Common Questions, Arguments, & Responses when discussing Flock Surveillance

Police have held innocent drivers at gunpoint, handcuffed a 12-year-old, and tracked ex-partners with automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems. In three Colorado cases documented below, the flag came from the state crime database that feeds the alert list, where a court clerk and two police departments had entered plate data that pointed at the wrong vehicle; one of those entries sat uncorrected for nearly two years. The documented incidents fall into false positives and system failures, where the system flagged the wrong vehicle or the wrong person, and misuse by officers with account access; the sections after those answer the arguments most often raised in favor of these deployments.

Documented incidents covered below, with the jurisdiction, the year, and the failure behind each one

Jurisdiction	Year	What happened	Mechanism
	2018	Privacy advocate Brian Hofer and his younger brother held at gunpoint while driving to Thanksgiving	Vehicle wrongly flagged as stolen
Aurora, Colorado	2020	Mother and family including a 6-year-old ordered face down on hot pavement at gunpoint, $1.9 million settlement	Database match error, a Colorado car matched to a Montana motorcycle
Kechi, Kansas	2022	Police lieutenant arrested for stalking after using Flock to follow his estranged wife	Officer misuse
Reno, Nevada	2023	UPS driver Jason Killinger arrested at a casino and detained about 11 hours	Facial recognition false match
Las Vegas, Nevada	2023	Metropolitan Police officer arrested for stalking his ex-fiancée	Officer misuse of police databases
Sedgwick, Kansas	2024	Police chief admitted 164 lookups of his ex-girlfriend and her new partner, then resigned	Officer misuse
Colwich, Kansas	Reported 2024	Couple stopped twice on a stolen-pickup alert, the second time by officers with drawn guns	Database entry error, wrong plate type on a duplicated number
Baltimore County, Maryland	2025	Student handcuffed and searched after officers arrived with guns drawn while he ate chips outside school	AI gun-detection false positive
Menasha, Wisconsin	2026	Officer charged with misconduct after trying five times to search his ex-girlfriend's vehicle	Officer misuse
Bow Mar and Columbine Valley, Colorado	2025	Denver woman summonsed for a $25 package theft on the strength of camera logs, summons voided after she assembled her own alibi	Correct read treated as proof of a crime
Evergreen, Colorado	2025	Driver's Subaru blocked in a parking lot by Jefferson County deputies	Database entry error, a numeral 1 typed for the letter I in 2023
Superior, Colorado	2025	76-year-old driver stopped by Boulder County deputies as a stolen-vehicle match	Database entry error, both versions of her plate entered
Española, New Mexico	Reported 2025	12-year-old handcuffed, and a 17-year-old honors student held at gunpoint a month later	Plate misread
Cherry Hills Village, Colorado	2026	Kyle Dausman pulled over twice on a warrant alert that was not his	Database entry error, court clerk entered the wrong plate

False positives and system failures

Automated surveillance systems generate false positives in which innocent individuals are subjected to armed police responses based on system errors.

Baltimore County gun detection false alarm

In October 2025, an AI-powered gun detection system at Kenwood High School in Baltimore County misidentified a student's snack food as a firearm, triggering an armed police response. Taki Allen was sitting outside the school with friends eating Doritos when officers with drawn weapons approached him.

They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me

Allen was forced to his knees, handcuffed, and searched before officers realized he was unarmed. Allen described watching about eight police cars arrive, with officers pointing guns at him.

The first thing I was wondering was, was I about to die? Because they had a gun pointed at me.

When shown the image that triggered the alert, Allen explained:

I was just holding a Doritos bag, it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun.

High schools in Baltimore County have used the AI gun detection system since 2023, using existing school cameras to scan for potential weapons. The system is operated by Omnilert, which uses existing school cameras to scan for potential weapons. The principal said the school district's security department reviewed & canceled the gun detection alert after confirming there was no weapon. A school official acknowledged "how upsetting this was for the individual that was searched as well as the other students who witnessed the incident."

Baltimore County Councilman Izzy Patoka called for a review of the system, stating: No child in our school system should be accosted by police for eating a bag of Doritos. Omnilert defended its system, claiming it functioned as intended: to prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification, though the incident demonstrated the system escalated to armed police response before adequate human review occurred.

Wrongful stops and detentions from ALPR alerts

ALPR systems generate false alerts that result in innocent individuals being held at gunpoint during high-risk traffic stops.

Brian Hofer Thanksgiving incident

In 2018, privacy advocate Brian Hofer and his younger brother were driving to visit their parents for Thanksgiving when they were held at gunpoint by law enforcement officers. Hofer's vehicle had been incorrectly flagged as stolen by an ALPR system, triggering an armed police response.

Your life definitely is different after you have guns pointed at you.

Hofer, now executive director of Secure Justice, an organization that aims to reduce government and corporate overreach, advocates for manual verification of ALPR "hits" before armed responses. He notes that even with verification procedures, data errors in databases can cause plates to match incorrect entries.

CBS News verified over a dozen similar cases during a six-month investigation into incidents of wrongful stops and ALPR technology abuse, finding that consequences range from erroneous toll charges to armed detentions of innocent people.

Española, New Mexico child detentions

In Española, New Mexico, ALPR misreads resulted in two separate armed detentions of minors within one month. In one incident, a 12-year-old was handcuffed after an ALPR camera misread the last digit of a license plate on a vehicle driven by her older sister, interpreting a "2" as a "7," according to a lawsuit filed against the city.

One month later in a separate incident, a 17-year-old honors student was held at gunpoint on his way home from school after officers mistook his vehicle for one associated with an individual sought in connection with a string of armed robberies.

Aurora, Colorado family detained on hot pavement

In Aurora, Colorado in 2020, a mother and her family, including her 6-year-old daughter, were pulled over at gunpoint and forced to lie face down on hot pavement due to an ALPR error. Police mistakenly flagged their Colorado license plate as matching a completely different vehicle from a different state, a stolen motorcycle registered in Montana.

The incident, captured on video and widely condemned, led to a $1.9 million settlement from the city in 2024.

Cherry Hills Village, Colorado: repeat stops from hotlist data entry error

According to 9News reporter Spencer Soicher, Kyle Dausman, who was driving through Cherry Hills Village, was pulled over twice by the Cherry Hills Village Police Department after a Flock Safety camera generated a wanted-person alert tied to a Colorado Crime Information Center hotlist entry. Dausman told 9News, I continually get pulled over. Cherry Hills Village Police Chief Jason Lyons attributed the underlying error to a Gilpin County court data-entry mistake, with Colorado license plates using both the letter "O" and the numeral "0".

Lyons said the cameras themselves alerted as designed, telling 9News that The Flock cameras did alert to his license plate being associated to a warrant. The Colorado State Patrol told the station that a court clerk had provided the incorrect plate information to the Colorado Crime Information Center, which supplied the information used on the Flock hotlist, and that because Gilpin County issued the underlying failure-to-appear warrant, only Gilpin County can fix it.

During the first stop, Dausman told 9News that officers "zipped out of nowhere and immediately got behind me with the lights flashing," and he described feeling his safety was at risk. He was released at the scene once officers determined he was not the wanted suspect. A few days later the same department stopped him again on the same alert before recognizing him and releasing him. Chief Lyons said the department then suppressed the alert in its local Flock system, but stated that the agency cannot remove the underlying entry from the wider hotlist. Dausman summarized the burden this left him with: Once you're in the Flock system, it's on you to get out.

Superior and Evergreen, Colorado: two more drivers wrongly listed

Two more Coloradans came forward after the Dausman story aired, and 9News reported both cases on April 30, 2026.

Sarah Judson, 76, who was driving to Superior to see her grandchildren at her daughter's house, was flagged in December 2025 as matching a stolen vehicle out of Colorado Springs, and two Boulder County Sheriff's Office deputies stopped her near a roundabout; about two weeks later a deputy waited behind her car in a restaurant parking lot. The Boulder County Sheriff's Office confirmed that Colorado Springs Police had entered two versions of her plate into the statewide stolen vehicle database, one with the letter "O" and one with the numeral "0", and that her plate matched one of them. After 9News contacted Colorado Springs Police, the department fixed the entry the same day. A department spokesperson said the mistake was 100% human error, on our part.

Katie Rothman's 2019 Subaru Forester was blocked in a parking lot by Jefferson County Sheriff's Office deputies on August 31, 2025 after a Flock alert tied to a stolen vehicle report from Aurora Police. Aurora Police confirmed that in 2023 her plate had been entered into the Colorado Crime Information Center database instead of the actual stolen vehicle's plate, a numeral "1" typed where the letter "I" belonged, and that the entry sat in the system for nearly two years. The department told 9News, The license plate was similar and was entered into the system with a typographical error. Rothman called Aurora Police herself in September 2025 and the entry was corrected the same day.

By April 30, 2026, all three drivers had been removed from the hotlist. 9News reported that in each of the three cases the wrongful flag was placed into the statewide database by a law enforcement agency that either entered both versions of an ambiguous plate character or made a typographical error, that the fix came only after the driver or the newsroom pushed the originating agency directly, and that no internal process caught the error.

Columbine Valley, Colorado: sergeant refused to examine exculpatory dashcam footage

On September 27, 2025, Columbine Valley Police Sergeant Jamie Milliman went to the Denver home of Chrisanna Elser to serve a court summons accusing her of stealing a package valued at $25 or less from a porch in neighboring Bow Mar on September 22, 2025. Milliman cited Bow Mar's Flock Safety ALPR network, which had logged Elser's green Rivian truck passing through the town between 11:52 a.m. and 12:09 p.m. on the day of the theft.

Ring doorbell footage of the encounter, reviewed by The Colorado Sun, recorded Milliman refusing to view Elser's Rivian dashboard camera footage, which she offered as proof that her vehicle never stopped in Bow Mar. Milliman told her, "If you are going to deny it to me, I am not going to help you with any courtesy."

Elser then assembled a digital alibi using her Rivian's onboard cameras, the vehicle's GPS log, and surveillance footage from a tailor shop she was visiting at the time of the theft. She located the actual theft video on NextDoor, which showed a different person who never entered a truck. After she submitted the evidence, the summons was voided.

On November 11, 2025, Columbine Valley Town Administrator J.D. McCrumb told Denverite that "appropriate disciplinary action will be applied to the officer involved" after the department's review of the encounter. Elser said the department never issued her a formal apology. Elser later testified before the Colorado General Assembly in support of Senate Bill 70, which would require a warrant for police access to historical ALPR data. On April 30, 2026, 9News reported that an effort to require a warrant to search a location tracking database like Flock had failed in the Colorado legislature this week.

Colwich, Kansas: duplicate plate numbers across plate designs

Matthew and Leah Spurlock's minivan carried a University of Kansas alumni plate numbered 7007. A stolen GMC pickup carried a temporary tag reading Kansas 7007, the same number on a different plate background. KAKE reported that the problem for Kansas drivers is that the state duplicates numbers across its plate designs, so one alphanumeric combination can appear on more than one plate.

Colwich police and a Sedgwick County sheriff's car made the first stop, and Colwich police said the wrong plate type had been entered into the system. About a month later officers stopped the couple again outside a casino in Catoosa, Oklahoma. KAKE wrote that the Spurlocks described a pullover like none other in their lives with officers pointing drawn guns at them.

Wichita Police Captain Casey Slaughter told KAKE that the reader cannot distinguish one plate design from another, saying of a disabled tag and a veteran's tag that it doesn't know the difference between those two. On what an alert is worth on its own, Slaughter said:

We can stop a car with reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Flock is more like the hunch.

Once a plate has been listed as stolen, he said, There's really no other recourse, at this point, for anybody.

Facial recognition false identification

Peppermill Casino facial recognition wrongful arrest

On September 17, 2023, Jason Killinger, a long-haul UPS truck driver, was wrongfully arrested at the Peppermill Casino in Reno, Nevada. Killinger entered the Peppermill Casino during a work trip. Casino security detained him based on a facial recognition alert identifying him as Michael Ellis, who had been issued a six-month trespass ban in March 2023 for sleeping on the premises. Ellis's ban was set to expire on September 26, 2023, nine days after the arrest. The AI system reportedly indicated a "100% match" in spite of large physical differences between the two men.

Killinger showed the casino several forms of identification to prove his identity. This included his Nevada driver's license, a UPS payslip from his employer, and his vehicle registration. All of these documents matched his true identity. According to his subsequent lawsuit, Killinger protested that he was not Ellis, but casino security did not believe him and called the police.

Released police records and driver's license images showed the two men differed in height by four inches and had different eye colors (blue vs. hazel), differences the facial recognition system failed to account for:

Characteristic	Jason Killinger	Michael Ellis
Height	Four inches taller than Ellis
Eye color	Blue	Hazel

In his police report, Officer Richard Jager dismissed the eye color discrepancy, writing that blue and hazel eyes are by their very nature similar eye colors and are dependent upon lighting. The report also noted that Ellis had larger ears than Killinger.

Officer Jager arrived at the casino. According to Killinger's lawsuit, he rejected the valid ID documents. Killinger alleges in court filings that Jager accused him of having a DMV hook-up to fabricate the documents. In his police report, Jager wrote that Killinger had conflicting identification and that he lacked satisfactory evidence to reasonably assure me that he was who he claimed to be, despite all identification documents matching the name Jason Killinger.

Bodycam footage released in late 2025 captured Jager stating:

"I have a feeling he's somehow making some fake identification or something."

Jager handcuffed Killinger and transported him to the police station. Killinger was detained for about 11 hours before fingerprint analysis proved he was not Michael Ellis.

Killinger has since settled a claim with the Peppermill Casino for an undisclosed amount. His federal lawsuit against Officer Jager, Killinger v. Jager, Case No. 3:25-cv-00388-MMD-CSD, remains active in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.

In a deposition reported in January 2026, Officer Jager acknowledged that the arrest never should have happened and stated that post-lawsuit training had clarified that facial recognition technology cannot serve as the sole basis for probable cause, but should instead be treated as an investigative lead only requiring further corroboration. Following the deposition, Killinger's attorney moved to add the City of Reno as a defendant, arguing that Jager's testimony demonstrated systemic failure to train officers on the limitations of AI facial recognition technology.

The lawsuit alleges that Jager's actions violated Killinger's Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. Killinger alleges that Jager failed to use the police department's own fingerprint technology in a timely manner and omitted the fingerprint exoneration from his official report. He is seeking compensatory, special, and punitive damages; the lawsuit does not specify the amounts sought. Discovery in the case has been extended to July 2026, with motions due by August 2026.

Common ALPR error mechanisms

These incidents illustrate how ALPR systems generate misidentifications through multiple mechanisms:

• Plate misreads: OCR (optical character recognition) errors confuse similar characters (O/0, I/1, B/8, 2/7), causing the system to flag vehicles that match stolen vehicle databases or warrant lists.
• Cross-state confusion: Systems incorrectly match vehicles from different states or confuse vehicle types (such as matching car plates to motorcycle registrations).
• Cloned plates: Criminals using stolen or duplicated license plates create false associations between innocent vehicles and criminal activity.
• Stale data: Vehicles recovered from theft or resolved warrant cases remain in hot lists, triggering alerts on lawful owners.

Law enforcement misuse and stalking incidents

Documented cases show that law enforcement officers have misused ALPR systems, including Flock Safety cameras, to track individuals for personal, non-investigative purposes such as stalking romantic partners or civilians. These incidents have raised concerns about lack of internal oversight, auditing practices, and the concentration of surveillance power in individual user accounts.

In Menasha, Wisconsin, police officer Cristian Morales was charged in January 2026 with misconduct in office after prosecutors alleged he used the department's Flock ALPR system to track his ex-girlfriend. According to the criminal complaint, Morales tried to use the system five different times to search for his ex-partner's vehicle in October 2025. Court filings state that Morales acknowledged knowing the searches were improper and attributed them to desperation & a lack of judgment. He was placed on administrative leave, barred from accessing Flock systems, and released on a $10,000 cash bond pending further proceedings. A parallel civil filing seeking a temporary restraining order in a domestic abuse case was also lodged against Morales.

The Menasha case is one in what has become a national pattern. In Kansas, Kechi Police Lieutenant Victor Heiar was arrested in October 2022 on charges of stalking and unlawful acts concerning computers after using Flock cameras to monitor his estranged wife's movements. In a separate Kansas case, Sedgwick Police Chief Lee Nygaard admitted in 2024 to using Flock ALPR data 164 times to track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner, leading to his resignation and surrender of his law enforcement certification.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer Christopher Young was arrested in December 2023 for stalking his ex-fiancée using police databases. Investigations by the Associated Press and others have found that such misuse often remains undetected until a victim files a complaint or an external audit occurs.

CNN reported in July 2026 that Milwaukee officer Josue Ayala was found by internal affairs detectives to have secretly used Flock to learn the location of his romantic partner 124 times and that partner's ex 55 times, according to a February criminal complaint. The detective who investigated him, Tehrangi Chapman, was later charged with felony misconduct in public office & misdemeanor misuse of a GPS device, after admitting to using Flock to track two people & to installing a GPS device on one person's vehicle. CNN reported that officers using Flock had to write a brief explanation of the reason for conducting a search, but these explanations were vague, & that Ayala gave his reason as investigation while Chapman listed training & test. CNN reported the incidents sit among at least two dozen cases in which officers resigned or were arrested for allegedly abusing Flock's automated license-plate reader system to stalk romantic interests, according to a tally from the Institute for Justice. Flock chief executive Garrett Langley told CNN, This is such a powerful tool, we don't want to reduce the efficacy of the 99.99% of officers who go to work every single day and want to do good for their community.

Atlanta News First reported in July 2026 that it identified at least 20 cases in Georgia in the past year in which officers faced discipline and/or criminal allegations tied to improper use of the Flock system. One of them was Paige Forte, a supervisor at the Conyers Police Department real-time crime center, whom the Georgia Bureau of Investigation alleged had accessed the system for non-law enforcement purposes more than thirty times between April & July 2026.

Flock has pointed to those same audit logs as the mechanism that catches misuse. Company spokesperson Paris Lewbel told Atlanta News First that Flock's audit tools have proven effective at enabling accountability, in many of the rare documented cases of misuse of our platform, it was our own audit logs that surfaced the issue. The same reporting found that the logs had become less informative: Atlanta News First Investigates found that Flock has removed officer names from audit logs where outside agencies search a department's data, replacing the officer names with anonymized Flock ID numbers. Lewbel attributed the change to activists using publicly released audit data to identify undercover officers, saying nearly 200 law enforcement leaders had raised the concern.

Two Kansas prosecutions are documented by case number in a petition filed in Sedgwick County. Former Kechi police lieutenant Victor Heiar was found guilty of unlawful use of computers & stalking in State v. Heiar, Case No. 2022-CR-001620. The Kansas Reflector reported he was sentenced to eighteen months on probation. Former Bonner Springs detective Kyle Rector was charged with eighteen counts including stalking, unlawful use of computers, breach of privacy & official misconduct, in State v. Rector, Case No. WY-2026-CR-000309.

Researchers and civil liberties organizations have documented audit findings and policy gaps in agency oversight of ALPR access. While vendors and agencies rely on access logs and written policies, audits have found that these safeguards have not consistently prevented or detected misuse.

The Virginia State Crime Commission's 2025 survey found that despite statutory restrictions on sharing, twenty Virginia law enforcement agencies were still providing continuous access to out-of-state agencies and nine were providing continuous access to federal agencies. Town police departments and primary sheriff's offices accounted for the majority of non-compliant sharing.

"No expectation of privacy in public"

Here, a prominent tech YouTuber claims that the 1st Amendment means no privacy in public spaces.

A common objection to constitutional challenges of automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems is the argument that individuals have no expectation of privacy when in a public place. The Supreme Court of the United States has instead applied a reasonable expectation of privacy standard under the Fourth Amendment, set out in the decisions quoted below.

The "reasonable" standard in Fourth Amendment law

The Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures," not all searches. The constitutional analysis turns on whether surveillance violates a person's "reasonable expectation of privacy." This considers the nature, scope, and how intrusive the government monitoring is.

In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the argument that venturing into public eliminates Fourth Amendment protection. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the government's access to 127 days of cell-site location data, tracking movements on public roads, achieved near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone's user. The Court said,

A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.

Distinction between isolated observation and citywide surveillance systems

Opinions in the cases below draw a line between isolated police observation & large-scale automated tracking. In United States v. Jones (2012), Justice Sonia Sotomayor's influential concurrence explained that GPS tracking:

generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person's public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.

She noted that automated surveillance:

evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices: limited police resources and community hostility.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court applied this reasoning to ALPR technology in Commonwealth v. McCarthy (2020), holding:

With enough cameras in enough locations, the historic location data from an ALPR system in Massachusetts would invade a reasonable expectation of privacy and would constitute a search for constitutional purposes.

The court distinguished limited camera deployment from citywide networks, noting that widespread ALPR use would bring into question constitutional protections even though individual license plate observations would not.

Mosaic theory

Commentators use the term mosaic theory for the idea that aggregating many individually innocuous observations can amount to a search. Justice Samuel Alito noted in his Jones concurrence that:

society's expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not; and indeed, in the main, simply could not; secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual's car for a very long period.

In United States v. Knotts (1983), while holding that limited beeper (a radio-emitting surveillance device) tracking did not constitute a search, the Supreme Court wrote that if such dragnet type law enforcement practices as respondent envisions should eventually occur, there will be time enough then to determine whether different constitutional principles may be applicable.

Litigation on citywide ALPR networks

Privacy advocates Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington challenged Norfolk's 176-camera Flock Safety ALPR network as unconstitutional. Federal judge Mark S. Davis initially denied a motion to dismiss the case in February 2025, finding that plaintiffs had stated a plausible Fourth Amendment claim. During discovery, it emerged that Schmidt's location was logged 526 times and Arrington's was logged 849 times between February and July 2025.

However, on January 27, 2026, Judge Davis granted summary judgment in favor of the City, ruling that Norfolk's ALPR system did not violate the Fourth Amendment. In a 51-page opinion, Davis concluded that the plaintiffs could not demonstrate that the system was capable of tracking the entirety of a person's movements. The court found that although the cameras captured snapshots of daily life, they did not continuously track individuals or capture sufficient data to reconstruct whole routines, noting "sizable gaps" between photographs.

Notably, Judge Davis cautioned that the constitutional analysis could change as ALPR technology expands. He wrote that ALPR surveillance could become too intrusive and run afoul of [constitutional privacy standards] at some point, but concluded that at least in Norfolk, Virginia, the answer is: not today. The plaintiffs, represented by the Institute for Justice, announced their intention to appeal, with Schmidt stating he remained committed to fighting against what he described as "dragnet warrantless surveillance."

Flock Safety's chief legal officer responded that the decision aligned with rulings by over 30 state and federal courts concluding that fixed-location ALPRs do not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment.

Legal scholars note that U.S. law enforcement scanned 2.5 billion license plates between 2016 and 2017, with 99.5% belonging to vehicles unassociated with criminal activity, illustrating the dragnet nature of modern ALPR deployment that distinguishes it from traditional targeted surveillance methods.

Scale and the reasonableness analysis

Real-world deployments show the scale: Denver operates 111 cameras scanning approximately 2 million license plates monthly; Norfolk's 176 cameras provide citywide coverage; and Austin's system scanned approximately 75 million plates from March through December 2024.

"It only reads license plates, not people"

A frequent defense of ALPR deployments is that the cameras photograph license plates, which are public and registered to vehicles rather than to people, so the systems track cars and not individuals.

Automatic license plate reader vendors have begun marketing sensors that tie the wireless devices a person carries to the vehicle's plate. Leonardo's ELSAG SignalTrace, a sensor add-on patented in 2024 and marketed from 2025, captures the identifiers that phones, earbuds, smartwatches, and other devices broadcast and correlates the devices that repeatedly travel with a vehicle into an "electronic fingerprint" tied to its plate. Reporting on the product for 404 Media, Joseph Cox wrote that it:

would turn ALPR cameras from devices focused on tracking cars to ones that can more readily track the location of particular people.

Leonardo's own announcement framed the capability the same way. Jason Laquatra, general manager of Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions, said:

The future of LPR advancements is reliant on enhancing LPR data sets with additional information from various electronic devices to find the individuals police are looking for.

The company says the system reads only publicly broadcast signals and "does not decrypt or capture the contents of the devices or their communications." SignalTrace is made by Leonardo, not Flock. The June 2026 reporting described it as a capability cameras would soon carry rather than one any agency had yet deployed.

"Cameras reduce crime"

A common argument for ALPR deployments is that the cameras reduce or deter crime, a rationale officials invoke to justify keeping them in service. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston extended the city's Flock Safety contract a second time in October 2025 through an administrative move that bypassed a City Council vote, an extension the city characterized as no-cost and running through March 31, 2026.

Denver's city-run network went dark soon afterward. The Flock contract expired on March 31, 2026, and on a 7-6 vote that day the City Council approved a $150,000 yearlong contract with Axon to replace it; Council President Amanda Sandoval voted in favor. The city decommissioned and removed all 110 Flock license plate reader cameras. The 50 Axon cameras were to be installed over the following weeks, so the city-run ALPR network was dark during that gap, though private Flock cameras stayed in operation across Denver.

Denverite reported that the Denver City Council approved a $150,000 yearlong Axon license plate camera contract on a 7-6 vote, replacing the city's former Flock system.

Denver Open Data's police crime feature service shows motor vehicle theft in the city falling from about 430 in April 2025 to about 301 in April 2026, roughly a 30% decrease, during the month the city's network was offline (Denver Open Data, pulled June 14, 2026). 9NEWS, which obtained the data through a public-records request, reported 439 vehicles stolen in April 2025 (cameras on) versus 313 in April 2026 (cameras off), a 29% decrease, and a drop in auto-theft cases cleared by arrest from 13% to 3%.

The Denver Open Data police crime dataset, drawn from Denver Police NIBRS records, is the source queried for the April 2025 and April 2026 motor vehicle theft counts.

The comparison is not conclusive on its own. The clearance figures move the other way, and the Denver figures cover a single month. The Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority's Cale Gould attributed the statewide auto-theft decline to a combination of factors rather than cameras alone, telling the Denver Gazette, It wasn't one thing that changed, but collectively everything. The same reporting credited 2023 changes to Colorado law, including Senate Bill 23-097, which made motor vehicle theft a felony regardless of the vehicle's value.

The Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority's Cale Gould told the Denver Gazette that the statewide car theft decline came from a combination of factors, It wasn't one thing that changed, but collectively everything.

State legislative responses: Virginia

Virginia became one of the first states to enact statewide ALPR regulation when legislation establishing statewide standards for law enforcement use of ALPR took effect on July 1, 2025. Before this date, Virginia had no statewide statutory or regulatory framework governing law enforcement use of ALPR, meaning agencies could operate the technology without any statewide limitations on use, data retention, or data sharing.

Overview of Virginia's 2025 ALPR law

Under the new statute (Virginia House Bill 2724, codified at Va. Code Ann. § 2.2-5517), law enforcement agencies in Virginia may only use ALPR for criminal investigations, active investigations into missing or endangered persons or human trafficking, and notifications related to missing or endangered persons, outstanding warrants, human trafficking, stolen vehicles, or stolen license plates.

The law requires ALPR data to be purged after 21 days unless needed for an ongoing investigation, prosecution, or civil action. It also restricts data sharing to other Virginia law enforcement agencies, Commonwealth's Attorneys, criminal defendants or their counsel, ALPR vendors, or pursuant to a court order. The statute does not permit data sharing with out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies.

Compliance findings from the Virginia State Crime Commission

In January 2026, the Virginia State Crime Commission published the findings of a statewide survey of all 361 Virginia law enforcement agencies on their use of ALPR. The survey, conducted in November 2025 to capture practices after the new legislation took effect, received responses from 251 agencies (70%). Of responding agencies, 63% (159 of 251) reported using ALPR. A large majority, 86% (137 of 159), reported Flock Safety as their ALPR vendor.

The Crime Commission found that some agencies were not complying with the new statutory requirements:

• Data retention violations: 21% (33 of 159) of agencies using ALPR reported retaining data beyond the statutory 21-day limit. Reported retention periods for fixed cameras ranged from 22 to 60 days; for mobile cameras, 30 to 180 days.

• Unauthorized data sharing with federal and out-of-state agencies: Despite the statute prohibiting such sharing, 13% (20 of 159) of agencies reported providing continuous access to out-of-state law enforcement agencies, and 6% (9 of 159) reported providing continuous access to federal law enforcement agencies.

• No written ALPR policy: 16% (26 of 159) of agencies using ALPR reported having no policy on ALPR use, despite the statutory requirement to maintain one. An additional 9% (14 of 159) reported being in the process of implementing a policy.

• No public awareness measures: 35% (55 of 159) of agencies reported taking no public awareness measures regarding their ALPR use, despite statutory requirements to promote public awareness.

• Non-response: Almost one-third of law enforcement agencies did not respond to the survey at all, meaning their ALPR use and compliance status remain unknown.

The Crime Commission's report stated that the Chair, Delegate Charniele Herring, planned to send letters to agencies whose survey responses indicated non-compliance with the new law, as well as to non-responding agencies.

Data sharing concerns

Virginia's experience reflects a national pattern of concerns over ALPR data sharing. A September 2025 investigation by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism found that before the new law took effect, federal agencies had attempted to access local Virginia ALPR data thousands of times for immigration enforcement purposes, and one small town's Flock network data had been searched nearly 7 million times by outside agencies in a single year. At least two Virginia localities, Charlottesville and Staunton, subsequently ended their use of Flock Safety cameras, citing concerns about federal data sharing.

As of early 2026, at least 30 localities across the United States have either deactivated Flock cameras or canceled their contracts, driven in part by concerns over privacy and federal agency access to locally collected ALPR data.

Revolving door: surveillance vendor hiring of public officials

Multiple documented cases have raised concerns about Flock Safety's practice of hiring current or recently departed public officials who hold or held influence over the procurement of the company's products.

Cleveland, Ohio: former council majority leader joins Flock

Kerry McCormack, the Ward 3 council member and Majority Leader of the Cleveland City Council, announced his resignation on September 11, 2025. He left office in early October 2025. He joined Flock Safety immediately afterward as public affairs lead for the eastern United States. No reporting has identified a gap between his departure from office and his start date at Flock.

In late October 2025, the Bibb administration introduced Ordinance 1367-2025 to Cleveland City Council: an emergency ordinance authorizing a contract with Flock Group, Inc. dba Flock Safety for a period up to three years.

The administration justified the sole-source designation on two grounds: that Flock was the only vendor offering the specific integrated bundle of services, and that the contract piggybacked on a pre-negotiated Ohio state term purchasing agreement. At the November 14, 2025 Safety Committee hearing, ShotSpotter representatives attended and stated on the record that they offer competing products capable of fulfilling the same requirements & wanted an opportunity to bid.

How the emergency and bidding bypass works

Cleveland Charter § 36 defines an emergency measure as an ordinance or resolution for the "immediate preservation of the public peace, property, health, or safety" or for the "usual daily operation of a Municipal department." Combined with the § 33 rule suspension mechanism, an emergency designation bypasses the normal three-reading requirement and the 30-day waiting period before a measure takes effect. Emergency passage requires a two-thirds supermajority of all elected council members.

Charter § 108 requires competitive bidding for contracts exceeding $50,000, with an exception for cooperative purchasing arrangements with other governmental agencies. Professional services contracts are exempt from sealed bidding but are still expected to go through a Request for Proposals process per the Division of Purchases and Supplies. The Bibb administration issued neither a formal bid nor an RFP for the Flock expansion.

Ohio revolving door law and its limitations

Ohio Revised Code § 102.03(A)(1) bars former public officials for twelve months from representing any person or entity before any public agency on any "matter" in which the official personally participated during their public service.

However, R.C. 102.03(A)(5) excludes from the definition of matter the proposal, consideration, or enactment of statutes, rules, ordinances, resolutions, or charter or constitutional amendments. Ordinance 1367-2025 was legislation requiring formal consideration by City Council, & the statute excludes legislative matters from the definition of matter that the twelve-month ban uses.

Cleveland has no local revolving-door ordinance, no lobbying registration requirement, and no cooling-off period of its own. Chapter 171 of the Cleveland Codified Ordinances covers employment provisions such as hours of work and overtime, not ethics or lobbying.

McCormack told Signal Cleveland that he "did not seek an opinion from the Ohio Ethics Commission" and was voluntarily observing the one-year rule as a best practice. However, News 5 Cleveland's investigators obtained McCormack's emails through a public records request and reported that he did contact the Ohio Ethics Commission about restrictions approximately one month before leaving office.

McCormack's one-year recusal from Cleveland matters is voluntary and self-enforced. It is not a Flock corporate policy. McCormack stated: Whether I have a defined legal conflict or not, regardless, it's best practice I think to sit out [for] a year from engaging the city of Cleveland.

Council member Rebecca Maurer stated at a Safety Committee hearing: "I hope you understand the hesitancy I have given a member of this body just departed to take a job at Flock that we now have a sole source contract without an RFP process."

Status of the Cleveland contract

Cleveland's ShotSpotter contract expires in April 2026 and the existing Flock automated license plate reader contract expires in June 2026. The Bibb administration proposed bundling both into a single expanded Flock contract covering cameras, license plate readers, gunshot detection, and audio monitoring, all through one vendor on a sole-source basis.

Council refused to advance the legislation. Fox 8 reported that council will not move forward until a full review is conducted and a request for proposals has been issued.

The Bibb administration then asked Safety Committee Chair Michael Polensek to shelve the expansion before year-end 2025. No public explanation was given. Polensek counter-proposed issuing a request for qualification.

As of March 2026, Ordinance 1367-2025 sits on indefinite hold in the Safety Committee. No vote has been scheduled, no RFP has been issued, and no RFQ has been completed. Approximately 100 Flock license plate reader cameras remain active across Cleveland.

A grassroots group called Flockno delivered a letter with 275 signatures to City Hall demanding the city cut ties with Flock entirely and remove existing cameras when the June contract expires. News 5 reported the petition had gathered nearly 300 signatures total. Organizer Bryn Adams stated: "We want to ask the city to remove, not renew."

Moreno Valley, California: Flock hired a sitting mayor

In February 2024, Flock Safety hired Ulises Cabrera, the sitting mayor of Moreno Valley, California (population 200,000+), as a Community Engagement Manager. A Flock job posting for the position listed a salary of $100,000 to $140,000 plus stock options. The role was intended to guide law enforcement customers through the public procurement process in collaboration with Flock's sales team. Cabrera had previously voted as mayor to fund a citywide Flock camera system in Moreno Valley.

During his time at Flock, Cabrera gave presentations promoting the company's technology at city council meetings in at least two other jurisdictions: Whitewater, Kansas and Mammoth Lakes, California.

Cabrera v. Flock Safety

In November 2024, Cabrera filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Flock Safety. According to the complaint, approximately two weeks after Cabrera started working at Flock, an employee requested that he use his position as mayor of Moreno Valley to benefit the company. Cabrera alleges he refused, forwarded the request to his legal counsel while copying the Flock employee, and that the employee immediately began exhibiting retaliatory behavior. Flock terminated Cabrera in June 2024. He worked at Flock from February to June 2024.

Cabrera also alleges he raised concerns that Flock was underreporting the number of surveillance cameras installed in Carmel-by-the-Sea. A separate Forbes investigation published in February 2024 found that Flock camera installations broke laws in at least five states, including by installing cameras without proper permits.

Flock categorically denies all of Cabrera's allegations and says its hire of a sitting mayor complied with California conflict-of-interest regulations.

California conflict-of-interest law

California Government Code § 1090 prohibits public officers from being financially interested in any contract made by the body or board of which they are members. The complaint in Cabrera v. Flock Safety describes a sitting mayor receiving a salary & stock options from the vendor during a period when his city council approved that vendor's contracts.

While campaigning for reelection in November 2024, Cabrera's campaign website cited his earlier vote to fund Moreno Valley's Flock system, but did not disclose that he had subsequently worked for Flock while serving as mayor.

Comparison of Cleveland and Moreno Valley ethics gaps

Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, stated that the allegations in the Moreno Valley case "add to the growing body of evidence that American surveillance is fueled by a broken revolving door between industry and government."

The Cleveland and Moreno Valley cases illustrate different but related gaps in ethics law. In Ohio, the state revolving-door statute excludes legislative matters from the cooling-off period. California Government Code § 1090 bars public officers from being financially interested in contracts made by the body they serve. Cleveland has no local lobbying registration or cooling-off ordinance. On the California statute, The Desert Sun reported that the law bars public officials from making decisions based on their own financial interests, including as employees in private companies. But it doesn't prohibit them from taking private sector jobs.

See also

• Flock license plate readers
• Flock Safety
• Leonardo ELSAG SignalTrace