Amid controversial new expansions, Flock found downed in Union Hill

Editor’s note: Sorry for the delay on today’s edition. I’ve been on the road and juggling some stuff. Thanks for your patience, and thanks to everybody who emailed to make sure Penelope was OK.—Dave.

Folks… we’ve got another Flock down. Say it ain’t so! (It’s so.) After a spate of anti-surveillance vandalism earlier this year, the East End has once again been visited by a Flock foe. And the stakes have only gotten higher.

Earlier this month, Flock Safety—the for-profit firm that sells the surveillance devices Richmond Police Department has placed throughout the East End, and citywide—began accepting applications from municipalities interested in an upgrade that enables its “gunshot detectors” to listen for human voices.¹ Last week, Flock announced a partnership with Ring, Amazon’s data-leaking doorbell brand, that will allow the former’s users to more easily request footage from the latter’s and “potentially access footage from millions more cameras,” per TechCrunch.³

And the list of Flock users at every level of law enforcement continues to grow: the very same day of the Ring announcement, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) published an alarming investigation showing that ICE, Secret Service, and the fucking Navy all had access to the company’s national panopticon of 10,000+ cameras, and that the company doesn’t even bother to check whether these agencies are complying with applicable regulations (of which there are very few.) Wyden:

It’s possible that none of this—the new eavesdropping feature, the Ring integration, the feds’ widespread and apparently unmonitored access—inspired somebody to rip the Flock microphone device off its post on the corner of N. 21st and Cedar Sts. in Union Hill last week. (These posts are pretty flimsy and top-heavy, and as I noted last time a few East End Flocks got flocked, “teens being teens” is always a good guess when it comes to this sort of vandalism.) But would you be surprised if it did?

📜 Possum Poetry

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

🎃 Lookout trick-or-treat take fires neighborhood imagination

Like a piece of granulated sugar crunching into a cavity, last week’s column about shutting down car traffic on E. Broad St. for Halloween seems to have struck a nerve. Several tipsters alerted your humble Lookout editor to this thread on a neighborhood Facebook page, where the subject provoked much discussion and heart emoji reactions; meanwhile, readers also checked in via the tipline and Lookout comments section to voice their approval. Glad we’ve got the conversation going, neighbors!

As I noted in my piece, the rapid onset of Halloween 2025 makes this year’s effort to (officially, safely, legally) close E. Broad St. to cars and trucks a foregone conclusion. As a stop-gap for the holiday seven days from now, a few readers chimed in with the idea stationing volunteer “flaggers” on the corridor at N. 29th and 32nd Sts. to at least alert drivers to proceed with caution through that zone. I thought this was a good idea! But frankly, I’ve been dealing with some personal issues this week² and haven’t been able to dedicate any attention to organizing. If you’ve got a reflective vest, a strong sense of duty, and free time during prime trick-or-treating hours next week, by all means, get out there and make like a sPoOkY crossing guard, I guess? Safely, though. While obeying applicable traffic laws. Even if drivers don’t.

As for a more formal, forward-looking, organized solution: I’m pleased to report that Lookout Liz Petty took the initiative to contact the Church Hill Association about planning a shutdown on on E. Broad St. for Halloween 2026, and the org has graciously allotted some time on the agenda for its November meeting to begin laying those plans. I’ll be there.

🗞️ Calling bullshit on Richmond’s corporate media

As paying subscriber to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a one-time employee of a local newspaper, and a longtime journalist, I’ve watched with dismay as Lee Enterprises has gutted Virginia’s paper of record, laying off its career journalists and replacing them with wire stories, schlocky third-party video, and worse. The latest twists of the knife, per The Richmonder, include laying off at least five reporters in mid-September and cutting opinion editor Scott Bass on the last day of that month. The RTD’s newsroom headcount is hovering around 10; its only remaining opinion journalist is Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Paul Williams. Shit is bleak over there, man, and I doubt it’ll get better.

That said, the RTD remains influential in circles of power in Richmond (and to some extent, Virginia), which makes it a powerful institution in and of itself. And the reality is that some of its coverage is negligent, servile corporate bullshit that deserves to be highlighted as such. After airing my gripes on the paper’s garbagio in group chats and letters to the editor for literal years, I finally got around to creating a tag for that media criticism here at The Lookout. It’s called Mad Enough to Blog It™️, and it’s live now. First up, a response to Congressman Morgan Griffith’s absurd op-ed likening Winsome Earle-Sears to Martin Luther King, Jr., which the RTD ran earlier this month:

I’ve gone through and backdated some letters to the editor I’ve sent over the course of the past year. (I don’t have an archive of them, and the RTD has never published one—shocker, I know—so I’m mostly just going off my Bluesky timeline.) So far, I’ve got:

I’m sure I’ll find more as I scrub through. If you come across wrong, deferential, or otherwise bad work in the RTD, feel free to submit it to be considered for future critiques. I don’t plan to dedicate much newsletter space on this, as it’s not really East End-specific, but I guess we’ll see how it goes!

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Clean up: The 501c3 Befriend Movement is holding a clean-up day at Jefferson Park tomorrow (10/25) from 11am-12pm. More info.

• Go East: The East x East End music festival is turning up tomorrow and Sunday (10/26) across Montrose Heights and Fulton Hill. Peep the lineup. 

• Come Together: Not “right now,” but Sunday from 12-5pm at Pizza Bones, where Together Vintage is hosting a market. Flyer here.

• Hill-o-Ween it: The CHA has all sorts of holiday programming next week—house decorating contest, costume parade, etc.—that you’re not gonna want to miss. Get the rundown on its website.

• Cave in: Emerald Lounge has temporarily remade itself as La Cueva (“The Cave”) to celebrate Día de Muertos and raise money for the Richmond Legal Fund. The pop-up runs now through early November. Details, details.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

📸 A Very CHill Photo

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.

1  RPD told The Lookout it’s not interested.

2  I’m fine, everything is fine, NOBODY FREAK OUT!!! No but seriously, it’s been A Week™️ due to some ongoing family matters.

3  Recall, Colette McEachin, the current and presumptive future Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney, likened Flock’s surveillance devices to Ring doorbell cameras in an interview with The Lookout last spring.