From Maryville to National Headlines
From Maryville, Tennessee, to newsrooms across America. On October 12, 2026, InvestigateTV published a national investigation into how Flock Safety license plate cameras were bought and installed, in some communities before elected officials ever voted. The report opens in Maryville. It has since been published on 75 news websites in 33 states.
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InvestigateTV’s National Investigation
Video: “Records show how police departments purchased Flock cameras without votes,” published on YouTube by Atlanta News First, a Gray Media station. Also on InvestigateTV and YouTube.
Flock cameras went up without some city councils’ approval. We found out why.
By Emily Featherston and Brendan Keefe. Video by Brendan Keefe and Owen Hornstein.
Gray Media’s national investigative team examined how Flock Safety license plate reader cameras were bought and installed in communities across the country, in some cases before elected officials voted on them. Maryville is the report’s opening case, drawing on public records a Maryville resident obtained from the city.
The report also covers Knox County, where sheriff’s office purchases were made in $24,990 batches just under a $25,000 review threshold before the county declared its contract invalid, along with Dallas’s sole-source contract and dozens of near-identical Flock sole-source letters.
The Maryville Findings
- The Maryville Police Department uses 16 Flock license plate reader cameras.
- The police chief told a council work session the department began using Flock in 2020. The report says records show the council did not vote on it until July 2024, when the city needed a state right-of-way permit.
- Through a public records request, the city produced three license plates on its suppression list, set never to expire, with no names attached. According to the report, the resident was told there is no written policy and that one person decides which plates are added.
Maryville Police Department. The chief said the plates were added to stop repeated false hotlist alerts caused by misread plate characters, not to give any vehicle special treatment.
Flock Safety. Flock described Maryville’s entries as “suppressed hits,” separate from its Safe List feature, which it says was removed from its law enforcement product. Flock also said each agency is responsible for its own procurement and approval rules.
City of Maryville. Mayor Andy White said the council is gathering information from residents and the chief.
Check the Record
Each Maryville point in the report can be checked against primary records already published on this site.
| What the report says | Primary record |
|---|---|
| Maryville has 16 Flock license plate reader cameras. | Maryville Police Department camera deployment report (PDF) Maryville’s Flock transparency portal |
| Police used Flock before the council voted, and the council did not vote until July 2024, when the city needed a state right-of-way permit. | City Council Resolution 2024-14, July 2, 2024 (PDF) TDOT right-of-way application, signed May 31, 2024 (PDF) Authorization of Agent naming Flock Safety, May 24, 2024 (PDF) |
| The city produced three plates on its suppression list, set never to expire, with no names attached, and said no written policy governs the list. | Maryville’s Flock Whitelist and Ghost Vehicles |
| Searches reach Maryville’s cameras from agencies across the country, as far away as California. | Who Is Searching Blount County? (July 2026 Flock network audits) |
75 News Websites in 33 States
Gray Media stations republished the full report on their own websites, including WVLT in Knoxville, WSMV in Nashville, and Action News 5 in Memphis. With the original on InvestigateTV, that is 75 news websites. Stations are grouped below by home state.
Station websites by state 74 sites · 33 states
Additional station video pages 5 pages
Station social media posts 4 posts
States reflect each station’s home market. Some stations also serve neighboring states; those are not counted separately.
Independent Follow-Up Drawing on the Report
Regional rewrites 2 articles
Both sites are operated by Hambry, LLC and restate the InvestigateTV reporting under staff bylines.
East Tennessee Reporting
Public Meetings and Original Recordings
Primary material from public meetings, kept separate from news coverage.
How This Archive Is Kept
Counts: 75 news websites is the original report on InvestigateTV plus 74 station websites that published it, each counted once. The 5 video pages are on station sites not included in that count. The 33 states are the home states of those 74 stations.
Sources: Compiled from publicly available pages. Titles and dates are given as published. News sites can move, edit, or remove stories after publication. New coverage is added as it appears.
Video: The video player loads from YouTube only after a visitor presses play. No YouTube or Google content loads with this page before then.
Originally compiled October 13, 2026. Last updated October 14, 2026.
This page documents where news reports about Flock Safety cameras in Maryville and Blount County were published, and links the primary records behind the Maryville findings. It counts places of publication, not separate investigations, and it does not establish that any story aired on broadcast television. It publishes the official responses included in the coverage and does not allege wrongdoing by any agency or official. Where the records do not establish a fact, this page says so.