Flock & ALPR cameras in Akron, OH

1,023 mapped cameras are split between 67 separate operators, an average of 15.3 each. That gap between size and fragmentation is the story here: Akron ranks 19th of 21 by camera count but 10th by operator count, ahead of Dallas, which spreads 2,634 cameras across 66 operators, and Denver, with 1,502 across 54.

Akron Police Department is the largest single operator with 151 cameras, but that is only 15% of the metro total. The second-largest is not an Akron-area body at all: Stark County Sheriff’s Office, centred on Canton, runs 57 — more than any municipality in Summit County apart from Akron itself.

The manufacturer data here is the thinnest of the five metros in this batch. 226 of 1,023 cameras — 22% — carry no manufacturer tag, and among those that do, 18 are tagged Axis Communications, a general security-camera maker rather than a dedicated plate-reader firm. Akron’s network is less uniformly Flock than its Ohio neighbours.

One caveat worth stating plainly: this map area overlaps Cleveland’s. Parma, Solon, Independence, Brook Park and Strongsville are Cuyahoga County communities that fall inside both boxes, so a number of these cameras are counted on both pages. The two totals describe overlapping areas and must never be added together.

Source: the BanditKin public camera map, sampled 3 August 2026. It pools OpenStreetMap tagging with reports from people who spot cameras locally, so the dataset grows as attention grows. Every total here understates the real one.

Akron sits 19th of 21 metros by mapped cameras — only Columbus and Charlotte record fewer — yet 10th by number of operators. At 15.3 cameras per operator it is the fourth-most fragmented network of the 21, behind Cincinnati (11.5), Chicago (14.1) and Cleveland (14.7).

That fragmentation shows up in who holds the largest share: Akron PD’s 15% is the 16th-largest lead share of the 21 metros. Compare Columbus, where one department holds 26% of a similarly sized network.

Ranked against the 21 metros BanditKin maps in detail, all counted the same way on the same day. Metro areas are drawn as a box around the city centre, so neighbouring metros can share cameras and these counts must never be added together.

Top 20 of 67 operators. Part of this attribution is tagged directly in OpenStreetMap; the rest is inferred from which jurisdiction a camera sits in — a reasonable assumption rather than a public record. A further 134 cameras name no operator at all.

Source: EFF Atlas of Surveillance (CC-BY). Camera positions on the map come from OpenStreetMap and community reports — coverage may be incomplete. BanditKin is not affiliated with Flock Safety, any other vendor, or any agency.

Manufacturer is a free-text field, so spellings and legal names have been consolidated here. 226 of 1,023 mapped cameras name no manufacturer at all, which makes the actual distribution broader than what is shown. These count cameras on the map, not purchase orders.

Once you have seen one you see them everywhere: a squared-off housing clamped partway up a slender pole by a junction, a solar panel feeding it, and a short cylindrical lens beside it. Among Akron’s mapped cameras the recorded mountings look like this:

A reader only captures traffic moving through its own cone, so which way it faces determines which journeys it logs. Across Akron the recorded bearings distribute like this:

Direction is taken from public map data. It marks an approximate capture zone and never an exact field of view — the true angle is not published by anyone. 133 of the mapped cameras record no bearing at all, and none are tagged omnidirectional.

New to this? Read what ALPR cameras capture, how long it's kept, and who can search it. Not in Akron? Search the full map by any city, or see what BanditKin costs — free during early access.

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