Flock Safety operates between 80,000 and 100,000 automated license plate reader cameras across the United States, scanning every vehicle that passes and cataloging plate number, make, model, color, and even bumper stickers. The system performs roughly 20 billion reads per month. In June, Flock cameras tracked automotive journalist Joel Feder for two days before Plymouth, Minnesota police acted: officers surrounded his loaned $155,000 Range Rover with four squad cars, weapons drawn, and ordered him and his wife out. The cameras had matched his plate against an incomplete entry in a federal stolen-vehicle database. Four Georgia law enforcement agencies fired and arrested officers in July's first three weeks for using Flock cameras to track friends, family, and romantic interests. On July 19, Flock defended its system publicly. Cities had terminated 82 Flock contracts across 28 states through May 2026 — and the count has kept rising since.

Flock's Cameras Find Stolen Cars, Locate Missing Children, and Catch Suspects

Flock CEO Garrett Langley says plate-scanning replaces bias-prone "suspicious activity" calls with objective, evidence-based enforcement.

Flock says its cameras solve a million crimes a year. Flock's 2025 Impact Census claims its technology supported more than one million investigations, helped solve 20% of cleared cases, and located more than 10,000 missing persons. More than 40% of Flock's law enforcement partners say cameras helped officers recover at least half the stolen vehicles in their jurisdiction. Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley points to a specific case: a detective used Flock plate data to find an 11-year-old child, discovering the vehicle belonged to a registered sex offender fleeing the state.

Langley says cameras remove the most dangerous variable: officer bias. At TED 2026, he said: "Suspicious activity is totally subjective. It depends entirely on who's looking, who they're looking at and where they deem is being dangerous." Flock tells cities that a license plate is an object — not a race, not a gut instinct — so replacing an officer's discretion with data reduces bias. Flock points to San Francisco as a case study: a 25% crime reduction in 2025 and the city's lowest homicide rate in 70 years.

Flock CCO Joshua Thomas says police failed, not the cameras. Thomas said on July 19: "The way that the ML works is it correctly read what it was supposed to read." He argues a Flock alert "does not equal probable cause" — the system generates a flag, and officers must verify it before making any stop. Plymouth Police Chief Erik Fadden backed that framing: "Everything comes down to the fact that people sometimes make mistakes."

Flock Cameras Surrounded Two Journalists and the Data Is Getting to ICE

The ACLU says 99% accuracy across 20 billion reads still means 200 million potential misreads a month — and cities found ICE accessing the system without permission.

Plymouth police surrounded Feder at gunpoint over a wrong plate. Feder — director of content at The Drive — was driving a loaned Range Rover with a New Jersey manufacturer plate (34 10 DTM) when Flock cameras tracked him for two days across the Twin Cities. Police boxed in his vehicle in a parking lot. The cameras had matched his plate against "34 DTM," an incomplete NCIC entry for a different plate reported stolen in California — Flock's AI flagged the partial match without flagging the mismatch in the middle digits. Fellow automotive journalist Tim Esterdahl was separately pulled over in Nebraska with his 14-year-old child in the car — same partial plate match, same model vehicle. Flock claims 99% accuracy. Applied to 20 billion reads a month, that still yields roughly 200 million potential misreads per month. An LAPD inspector general audit found 32.3% of Flock alerts it reviewed were inaccurate, with 161 vehicles wrongly flagged as stolen over two months.

Federal immigration agents are also pulling Flock data — without city authorization. Flock officially does not contract with ICE. But immigration agents have asked local police to run more than 4,000 immigration-related searches through the Flock network on their behalf. An audit in February 2026 found the ATF, Air Force, and GSA had accessed Mountain View, California's Flock data without the city's knowledge or consent. Mountain View disabled all 30 of its cameras in response. In one school district's camera network, investigators found 620 immigration-related Flock searches — more than twice the number of criminal searches. Thirty agencies from Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Tennessee had run those immigration lookups on school cameras. In January 2026, Flock added an administrative toggle allowing agencies to turn off all federal data sharing.

Georgia fired nine officers in July for misusing Flock cameras. On July 6, Albany Police Department fired and arrested five officers — Issac Whitus, Nicholas Richardson, Brittney Smith, Ty'Tianna Davis, and Jade Jackson — charging all with Misuse of License Plate Data and Violation of Oath of Office. On July 10, Henry County fired and arrested officer Patrick Isbell on the same charges. On July 18, DeKalb County fired and arrested Sgt. Kabiru Salawu, a 17-year veteran, on felony charges. The same day, Fayetteville fired three officers after an internal audit found they had searched their own plates and those of friends and family. Sheriff Melody M. Maddox said: "The misuse of law enforcement technology or confidential information for any unauthorized purpose is a serious breach of the public's trust and will not be tolerated." An Institute for Justice analysis found at least 22 similar officer-misconduct cases nationwide since 2024.

Some Cities Say: Keep the Cameras, Add Strict Rules on Who Can Look

Cleveland reversed a shutdown decision after negotiating new restrictions — no outside agencies, no national database searches.

Cleveland reversed its Flock shutdown on July 8 and extended its contract. The new agreement limits data access to Cleveland agencies only, blocking cross-jurisdictional national database searches. Many city councils are navigating the same tension: the cameras produce real investigative value, but unrestricted data sharing is where critics see the danger. Leon County commissioners delayed a Flock grant funding decision on July 18, seeking more time to review access terms. Junction City, Oregon is considering a free eight-camera trial.

These cities say Flock overreached — the cameras are not the problem. They say Flock's core technology works. They argue that tighter contracts, mandatory auditing, and data-sharing restrictions can fix what the ACLU wants to ban outright. Flock itself introduced a federal-sharing toggle in January 2026 after city officials demanded more control. Stockton, California — which has 120 Flock cameras and just voted unanimously to add six Flock drones — says clear contract terms are what make the technology work.

Where This Lands

On July 19, Flock's Joshua Thomas said the cameras "worked correctly" when they tracked Joel Feder for two days. He said Plymouth police failed when they stopped Feder without verifying the alert. Flock and its critics both agree officers made errors in the Feder case. They disagree on where to fix it. Flock and its law enforcement partners say better human judgment on top of the cameras is enough. The ACLU, immigrant rights advocates, and the cities that had canceled 82 contracts through May 2026 say the cameras — with 200 million potential misreads a month and a backdoor to ICE — are a problem that officer training cannot solve.

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