Alabama Power

Birmingham's cameras are sold, owned, and billed by Alabama Power. Here is how the contract works and why nobody has checked it.

Birmingham's cameras are not a Flock contract. They are a power contract.

When Birmingham's City Council approved $9.7 million for more than 100 new surveillance cameras in July 2025, it was amending a "Master Contract for Public Safety Services" with Alabama Power Company.

Alabama Power installs the cameras on its poles, owns the hardware, supplies the network, and bills the city. Flock Safety is the utility's subcontractor. The mayor put it plainly: "We don't even have a contract with Flock. We actually have a contract with Alabama Power."

What the contract says

We have not obtained Birmingham's executed contract or its exhibits. We have the same Alabama Power contract as executed by other Alabama cities, from their public council records. On that template:

  • Alabama Power keeps "sole and exclusive right, title, and interest" in all equipment. The city gets a revocable license.
  • The city agrees Alabama Power may disclose camera content to third parties "with or without notice to Customer."
  • Alabama Power told the council the electricity is "roughly $3,000 a month. The rest of that is the service of the actual cameras." The part a regulator can see is the $3,000.

Why it rides the power bill

The contract is a utility services agreement, so the camera fee is a line on the city's power bill. Columbiana's minutes say it outright: the monthly charge "will be added to the power bill paid by the city." Helena's budget carries the line "FLOCK CAMERAS AL POWER."

For a resident or a reporter, that means there is no Flock invoice to request, no Flock line in the budget to find, and no procurement file to read. The cameras cost what the power bill says they cost.

The regulator has never looked

The Alabama Public Service Commission regulates the utility's monopoly. We searched its record from 2005 to 2026. No docket, order, tariff, or annual report mentions cameras, license plate readers, Flock, or public safety services.

In Alabama Power's annual rate filings, "non-electric" plant carried inside its electric plant account rose from $39.6 million in 2018 to $366 million in 2026. The filings never say what that plant is.

Nothing in the public record proves that electric customers subsidize the camera business, and nothing proves they do not. The finding is that no one can check.

It is not only Birmingham

Alabama Power told Birmingham's council in July 2025 that it works with "over 80 municipalities across the state." We have found the contract itself in the public records of ten of them so far.

Shelby County shows the alternative. In 2024 the county ran an open bid. Alabama Power bid and lost to Flock directly, which put Flock's actual price on the public record: $250 a month per camera.

Who paid

More than $4 million of Birmingham's $9.7 million comes from a $4.2 million federal Department of Justice grant that names "camera surveillance" and the Real Time Crime Center. In March 2025 the council amended the contract so new cameras are reimbursed from that grant. When the federal money runs out, city staff have said the program costs about $2 million a year from the general fund.

What we are asking

  1. Publish the executed Alabama Power Master Contract and every premises exhibit.
  2. Publish the itemized monthly Alabama Power camera bills.
  3. Publish the Contractor/Vendor CJI Access Security Agreement Alabama Power signed in February 2026.
  4. Ask the Public Service Commission whether the camera business has ever been reviewed.

Sign the petition · Read the facts

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