Flock is falling out of favor with police departments
Flock Safety is hitting a rough patch with one of its biggest customers.
By Katherine Li, Business Insider
Flock Safety is hitting a rough patch with one of its biggest customers.
The Los Angeles Police Department let its deal with the surveillance company expire over the past weekend, a spokesperson of the department told Business Insider on Monday.
“We wanted to address some of the civil liberty and civil rights concerns and ensure that there is clarity over the terms regarding privacy, data ownership, and security,” the LAPD spokesperson said.
The LAPD is among Flock’s largest government customers. The Atlanta-based company operates a nationwide network of more than 80,000 cameras that scan license plates to help law enforcement agencies trace vehicles.
An LAPD audit report released earlier in July said the department had a three-year agreement with Flock, which operated 138 pole-mounted cameras across Los Angeles since July 2023. LAPD’s audit cited concerns that federal agencies could have access to data collected by Flock and that federal immigration enforcement could seek access to it.
The data-sharing arrangement was first reported in October 2025 by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights, which said that Flock had implemented an information-sharing pilot program that allowed federal agencies to access license plate data collected by local law enforcement agencies without those agencies’ knowledge or consent.
The LAPD isn’t alone in rethinking its association with Flock
A growing number of police jurisdictions have walked away from Flock since 2025, including Mountain View, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara County, South Pasadena, Flagstaff, and Hillsborough, North Carolina.
In some places, breaking up with Flock has proven harder than signing up. In Dayton, Ohio, city workers recently covered the company’s cameras with trash bags after an internal review found what officials described as “egregious violations” of city policy, including thousands of immigration-related searches. In Evanston, Illinois, officials said Flock reinstalled cameras after the city had moved to remove them, prompting a cease-and-desist letter before the devices were ultimately taken down months later.
Business Insider’s Nicole Einbinder previously reported that mistakes made by Flock’s automated license plate readers have led to innocent drivers being stopped at gunpoint, mauled by police dogs, or jailed after their vehicles were incorrectly flagged. One man in Toledo was arrested and suffered serious injuries after Flock’s camera misread the “7” on his plate for a “2” and flagged the vehicle to the police as stolen.
The setbacks come after years of rapid expansion for Flock, which has become a dominant player in the automated license plate reader market since its launch in 2017.
Earlier in 2026, Amazon’s Ring also canceled a planned partnership with Flock days after a Ring advertisement aired during the Super Bowl sparked widespread backlash.
In a separate incident, US Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg announced federal charges against a Texas man on Monday for allegedly leaving antisemitic and homophobic threats in Flock’s company voicemail inbox. The voice message also accused the company of “breaking the Constitution.”
Flock Safety’s spokesperson told Business Insider that the company will have ongoing discussions with LAPD to address “misconceptions” that led to the “disappointing pause” and that it hopes to resume its “successful partnership” with LAPD soon.
“While this latest development comes as a surprise,” the Flock spokesperson said, “We remain committed to continuing our active and ongoing conversations with LAPD to find a path forward.”
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