Wichita Is Watching
Mapping the Flock Network
Meeting with Council Member
I have a meeting scheduled with District 5 Council Member J.V. Johnston on Monday, March 23, 2026. I don’t know his current opinion on Flock cameras, and I only have 30 minutes with him, but I will present my findings and try to persuade him that they are a net negative for the city of Wichita. He is a fellow parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena and attended the same grade school and high school as my Dad, so we at least have some common ground. I will bring my HiDock Voice Recorder and, if he agrees, record the meeting. Following the meeting, I will post a full, raw, unedited transcript, AI summary, and my own thoughts right here on Kansas Watch.
Assistance from Friend
My friend who inspired all of this has agreed to submit a KORA request with the city of Goddard. They don’t have an automated portal like Wichita, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad. He is going to request everything via email so there’s a paper trail and share it with me so I can publish it here on Kansas Watch. He says there are an astonishing number of cameras deployed there and is going to document the precise location of each.
He drove around Wichita today geo-tagging precise locations on Google Maps and has shared that data with me. As soon as I’m finished with this post, I plan to begin exporting the data from Google Earth, converting it to a usable format (GeoJSON, CSV, and/or KML), then importing it into OpenStreetMap. Google was the quickest and easiest way for him to tag locations for me, but I’m reluctant to share the URL publicly here since it includes his private information. Let me just say he is doing the Lord’s work, and this is what he accomplished in just a single day.
He works for himself and drives all over town as part of his job, so he will continue marking locations as he comes across them.
He also shared a number of photos and helpful tips for identifying cameras. This is what a standalone camera looks like.
They try to “conceal” them if they can though. The image below is of an electric pole at Central and Hillside. As you can see, it blends in well with the surroundings.
And here’s one on the back side of a stoplight pole just south of Kellogg.
He said either the City of Wichita or KDOT has a massive amount of cameras along Kellogg and 235 that are not Flock cameras. This is a separate issue not related to Flock, but it’s one to be aware of when spotting cameras. When I asked how to differentiate between “government” and Flock cameras, he said the government ones look similar to surveillance cameras you would see at retail stores – half-dome, glass, wired, and without solar panels. The oval-shaped Flock cameras are distinct in that they’re attached to solar panels. He said the city of Wichita is doing a much “better” job mounting new cameras to the back of existing stoplight poles rather than doing standalone installations; Goddard’s are almost exclusively standalone installations.
Below is another Flock device to be aware of. These are listening devices designed to pick up gunshots, but there have been reports they can pick up nearby conversations as well.
Towne East is completely surrounded. You cannot get anywhere even remotely close in a vehicle without your tag being captured. There is even a pole near an abandoned restaurant (BD’s Mongolian Grill) on the corner because the parking lot connects to the mall. It’s possible many, if not most (or all), of these are “paid for” by Simon, but it’s worth being aware of nevertheless.
He did a lot of work today but obviously did not cover the entire city. One trend he said that was immediately evident, however, is that there are a disproportionately greater number of cameras out East than there are out West. That said, following my Flock 101 training session today, I immediately noticed one this evening by the Dairy Queen on north Maize Road right as you cross over into the city of Maize. He said Flock aggressively targets smaller towns and municipalities – probably because they have fewer law enforcement resources.
It wasn’t all bad news though. It appears someone in Goddard Parkview decided to take matters into their own hands! (NOTE: I originally misidentified the damaged camera as being in Goddard. The camera is actually located in the Parkview neighborhood in east Wichita. This is a town-home community a block east of 13th and Oliver, and WPD paid for three flock devices on a single street due to the high incidence of crime.)
Nerd Stuff
Given my background in data engineering, SQL, database administration, Python, reporting, and visualizations, I am going to spin up a private PostgreSQL instance with PostGIS for storing geospatial data and use GeoPandas, Folium, Matplotlib/Seaborn, and Plotly for visualizations. The database will be kept entirely internal (zero attack surface), but I will export static GeoJSON and/or CSV files to GitHub on a scheduled basis in case anyone else wants to play with the data.
Closing Notes
I have started an X account: https://x.com/kansaswatch, so please follow us there if you’re on the platform. Someone commented on Reddit that her son is doing similar work to oppose Flock in Haysville. I hope he’ll agree to share information and possibly write for Kansas Watch as well. If you or anyone you know would like to assist either here in Wichita or anywhere else in the state of Kansas, please feel free to reach out. I’d be more than happy to feature “guest contributors.”