Holt doubles down on Flock vote as critics flood social media

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OKLAHOMA CITY – One week on from the Oklahoma City Council’s 5-3 vote to renew the City’s contract with controversial Flock Safety, a growing chorus of backlash and criticism has settled primarily on Mayor David Holt, who joined four other council members to pass the vote in Flock’s favor.

Flock Safety – an Atlanta-based surveillance tech company that produces Automated License Plate Reader cameras, or ALPRs, and an AI-powered data network to connect them – has come under nationwide scrutiny in recent months thanks to numerous stories of non-existent oversight, police stalking, employee misuse, and more than 90 cities across America severing ties with the company.

In light of that widespread, and often bipartisan, pushback, roughly 30 residents turned out at the August 18^th City Council meeting hoping to sway councilors toward denying the contract renewal, with many appealing to Mayor Holt directly.

City Council votes to renew contract for controversial Flock cameras

Despite the elevated profile and contentiousness of the issue, Holt declined to speak or explain his thinking before the vote was called, leaving the chamber in a loud uproar when he voted in favor of Flock, albeit with a sweeping new collection of “guardrails” in a new amendment.

Holt’s response

Free Press reached Mayor Holt via text message Monday to ask for his explanation regarding his vote.

His reasoning, he explained, is a belief that his primary responsibility as mayor is to public safety.

“I have years of elections and polls and life experience that informs my understanding that the vast majority of residents want us to keep them safe,” he replied. “In these roles, that’s always our number one obligation. This law enforcement tool makes us safer, but I think the arguments that were presented by those in attendance at several meetings did influence the final outcome in that more guardrails were added. The final outcome, however, reflected where the overall constituency is, which is generally how it works out.”

Asked whether he was swayed at all by the resident turnout at last week’s meeting, which was exclusively in opposition to Flock, the mayor said that decisions for City Council votes are often decided and firm before the meeting date, regardless of the turnout.

“I’ve been to hundreds of Council meetings and it’s actually pretty common for the people in the room to heavily favor a position that would not necessarily be popular across the whole city,” Mayor Holt responded. “I doubt anyone who serves on the Council is ever counting votes in the room, because we don’t just represent the 25 people in the room, we represent the 720,000 people outside the room.”

Hundreds of critical comments revealed after questioning by Free Press

Following the August 18^th vote, users across social media platforms reported that they had left critical, mocking, or outright angry comments on many of the recent posts on Mayor Holt’s accounts, only to find their comments swiftly hidden or deleted.

Between August 18^th and Monday, August 24^th, many of Holt’s posts on Instagram, for example, showed comment totals in the dozens, sometimes more than 100 per post, with only a few supportive comments visible, or in some cases, none at all.

There were only a small few comments visible that mentioned Flock or that were critical of Holt’s vote, including one comment on Facebook that Holt engaged with a lengthy rebuttal, to which he directed us when questioned about hidden comments.

All of Holt’s social media accounts are personal and privately run, rather than official government office accounts. By law, any government official is allowed to hide, delete, or curate comments on their personal accounts without upsetting the First Amendment protections offered to comments on official government accounts.

Mayor Holt confirmed this when asked by Free Press.

“I don’t have any government social media accounts,” he said. “All of my social media accounts (I’m on five mediums) are campaign accounts, were created that way, have always been run that way, and are clearly labeled that way.”

He also discussed a general policy of regularly hiding vulgar, offensive, and openly racist comments.

When asked, however, if he was concerned about the optics or the message that it sends to constituents for so many critical comments to be hidden when the public can see the full number of hidden comments on each post, he chalked it up to his pages simply being “dynamic.”

“I’m always having to moderate, respond, sift through comments that had been flagged, etc.,” he replied. “I’m sure the comments on my five campaign pages are always dynamic for one reason or another.”

Shortly following that exchange, hundreds of comments openly critical of his vote in favor of Flock were unhidden on his posts across social media platforms, with some posts that previously had no visible comments now showing dozens, all critical of Flock.

As of Wednesday morning, there were still hundreds of angry and critical comments visible across Mayor Holt’s social platforms.

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