Every license plate camera in Milton, Georgia, mapped

How many license plate cameras are in Milton?

Two honest numbers, and they disagree. The City of Milton says it operates 36 Flock Safety cameras. The DeFlock map, which draws on OpenStreetMap, shows 55 license plate cameras pinned inside the city limits. DeFlock is a volunteer project that tracks these cameras nationwide; people who spot a camera pin it on OpenStreetMap with a handful of tags, the maker if they can read it, whether it watches traffic, what it is mounted on, which way it faces. We pulled every camera tagged in and around Milton on September 12, 2026, put each one on this map exactly where it was pinned, and used the city's own boundary file to sort inside from outside.

So a dot is one person's observation, not a city record. Of the 55 inside the city, 54 are tagged as Flock Safety cameras and one as operated by Fulton County Schools. We did not walk to each pole. A pole with two cameras can be mapped twice. A camera can be removed after it was mapped. The count is a floor with error bars, and we print it as one.

What the city says it operates

Asked on the record for our reporting on Milton's license plate cameras, the Milton Police Department told us on September 11 that the city operates 36 Flock cameras, 33 fixed and 3 mobile, and that license plate reading is also available on 39 marked patrol cars. It said Milton has 15 one-way data-sharing connections with private residential and commercial camera owners, meaning police can search those cameras but the owners cannot search the city's. That is one honest explanation for the gap between 36 and 55: homeowner associations and businesses buy the same cameras, and those get pinned too. Another is Fulton County Schools. Another is double counting. The city has paid Flock $341,235.62 across 22 payments since 2020, according to its own published checkbook.

Who can search the data, and for how long

The department also said data from the city's cameras is searchable for 365 days, up from 30, that authorized agencies outside Georgia can search it depending on the city's sharing settings, that not every search gets advance approval, that all searches are logged, and that a review of search activity found two matters it is investigating as potential misuse. Georgia law allows retention of up to 30 months. Flock's default for new customers is now seven days.

Put against the population, the Census Bureau's estimate of 41,266 residents as of July 1, 2025, the DeFlock count works out to one camera for every 750 people who live here. The city's own count of 36 is one for every 1,150. Add the 39 patrol cars and it is one for every 550.

Why we published the locations

These cameras face public roads and photograph the public. Their positions are already public on OpenStreetMap and DeFlock. A resident asked Council on September 9 to tell the public how many cameras there are and where. The city has now given the count. This is the where, as well as the people who map them know it. If a dot is wrong, tell us at tips@readroundabout.com and we will fix it and say so.