LAPD’s withdrawal from Flock exposes deeper failures in camera oversight

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) allowed its three-year agreement with Flock Safety to expire July 11 and suspended its use of the company’s automated license plate readers, adding one of the nation’s largest police departments to a widening backlash against the privately built surveillance network.

LAPD had used 138 pole-mounted Flock cameras across Los Angeles since July 2023. The department said it wanted to address civil rights and civil liberties concerns and obtain clearer, enforceable terms governing privacy, data ownership, security, and access by outside agencies before continuing the program.

Flock described the decision as a pause and said it hoped discussions with LAPD would lead to the partnership being restored.

The decision followed an audit by the LAPD Office of the Inspector General that recommended suspending new deployments and contracts until the department obtained stronger requirements governing data ownership, storage, security, access, sharing, retention, and oversight.

The inspector general also identified a separate risk arising from inaccurate or outdated information used to generate automated alerts.

During a two-month review of LAPD’s broader license plate reader program, officers confirmed 161 alerts as matches to the plates being sought. Subsequent investigations determined that the vehicles were not stolen.

The audit warned that inaccurate “hot list” information could lead to unnecessary enforcement actions, interfere with individual liberty, and expose the city to legal and financial liability.

That finding involved LAPD’s overall license plate reader program, which includes technology from multiple vendors and should not be attributed exclusively to Flock.

It nevertheless added to concerns about what can happen when a technically accurate plate match is compared against an inaccurate, obsolete, or improperly maintained law enforcement record.

Flock cameras photograph passing vehicles, read their license plates, and record the time and location of each observation.

The system can also classify vehicles by make, model, color, and distinguishing characteristics, allowing investigators to search for a vehicle even when they do not know its plate number.

Police departments say the cameras help recover stolen vehicles, locate missing people, and identify suspects.

The controversy arises when cameras purchased for local investigations are enrolled in sharing arrangements that can make their records searchable by authorized personnel at thousands of participating agencies.

The LAPD decision follows incidents in Dayton, Ohio, and Evanston, Illinois, that demonstrate how nominally local systems can escape the safeguards cities believed they had imposed.

Dayton indefinitely suspended its fixed Flock camera program in May after an internal review found that a police commander had failed to implement restrictions governing access to the city’s license plate information.

City Manager Shelley Dickstein described the failures as “egregious violations of policy” that had damaged public trust.

The investigation found no evidence that Dayton police officers had deliberately conducted improper searches or intentionally assisted immigration enforcement. The central failure was that required controls over outside access had not been implemented.

Records showed that outside agencies had conducted approximately 7,100 searches carrying immigration related justifications through a system that could include Dayton’s cameras.

At least 140 agencies outside the city conducted such searches. U.S. Border Patrol accounted for 3,703, while the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia accounted for another 779.

Those figures do not mean that Dayton records were returned in all 7,100 searches. Because automated sharing had been enabled, outside agencies could submit queries across numerous participating camera networks at once.

Dayton could not determine how many searches produced matches from its cameras, which vehicles may have been identified, or whether federal or local officers took enforcement action based on information collected in the city.

That uncertainty was itself part of the problem. Dayton adopted a surveillance-technology ordinance in 2021 requiring city commission approval, an impact report, a public hearing, and a written policy before police acquired new surveillance technology.

When commissioners approved the license plate readers in 2022, the accompanying rules were supposed to require authorization before information was shared outside the department.

They also required documentation intended to ensure that Dayton data would not be used for immigration enforcement and required the city commission to be notified about outside sharing arrangements.

The internal investigation found that those safeguards had not been fully implemented. A former commander of the police department’s Support Services Division enabled automated sharing without creating the required review, approval and documentation procedures.

Police Chief Kamran Afzal characterized the lapse as a departmental failure rather than a malfunction in the cameras. The commander was no longer employed by the city when the findings were announced.

The problem came to light after Major Jason Hall, who had been assigned to lead the Support Services Division in June 2025, noticed in October that outside access was far broader than expected. Dayton disabled sharing with out-of-state agencies in November and turned off all outside sharing April 7.

The city then suspended its fixed-camera program pending an independent review and paused plans to add 27 cameras using newly awarded grant funding. The existing devices initially remained mounted on their poles.

After residents questioned whether the cameras might still be collecting information, city workers covered them with black trash bags. The improvised coverings became a visible symbol of the broader resistance to Flock’s surveillance network.

Evanston’s experience presented a different problem. There, the city deactivated its cameras and moved to terminate its agreement, only to discover that Flock had reinstalled equipment on Evanston streets without municipal authorization.

Evanston first contracted with Flock in 2022. A renewal approved in 2024 was intended to run through 2029 and covered 19 cameras, including 18 fixed devices and one mobile unit.

Police said the system had helped investigate stolen vehicles, hit-and-run crashes, and a 2023 homicide.

Public concern increased in June 2025 after reporting showed that at least seven out-of-state agencies had conducted immigration related searches through Flock’s National Lookup system that could include information collected by Evanston’s cameras.

The records did not necessarily establish that every query returned a match from an Evanston camera.

The controversy intensified after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias conducted a sample audit of 12 law enforcement agencies and found that Flock had allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to access license plate cameras on Illinois roads.

Illinois law restricts the sharing of automated license plate information with agencies seeking to detain or investigate someone based on immigration status or for obtaining reproductive health care that is lawful in the state.

Giannoulias concluded that CBP’s access violated Illinois law and ordered Flock to shut it off. His office said Flock had failed to establish adequate safeguards and was simultaneously operating a pilot program with CBP.

Flock paused that pilot and other federal pilot arrangements nationwide. 

Flock disputed the conclusion that it had violated Illinois law. The company nevertheless acknowledged broader problems with how federal pilot programs had been administered, including insufficiently distinct permissions and protocols for federal users operating in states and cities with restrictions on immigration-related searches.

Evanston had also strengthened its Welcoming City Ordinance to prohibit sharing city databases with federal immigration agencies or third parties unless they certified that the information would not be used for civil immigration enforcement.

The state audit and Flock’s acknowledgment of inadequate federal controls made continued participation untenable for city officials.

On August 26, 2025, Evanston deactivated all 19 cameras and stopped contributing license plate information to the Flock network. It issued a termination notice effective September 26.

During the 30-day termination period, cameras began disappearing from their poles. Residents then noticed that stationary cameras had returned.

City officials said Flock had reinstalled them without permission after Evanston had deactivated the system and begun terminating the contract.

Evanston issued a cease-and-desist order September 18. Flock said the reinstalled cameras were inactive and promised to remove them while contractual discussions continued.

Removal was not immediate. The final two devices remained in place until March, and were taken down after a local news organization asked Flock why they were still there.

A separate case in Albany, Georgia, showed how surveillance access can allegedly be abused by authorized users.

Five former Albany police officers were arrested July 6 after an internal audit identified repeated Flock searches allegedly conducted for purposes unrelated to law enforcement.

The officers collectively face 21 counts of misuse of license plate data and five separate counts of violating their oaths of office.

Flock says its customers own their information, determine who can access it, and can review searches through audit logs. By default, the company says federal sharing is disabled, and federal agencies are not included in its statewide or National Lookup services.

The size of the national backlash depends on how it is measured. The Wall Street Journal reported that roughly 50 cities and counties had canceled or rejected Flock contracts since early 2025. That total includes places that rejected proposed installations as well as those that ended existing agreements.

The Financial Times reported in March that 53 cities in 20 states had deactivated or rejected Flock cameras, including 38 during the preceding six months.

DeFlock, an activist project that maps license plate readers, subsequently estimated that 68 cities had rejected Flock technology since August 2021 through canceled contracts, camera deactivations or local bans.

Article Topics

LAPD  |  law enforcement  |  license plate readers  |  video surveillance