Steve Eimers has racked up hundreds of thousands of followers across platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and X. Under the moniker “The Guardrail Guy,” he posts about installation issues with guardrails lining roadways across the country. He began posting about guardrails in 2022, a few years after his 17-year-old daughter Hannah was killed when she collided with a guardrail that pierced through her car rather than guiding it back to the road.

In April, Eimers began posting about another hallmark of American roads: automatic license plate readers (ALPRs).

ALPRs, sold by companies like Flock and Axon, use mounted cameras to capture vehicular data, which can be used to track people suspected of committing crimes. Eimers expanded his safety advocacy because he believes ALPRs may pose serious risks to passengers in the event of a crash. His claim is that many ALPRs are installed too close to guardrails, which undermines their functionality, or are placed on existing road signs, which can negate the ability of “breakaway” posts to function safely upon impact.

His videos about ALPRs touched a nerve. The devices have become increasingly controversial, and cities across the country are weighing their effectiveness against the risks of misuse. Though Eimers’ videos focused on whether the cameras were “crashworthy,” many commenters believed the cameras were invasive and represented a quiet expansion of mass surveillance in their own neighborhoods.

Eimers noted, with alarm, that an increasing number of people were telling him to destroy the cameras, and some were furious that he hadn’t. Others wanted to know the exact location of the cameras in his posts, or suggested that they contained metals like gold, silver, and copper. Some suggested specific vandalism methods.

“Large diameter pipe cutter,” read a comment on a video Eimers posted on July 24, accompanied by a picture of a large-diameter pipe cutter. “Nice and quiet, cuts it like butter!!!!”

On July 22, Eimers posted that Flock, perhaps the most recognizable ALPR brand in the country, had committed to conducting a nationwide audit of its camera installations. Eimers included a video of a local Flock camera, which he had also posted about the previous day. Garrett Langley, the company’s CEO, quote-tweeted Eimers, whom he called a “true American hero.”

On July 25, Eimers says he was driving home with one of his daughters when he came across the camera from his post. He was taken aback: It was severely damaged. He tells WIRED it looked like it had been shot.

A couple of miles down the road, he passed by another Flock camera that he had documented in a TikTok video back in May. It was similarly damaged.

Eimers made a decision: He was halting all ALPR-related advocacy work indefinitely.

Eimers says that seeing the cameras left him feeling “a little bit shell-shocked.” He says they demonstrate what he sees as an alarming surge in negative sentiment toward Flock and other ALPR companies.

“I just haven't seen or experienced what I've experienced over the last few months with the escalation ever with any of my guardrail advocacy work,” Eimers says, adding that he doesn’t want to “feed the trolls.”

Eimers tells WIRED that he reported the damage to local police. The Maryville Police Department and the Blount County Sheriff’s Office announced on July 31 that they had arrested Adam Heimerman, who appears to be running for Congress in Tennessee, and charged him with felony vandalism for shooting four ALPR cameras in the area between July 14 and July 22.

Major deputy chief Ryan Rogers of the Maryville Police Department confirmed to WIRED that Heimerman was arrested in connection with allegedly damaging the same cameras Eimers flagged. Heimerman did not respond to a request for comment, and his legal representation couldn’t immediately be identified.

Eimers noted, to his dismay, that many of the comments on a Facebook post about the news appear to express support for Heimerman. One read, “Buy that man a beer.”

Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel declined to specify how many of the company’s cameras have been damaged in recent months, but tells WIRED that the company has received relatively few reports about these incidents.

"Damaging public safety equipment is illegal and puts communities at risk, which is why we strongly condemn this type of behavior,” Lewbel adds. (Lewbel confirmed that the company is conducting a nationwide audit, but didn’t answer specific questions about the methodology, timeline, or scope. Flock has more than 120,000 ALPRs across 49 states.)

Eimers’ greatest concern, he tells WIRED, is that someone gets hurt. He pointed to a hypothetical scenario in which someone shoots an ALPR, gets chased by the police, and then someone fires a weapon.

Eimers says he wants his advocacy to focus on roadside safety and crashworthiness, and let civil rights groups lead the privacy discourse surrounding ALPRs. He says there’s tangible good that can come from “staying in my lane,” pointing to the Flock audit. Though he won’t be posting anything new about ALPRs, he plans on leaving all of his existing content about them up.

“If these continue to be out on the roadside, America will be safer because of what I posted,” Eimers says.

“I poke the bear too often,” Eimers adds. “And this time the bear poked back.”