If Maricopa residents agree on anything about the city’s growing network of Flock cameras, it’s that they don’t agree on much else.

In a recent InMaricopa poll, readers were nearly split down the middle on the automated license plate reader system, proving that few topics can ignite a Facebook comment section quite like surveillance.

About 42% of respondents said, “Keep ’em coming, it means more eyes on the road.” Close behind, 41% chose, “Is this ‘1984?’ It’s time to take them down.”

That razor-thin margin, marked by just a few votes, left little room for fence-sitters.

Nearly 1 in 10 respondents wanted more proof the cameras are effective before taking a side. The remaining 8% were split between thinking the city already had enough Flock cameras and being clueless about the city having any at all.

Meanwhile on Facebook, the comments section quickly turned into a showdown between Team Public Safety and Team Big Brother.

Supporters argued the cameras help locate stolen vehicles, missing children and suspects.

“They are extremely useful in locating vehicles in situations such as a reported drunk driver … or in a child abduction,” Villages resident Linda Chapman wrote.

Critics, meanwhile, reached for George Orwell faster than you can say “license plate reader.”

“1984 … no thanks,” Mike Armstrong wrote, while Randy D. Jesus added, “If I wanted Big Brother I’d move to China.”

Perhaps the most thoughtful perspective came from Kate Sandell, executive director of Maricopa-based Survivors Against Distracted Driving. She said she once opposed surveillance cameras until a loved one was involved in a serious crash.

“I’m on the side where unless you experience it, you don’t understand … I was anti-Big Brother, anti-cameras … until I got a glimpse into a very unfair world. The reality is our information is taken without your permission all of the time,” she wrote.