The teenager who filled Troy's council chambers

A group that formed on Instagram in June brought dozens of residents to the Aug. 31 city council meeting. They didn't get the vote they wanted. All six council members backed new rules of some kind, and the mayor sent staff to study them. Only one questioned the contract itself.

James Christiani wanted a vote.

For two months, the founder of No Flock In Troy had been working the city council one member at a time — a sit-down with Mayor Ethan Baker, a long phone call with Council Member Theresa Brooks, texts and emails with the rest. His ask was specific: put the city's contract with Flock Safety on the agenda, and vote to end it early.

It never made the agenda. So on the night of Aug. 31, he brought people instead.

Mayor Baker called the meeting to order at 7:32 p.m. Council worked through board appointments, a firefighters' incentive plan, a library redesign, a bid waiver for shade structures at Jeanne M. Stine Community Park, and the consent agenda. Public comment for items not on the agenda opened just after 8:30 p.m. Christiani was called to the microphone a little after 8:40.

Christiani is 17.

An Instagram post in June

Christiani says he first learned about automated license plate readers from an Instagram post warning that the cameras were appearing in cities across the country. He read up through the ACLU, decided nobody else in Troy was going to take it on, and started No Flock In Troy in June.

Recruitment happened almost entirely through the same app. People found the account and messaged him asking how to help. A few came from friends at school and from a city council campaign he worked on last year. He estimates the average member is 22 to 24 years old, with the oldest around 50 — which makes him, by a wide margin, the youngest person in the room he organized.

He told council he had “50 some odd people” there. He told this reporter the number was 65.

The group can be reached at @noflockintroy on Instagram.

What they brought

Ten Troy residents spoke about the cameras during the main public comment period, nine of them recorded in the minutes as opposed. They did not repeat each other — unusual for a run of that length. Two more residents spoke against the cameras later in the night, after council had already responded.

Before any of them, David Kniffen raised Flock during the earlier comment period for items on the agenda. He said he shares the concerns about privacy, overreach and mass tracking, but took a different line from the rest: the city already bought the cameras, the infrastructure is live, and taxpayers should demand real value and a standard applied universally. Kniffen ran for the 56th District state House seat as a Republican in 2024 and lost to Rep. Sharon MacDonell.

Daryl Graham argued that networked cameras create surveillance that would traditionally require a warrant, and offered an alternative: unnetworked cameras, local storage, accessible in person. Benjamin Nickerson said an officer could be looking at his data right now and he wouldn't know until someone knocked on his door.

Ethan Waters — whose first name drew a laugh from the mayor — walked through the case of Christopher Goodson, a Haines City, Florida officer who searched his estranged wife's plate in the Flock database 717 times over roughly two years. Waters noted that Troy requires quarterly audits of Flock searches, then pointed out that in the Goodson case the quarterly audit didn't catch him. He confessed. Waters also said he had run his own family's plate through haveibeenflocked.com, a site that aggregates audit logs obtained through public records requests, and found a relative's plate had been searched by an officer in Fort Wayne, Indiana, logged only as “suspicious vehicle” — on a car he said hadn't left Michigan in years.

Justine Galbraith brought the example that lands hardest locally. Ferndale's Flock contract barred federal agencies from its data, and an independent audit found more than 8,000 federal searches anyway. Ferndale canceled. Dayton, Ohio canceled over thousands of data privacy violations, and when Flock didn't remove the cameras, the city covered them with trash bags.

Arthur Cheng, a senior at Troy High, told the story of a man whose life came apart after a camera misread a seven on his plate as a two.

The last resident to speak before council responded was Ren Nushaj, chair of the Troy Democratic Club, an attorney who said he has seen Flock's benefits in his own work and opposes it anyway.

A Republican House candidate opened the night. The Democratic club chair closed it. Whatever this is, it isn't one party's campaign.

What the council said

Police Chief Jones was invited forward first. In 27 years in law enforcement, he said, Flock is the most beneficial tool he has seen come into the department. He described what the system captures — plate, make, model, color — and what it does not, which is any ownership or identity information. He credited the department's audit tool as the reason officers who misuse these systems elsewhere get caught at all, and pointed to Troy's transparency dashboard. Asked how out-of-state searches work, he said agencies Troy has approved as sharing partners can query Troy's data under the same requirements Troy officers face, and agencies that aren't approved have to request access and be vetted against the city's share policy.

Then all seven members of council spoke, and the room shifted.

Council Member David Hamilton went first, without notes. “I'm really struggling to myself as a council member to continue this Flock contract,” he said. He called it a fundamental constitutional question, said voters should decide where the line between safety and security sits, and said he would support putting a ballot question to Troy residents. A security engineer at General Motors, he said he uses AI heavily and worries about what the data could do in the wrong hands. He said he strongly trusts the Troy Police Department and believes it is policing the right way.

Hamilton also said this, in the same breath: some people in the room had made oinking noises at police officers, and it was despicable. Many who spoke reasonably, he said, had done a great job persuading him to rethink a vote he made in the past — and the ones making pig noises were repelling residents who might otherwise be on their side.

Council Member Annalisa Bluhm said she would support an ordinance regulating Flock or any similar system, so residents would have no questions about what it is allowed to do.

Council Member Rebecca Chamberlain said she was moved by what she had heard, specifically residents describing the loss of privacy and the feeling of being surveilled. Technology like this requires protection and accountability, she said, and she favors an ordinance.

Council Member Theresa Brooks said the conversations matter and that technology is moving faster than legislatures can handle, on data privacy and in fields well beyond policing. She said she supports whatever the city can do to strengthen its own regulations. Then she drew her line: based on the information she has been presented, she does not have a reason to pull the contract, and she believes Troy officers are using the technology appropriately.

Council Member Mark Gunn said he supports the police department and also has privacy concerns. He said Troy police have safeguards in place and are using the system appropriately, and that it is council's responsibility to make sure safeguards protect residents. Mayor Pro Tem Hirak Chanda said residents want both public safety and privacy, and that he favors an ordinance.

Mayor Baker, an attorney, took up the argument several speakers had made about waiting for harm before acting. If there were evidence Troy police were misusing the system, he said, council would move quickly. But by then it's too late. Even once, and someone's rights are gone.

Council members were more specific than the directive that followed. One asked that a Flock question be added to the resident survey already coming up; another noted a survey was on that night's agenda, which it was — the 2026 Resident Engagement and Priority Study, filed under department reports. Baker questioned whether survey results would mean much without an education component, said a survey could be written in unbiased terms, and raised advisory opinions on the ballot as the other route.

Then he did something the group had not asked for. Baker obtained consensus of council on four separate directives to city administration: to report whether an ordinance is advisable or would be effective; to provide options for placing an advisory question on the ballot or otherwise gathering input from a broader group of residents directly; to provide more information on the policies and procedures governing how Flock data is shared; and to lay out next steps for the discussion.

No motion. No vote. But three members explicitly backed an ordinance, a fourth said he is reconsidering the contract entirely and wants it put to voters, and the rest spoke in favor of stronger safeguards or regulations of some kind — and council directed staff to figure out how.

The speech

Christiani's own three minutes were the most confrontational of the night.

He told council that compromise is not an option, that surveillance is slavery and silence is treason, and that he hoped they would make “the American decision before we decide for you.” He closed a passage on the cameras by saying he would highly suggest council “unshackle us before we unshackle ourselves with a sawzall and a hammer.”

He also gave council a roadmap. It takes two members to place an item on the agenda and four to overturn a contract, he said. And sections 5.11 through 5.14 of the city charter allow residents to force action with 2,000 signatures.

“Who thinks we can get 2,000 people?” he asked. The room cheered.

What happens next

Council recessed at 10:27 p.m. and came back at 10:35 for comment from people outside Troy. A non-resident spoke about Detroit's Project Green Light and surveillance generally. Council then agreed by consensus to hear a Troy resident who had missed the sign-up window, who spoke against the cameras. Council recessed again at 10:41, went into closed session, and adjourned at 11:10.

Before the night ended, Hamilton thanked Sterling Heights Council Member Mike Radtke for what he called valuable conversations about Flock — a sign the argument is moving between Oakland and Macomb County city halls, not just inside Troy's.

Council returns Sept. 14. City administration owes it four answers.

The petition is still moving in the meantime. Christiani says the group is collecting toward the 2,000 signatures he cited from the charter and expects to land closer to 3,000, which he called preferable. He has not said how many they have now.

Christiani's read, going in, was that nothing would happen. What happened instead is that a room full of people he organized moved most of council toward writing rules, and moved one member toward asking the voters directly. That is not the vote he wanted. It is closer to a result than Troy has produced on this before.

Whether it becomes an ordinance or a ballot question or a memo that dies in a drawer is the next story.