down rewrite of local equipment policy. Agencies that find plate readers useful would pay for that decision with federal dollars, or they would take the cameras down.
The same progressive network that turns campus events into ideological theater, including a Cornell town hall opened with a controversial anti-Israel chant, is now writing rules for police technology budgets.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez supply the national profile. Merkley supplies another Democratic Senate vote. The product is a bill that names Flock Safety, freezes federal use, and turns grant money into a compliance tool.
Taxpayers already fund both the cameras on the street and the grants in the pipeline. This bill would force those streams apart whenever Flock Safety hardware or ALPR data is in the mix.
Local control over basic policing tools should not hinge on progressive members’ distaste for a camera vendor, and federal grant money should not be the whip used to settle that fight.
