Our testimony: Remove Flock cameras from Ohio
Blog | August 10, 2026
Jaime Miracle, Deputy Director
Columbus City Council – Flock Camera Audit Hearing
August 10, 2026
Council Member Remy and members of Columbus City Council, my name is Jaime Miracle and I am the deputy director for Abortion Forward, formerly Pro-Choice Ohio. I’m here this evening to talk to you all about the dangers of Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers (ALPRs) for reproductive healthcare privacy, and to urge council to end all contracts with Flock safety and take down all Flock cameras.
In 2022, the Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court removed nationwide protections for abortion rights by overturning the Roe v. Wade decision. In the days and weeks after the Dobbs decision, Ohio abortion clinics had to turn away patients because Ohio’s six-week ban was in place. During those 82 days, Columbus City Council stood up for its residents and pledged a million dollars to help cover the costs of travel and other supports patients needed to travel to other states to get the abortion care they needed. At the same time, this council recognized that it needed to put safety and access to essential abortion care ahead of potential surveillance and criminal prosecution of patients and providers by passing a resolution “To de-prioritize the enforcement of laws that criminalize access to safe reproductive healthcare procedures and services.”
This resolution stated that “the City of Columbus honors the rights of pregnant people to bodily autonomy and control over their private medical decisions” and resolved that “It is the policy of the City … that city funds will not be used to do any of the following … provide information to any other governmental body or agency about any abortion, miscarriage, or other reproductive healthcare act” and also that city funds would not be used to “conduct surveillance or collect information related to an individual or an organization for the purpose of determining whether an abortion has occurred.”1
Similarly, City Attorney Zach Klein signed onto a “Joint Statement from Elected Prosecutors” in June 2022 which stated, in part, “Enforcing abortion bans runs counter to the obligations and interests we are sworn to uphold. It will erode trust in the legal system, hinder our ability to hold perpetrators accountable, take resources away from enforcement of serious crime, and inevitably lead to the retraumatization and criminalization of victims of sexual violence…”2
The contract with Flock and the use of ALPRs violate the spirit and the letter of these commitments city leaders made to individuals seeking abortion care in our city. At the end of my testimony are three maps (Attachments A-C) that all show there is at least one ALPR camera within one mile of the three facilities providing abortion services in the City of Columbus. All are along possible major routes someone would travel to get to the facility.
In 2025, 20.9% of abortions in Ohio were with out of state residents with 5,243 individuals traveling from their home state to Ohio to receive the essential abortion care they needed and deserved. Because Ohio voters overwhelmingly passed the Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment in 2023, we have become haven for people who live in states where abortion is illegal or severely restricted.
Since the Dobbs decision overturned federal protections for abortion access, thirteen states3 have fully outlawed abortion, and an additional six states4 have severely restricted abortion access with a 6 or 12-week abortion ban in place. This includes our neighboring states of Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, all of which have total abortion bans.
According to Pregnancy Justice’s 2025 report, Pregnancy as a Crime5, in the two years following the Dobbs decision, prosecutors across the country initiated at least 412 cases charging individuals with crimes related to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. The largest numbers of cases were filed in Alabama (192), Oklahoma (112), and South Carolina (62). Ohio had seven cases filed. More than three-quarters of the defendants were low-income individuals, 68% were white, and 15% were black. Nine of these cases included allegations pertaining to abortion, such as possession of abortion medication or attempts to obtain an abortion, showing that even when abortion is not the actual charge in a case, the pregnant person’s contemplation of abortion can be weaponized against them.
According to the Flock Transparency Portal, CPD shared data with two of the three states with the largest number of prosecutor-initiated cases filed against pregnant individuals (Alabama and South Carolina), and ten states where abortion is illegal or severely restricted (AL, GA, IA, IN, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN, and TX).6 Between 2023 and 2026, five of the top ten most active agencies searching Columbus’ data were from agencies located in states banning or severely restricting abortion (Houston, TX; Dallas TX; Louisville, KY; Palm Beach, FL; Hillsborough Co.; FL). In fact, Houston and Dallas were the top two agencies who searched Ohio data.7
The use of these cameras to track down potential patients is not a hypothetical. It has already happened. In 2025, an investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) found that a deputy in Johnson County, Texas used Flock’s nationwide camera network to investigate an individual who had been reported by her partner for possibly taking medications to induce an abortion.8 Both Flock and the Johnson County Sheriff’s office claimed it was about a missing person, but the deputy doing the search listed the search reason not as a “missing person” but as “had an abortion, search for female” and used the case number associated with a case listed as “death investigation” of a “non-viable fetus”. The searches covered more than 83,000 cameras across multiple states, including Illinois and Washington state where restrictions are in place that should have blocked this kind of surveillance using their data. Cameras in Columbus were included in that search, directly violating the city’s prohibition on using city resources to search for people who have had abortions. A screenshot of that search is included as Attachment D.9
Throughout the reporting on this case, Flock and law enforcement continued to lie about the reason for the search, even when reporting on official records obtained by EFF clearly show the reason for the investigation was not a missing person, but an investigation of a reported abortion. At the same time that Flock was claiming the story exposing the true nature of the search was a lie, they announced a series of new features supposedly designed to prevent future abuses. If Flock is claiming that nothing was wrong, why does it need to “prevent future abuses”? Even more concerning is the fact that these new features don’t actually “prevent future abuses.” The change was to turn the reason for the search field into a drop-down menu instead of a free text block that was filled in by the person performing the search. Next time someone in Texas wants to use our cameras to enforce their bounty hunter abortion ban, they will just use another search reason and again have access to the data for whatever purposes they want.
Just this week, it was reported that two police officers used Reynoldsburg’s Flock cameras to stalk individuals not associated with any investigation. One was stalking an ex-partner they had been accused of abusing. Their search reason was the code for “errand” – “23”.10 Limiting the search reasons does not stop abuse of the system. It just makes it harder to tell when someone is misusing it.
This is why regulations are not the answer. The only solution is to end the contract and remove the cameras. Flock has shown that it is not interested in protecting individual privacy. They are interested in making sure that as many people can have access to their data as possible.
Columbus City Council took the lead in 2022 and was one of the first localities to pass funding and legislation to protect abortion access. Today I’m here again asking you to continue to lead on this topic. Ensure that people coming to our city to get the abortion care they need are protected from vindictive and intrusive investigation and prosecution by their home state. The only way to make that happen is to end the contract with Flock Safety and remove the cameras.
Attachment A: Map showing Flock cameras located near Aria at Just Center (red star)
Source: maps.deflock.org
Attachment B: Map showing Flock cameras located near Planned Parenthood Greater Ohio East Healthcare Center (red star)
Source: maps.deflock.org
Attachment C: Map showing Flock cameras located near Your Choice (red star)
Source: maps.deflock.org
Attachment D: Screenshot of search of Columbus cameras by Johnson County, TX deputy looking for an individual with the search reason “had abortion, search for female” on September 5, 2025.
Source: https://cpdflockaudit.net/search/8f5b2c84-9b4a-471f-9c2e-5976684972f3
