Key Takeaways
- The LAPD has suspended its use of Flock Safety's automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) due to unresolved data privacy and sharing concerns.
- The LAPD Inspector General's audit revealed that contracts with three vendors lack adequate protections for the massive troves of data collected on millions of vehicles.
- Flock's 138 pole-mounted cameras in Los Angeles will remain offline until a new contract with stricter data governance is finalized.
- The suspension comes amid broader scrutiny of Flock's data-sharing practices with federal agencies, including ICE, which critics say could enable immigration enforcement.
- Despite the pause, the LAPD's overall ALPR network—including Axon and other vendors—continues to operate under existing agreements.
Introduction
The Los Angeles Police Department has abruptly paused its use of Flock Safety's automatic license plate reader cameras, citing serious privacy and data security concerns. The move follows a scathing audit by the LAPD's Office of Inspector General, which found that the department lacks formal contracts with multiple ALPR vendors, leaving sensitive data vulnerable to misuse.
Why the LAPD Pulled the Plug on Flock
On July 11, 2026, LAPD Chief Information Officer Dean Gialamas announced the suspension, effective immediately, as the three-year agreement with Flock expired. “The sticking point is around having very clear terms about who owns the data, what happens with the data once they collect it,” Gialamas told reporters. The LAPD said it will not resume using Flock's 138 pole-mounted cameras until a new contract with robust privacy and security provisions is signed. The LAPD is specifically seeking to implement civil penalties against Flock if user data is shared with outside agencies that do not comply with local and state laws, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company, expressed surprise at the decision. A company spokesperson stated, “We are confident that through ongoing discussions with LAPD, we can clear up the current misconceptions that led to today's disappointing pause.” Flock maintains that its technology complies with California law limiting data sharing with federal authorities. In a statement, Flock added: “Flock has been working with LAPD to ensure that any continued use of our technology included strong privacy protections, strict auditability, clear accountability, and appropriate limits around data access.”
LAPD officials said the department does not use Flock's cameras to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “The use is strictly for law enforcement purposes, and it is inherently not for any immigration purposes,” Gialamas said. “So the cameras can be searched. If there's criminal activity, there needs to be an active case, users have to be registered in the system, trained in the system.”
LAPD says Flock Safety's cameras are audited and inspected for compliance regularly and stored data is kept between seven and 30 days before it's deleted. The cameras have drawn mixed reactions from residents. Some support the surveillance technology, while others argue it violates privacy rights. LAPD officials said those concerns influenced the department's decision not to renew the agreement.
In a statement on July 13, LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman confirmed the non-renewal, saying, “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 department's Board of Police Commissioners was scheduled to hear a report on the matter at a meeting on July 14.
Public concerns over the LAPD's use of Flock cameras intensified after an October 2025 report by the University of Washington's Center for Human Rights, which said Flock had tested an information-sharing program that allowed federal agencies to access license plate data collected by local agencies without knowledge or consent from those agencies.
Other jurisdictions, including South Pasadena, Santa Cruz, Hillsborough (North Carolina), and Flagstaff (Arizona), have either ended or suspended their relationships with Flock, according to the Inspector General's report.
Before the Board of Police Commissioners meeting on July 14, members of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition planned to rally outside LAPD headquarters to demand the department permanently end its use of ALPR technology. The coalition, which has previously sued the department over these cameras, views the suspension as proof that pushback against invasive surveillance is working.
Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has been a frequent attendee at weekly Board of Police Commissions meetings as a result of their campaign to end LAPD collaborations with Flock Safety. The coalition routinely raised concerns around data-sharing between Flock, LAPD, and federal agencies. In particular, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition sounded the alarm week after week about the ways in which Flock enabled the Trump regime’s deportation machine by providing detailed data to ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). An investigation by CalMatters in 2025 revealed that Southern California police departments — including LAPD — illegally shared data from Flock Safety cameras illegally with ICE and CBP more than 100 times. These departments searched Flock Safety databases on behalf of federal agencies and logged the reasons for the searches as ‘CBP’ or ‘HSI’ – Homeland Security Investigations.
During a press conference on July 14, Miriam Arghandiwal with the Boycott Home Depot Coalition stated that Flock cameras played a direct role in the CBP-led cluster raids at Home Depot parking lots in 2025 and early 2026. These raids targeted day laborers who usually congregate in Home Depot lots as they look for work. “[ICE and CBP] use surveillance to harass and monitor day laborers, with the abductees saying they are followed two to three days visibly before being picked up,” Arghandiwal said.
Day laborers are not the only victims of stalking and violence as a result of increased government and private surveillance. In a 2026 needs assessment conducted by LACAN, women living on Skid Row named gender-based violence as a regular experience when interacting with LAPD. Violent incidents will only increase as ballooning police budgets afford officers more tools to stalk and surveil them. “[LAPD] would rather fund policing and tracking us rather than providing us real safety,” said Leticia Frederick with the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition and LACAN. “Flock has been used as a tool to racially profile our communities. All these actions are to contain and control us, not to serve and protect us.”
In a previous press conference on March 3, LACAN director Monique Noel stated that women living on Skid Row identified police harassment, stalking, and police brutality as some of their greatest threats to safety. “Women are sleeping and dying on sidewalks. Mothers are in soul-breaking battles to get their children back, because apparently poverty makes you an unfit mother. People are starving in our communities,” Noel said. “Why is there always money for surveillance but never enough for housing?”
Flock Safety’s harms against women and queer people extends beyond Los Angeles. Police departments have demonstrated themselves to be untrustworthy and violent in the ways they handle and use ALPR data. In Costa Mesa, police officer Robert Jay Josett used the city’s Flock Safety database to track his mistress’s vehicle with the intent of following her. He later pleaded guilty to harassment and was terminated from the police force. In February of this year, Riverside County sheriff’s deputy Alexander Ravy Vanny was sentenced to six years in prison for felony and misdemeanor charges, including stalking and misuse of protected electronic data. Using ALPR data, Vanny tracked his ex-partner’s location to a bar, confronted her, then forcibly threw her into his vehicle.
Inspector General's Findings: A System Without Safeguards
The Inspector General's report, released on July 10, 2026, painted a troubling picture. The LAPD operates approximately 2,000 ALPR devices—including pole-mounted, vehicle-mounted, and in-car cameras—that capture hundreds of millions of images annually. Yet, the department has no formal contracts with its three primary vendors: Flock, Axon, and a third unnamed provider. “The absence of formal agreements is particularly concerning given the growing national concern over third-party access to ALPR data,” the report states.
The audit also revealed that the LAPD has not conducted a thorough audit of ALPR usage since 2022. When NBCLA requested records under the California Public Records Act in 2025, the LAPD said it had no such documents. The Inspector General recommended suspending new ALPR deployments and contract executions until public input and a broader reassessment of data practices occur.
According to the report, the LAPD's ALPR system includes 248 pole-mounted cameras, 140 cameras mounted on police vehicle roofs, 1,500 cameras installed inside police vehicles, and seven mobile trailer cameras. Inspector General Matthew Barragan recommended that any new contracts go through the Board of Police Commissioners, regardless of whether the agreement includes an exchange of funds. “Contracts or agreements shall establish enforceable requirements governing data security, privacy, access controls, retention and auditing to protect Department ALPR data and ensure accountability for its collection, use and disclosure,” the report said.
The Office of Inspector General said there are 298 automatic license plate readers mounted on poles throughout the city and more than 1,600 ALPRs mounted on top of or inside LAPD cars. The largest concentration of cameras is in West LA. LAPD has ALPR contracts with two other companies: Axon and Motorola. Officers said those contracts remain active because the companies have more stringent data safeguards. The deals will expire in 2027.
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.
An internal review that found repeated mistakes in AI-generated stolen-vehicle alerts is pushing the LAPD away from Flock. According to ABC News, the department said it will allow its agreement with Flock to expire rather than renew it, citing public concerns about privacy, civil rights, and the data collected by the cameras. The July 10 audit by the LAPD Office of the Inspector General found 161 incorrect stolen-vehicle alerts from the department's license plate reader cameras during a two-month period. Every one of those mistaken alerts led officers to stop a driver whose car had not been stolen. With 337 alerts resulting in stolen-vehicle recoveries, the system still posted a 32.3% error rate, as Futurism observed — meaning nearly one in three stops connected to these alerts involved an innocent person. A case in Minnesota underscored that risk. The Drive's Joel Feder wrote that police descended on him and his wife while they were test-driving a Range Rover after Flock had wrongly marked the vehicle as stolen. The LAPD inspector general's audit stated: "In addition to creating an inconvenience for vehicle owners, these inaccuracies can affect individual liberty interests, erode public trust, and potentially create substantial legal and financial liability concerns."
Local California Context: A City Divided Over Surveillance
Los Angeles has become a battleground over automated license plate readers. While the LAPD credits the system with recovering at least 337 stolen cars and making dozens of felony arrests in just two months last year, privacy advocates warn of mission creep. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado introduced a motion in May 2026 urging the Police Commission to halt all new Flock agreements, citing fears that data could be shared with federal immigration authorities under President Trump's crackdown. In late May, Jurado's motion specifically asked the Board of Police Commissioners to “refrain from entering into any new Memoranda of Understanding, Contracts, or other Agreements, or implement any pilot programs with Flock Safety or its affiliates.”
Protests have erupted outside LAPD headquarters, with demonstrators demanding an end to what they call “mass surveillance.” At the same time, homeowner associations and some elected officials have pressured the city to expand the camera network, arguing it is a vital crime-fighting tool.
Background: Flock's Controversial Track Record
Flock Safety has faced backlash nationwide. In February 2026, Mountain View, California, turned off its 30 Flock cameras after discovering that federal and state law enforcement had accessed city data in violation of local policies. The city council later terminated its contract. Similar concerns have led smaller cities across the country to sever ties with the company.
Flock contracts with roughly 5,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. Critics argue that its data-sharing practices—even when technically compliant with state law—create a backdoor for federal agencies like ICE to access local surveillance networks without warrants.
Flock has also faced scrutiny following several security lapses that have exposed cameras and data, which in one case allowed independent news outlet 404 Media to watch themselves live on publicly exposed Flock cameras. Lawmakers have also urged federal consumer authorities to investigate Flock for failing to implement measures that would prevent hackers and spies from gaining access to its security cameras, warning that many of the police user logins are not protected with multi-factor authentication. 404 Media also reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration used a local police officer’s password without their knowledge to search for a suspect accused of an immigration violation.
Researchers have identified an uptick in documented cases of motorists being pulled over, detained, and held at gunpoint by police, or jailed, due to false positives and errors with license plate readers. Last week, a journalist with car reviews and news website The Drive detailed how he was tracked for days and later boxed-in by police after a Flock camera mistakenly flagged the license plate of the on-loan review unit he was driving as stolen.
LAPD's announcement comes several months after the Ventura County Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies in their jurisdiction explored alternative vendors for automatic license plate readers after learning that Flock had inadvertently shared their data with out-of-state law enforcement agencies, including federal agents. An audit found that out-of-state agencies accessed data from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office more than 364,000 times between February and March of last year without the department's approval or knowledge. Deputies said 299 justifications to enter the system referenced immigration enforcement, which is less than 1% of the hundreds of thousands of searches. The company told deputies that someone at the Sheriff's Office or a Flock employee could have reactivated the "National Look Up" feature, or that a system bug could have automatically activated it. In response, the Sheriff's Office said, "We conducted an internal investigation and determined that no one from our agency activated the national lookup feature." Flock said it made internal improvements to their system to prevent the same issue.
In July, at about the same time as the LAPD, Costa Mesa city leaders said they would reconsider their use of Flock ALPRs amid similar complaints about privacy and the sharing of information with the federal government.
Los Angeles is the largest police department to break with Flock. The company already has lost contracts in communities such as Seattle; Austin, Texas; Eugene, Oregon; Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Dayton, Ohio.
In recent months, ALPR cameras have become increasingly controversial due to reports of Flock sharing its data with immigration police and a local department’s use of the data to investigate a woman suspected of having an abortion. Flock also was used to track protestors in several cities.
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.
In a similar incident, Evanston, Ill., halted Flock camera usage after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias alleged the company violated state law by giving U.S. Customs and Border Protection access to cameras as part of a “pilot program.”
An audit by Oxnard, Calif., officials revealed Flock enabled a “nationwide query” giving outside agencies access to the city’s police department data without its approval or knowledge, despite the department setting security precautions to the contrary.
Renegotiation and New Contract Terms
Less than a week after the LAPD announced it had halted its relationship with Flock Safety, police officials said they are working out a new agreement — this time with more protections in place. Cmdr. Randy Goddard, who runs the LAPD’s information technology bureau, told the Police Commission on July 14 that department employees no longer had regular access to data collected by the company, but that information is being stored in the cloud and could be obtained by LAPD investigators in the future if a new contract is finalized.
Goddard said the department let its previous operating agreement with Flock lapse because of lingering questions over who owns the data collected by the company’s plate readers and who has access to it. Under the language in the department’s proposed new contract with Flock, the LAPD would retain ownership of “every image, every record, all metadata” from data captured on the cameras. Goddard said Flock would not be allowed to “sell, publish, disclose or share” any of the data to any outside entity or use them to train artificial intelligence or other commercial uses. Under the proposal, the company would also have to alert the city in writing within 24 hours of any data breach.
Dean Gialamas, the LAPD’s chief information officer, said Flock sent the department suggested changes to the proposed contract on Monday, July 13. A Flock spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Times.
Addressing the Police Commission on July 14, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell called Flock’s plate reader technology a “valuable investigative tool,” but one that must be handled “responsibly.”
Barragan’s report also found that the department’s license plate readers have misidentified vehicles as stolen on a number of occasions. Over a two-month period starting last August, Flock cameras scanned more than 210 million license plates. In 161 instances, according to the report, a plate that the system flagged as being stolen turned out to be wrong — although not every one of those cases led to a police intervention. The report found that 337 alerts did lead to the recovery of a stolen vehicle. The report said the department lacks formal contracts or agreements with its two other plate reader vendors — Axon and Motorola — “to address ALPR data-security, privacy, and access-control requirements.” Barragan’s report said there were numerous “limitations” in the department’s existing agreements with the three companies, including a lack of clear language around how long the data are retained and how they are shared with third parties or other law enforcement agencies.
In a statement following last week’s decision by the LAPD to pause its relationship with Flock, Jurado called for “full accounting of who accessed this data, whether any outside agencies used LAPD-controlled systems, and how privately funded cameras have been connected to public law enforcement infrastructure.” During a news conference before the July 14 meeting, several community groups that have opposed Flock’s expansion in the city called for the department to end its relationship with the company outright. Mau Trejo, director of strategic communications for Students Deserve, a group that advocates for Los Angeles schools to “defund the police and defend Black life,” urged L.A. to follow the lead of other cities that have severed ties with Flock.
Dozens of mostly smaller law enforcement agencies have severed their ties to Flock in recent months. News reports show that the San Francisco Police Department became the biggest department yet to suspend its relationship with the company after a routine audit found that a number of out-of-state and federal agencies had accessed its plate data, possibly in violation of state law.
Activists continue to argue that systemic flaws exist within the technology itself, regardless of contract terms. "I'm not going to get into the cost benefit analysis, but we have to assess the level of harm. Yes, one person may have been caught, but how many more people have been harmed, extremely harmed?" argued one opponent of the system. Critics also point out that the cameras actively map the coordinates of drivers who are not suspected of any crimes. "License plate readers are not 100% accurate. They misread license plates from time to time. That has severe consequences for people whose license plates are misidentified," another advocate noted.
The city's police commission voted unanimously to adopt the OIG's recommendations to: Strengthen ALPR data oversight; Establish standardized practices for documenting traffic stops and other enforcement actions; Suspend installation of new ALPR cameras until additional public input is received. The city will hold a virtual meeting on the technology on July 30. "We're looking for all members of the community to share their perspectives that we can report back to the board," LAPD Inspector General Matthew Barragan said.
In a recent interview with The California Post, Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley addressed the controversy, emphasizing that the company's cameras are designed to capture only license plates, not people. “We can’t see into a car. We can’t see a person’s heart rate. We cannot read the contents of their cell phone,” Langley said. “What we can do is take a picture of their license plate.” He also highlighted that California law prohibits sharing ALPR data with agencies outside the state, and Flock has implemented a “firewall” to enforce this. “The customer has complete control over where the data goes and who they share with, with an asterisk — so in a place like California, it is a violation of state regulation to take data, ALPR data out of California and move it to another state,” Langley said. Regarding data ownership, Langley stated, “The data shouldn’t be monetized. This is a public safety utility and so we don’t own the data. We have no legal right to sell it, to use it for anything. It is our customer’s data.” He also noted that the company now mandates multi-factor authentication and has hired an independent firm to audit its systems, with plans to publish penetration test results. Langley expressed optimism that the differences with LAPD would be resolved soon.
Tom Bowman, the policy counsel for the Center of Democracy and Technology’s Security & Surveillance Project, previously told Fortune automatic license plate readers have been around for years but gained attention following a surge of ICE activity across the country. He said that despite Flock not having direct contract with immigration enforcement agencies, the company has enabled increased access to sensitive data through “side-door handshakes,” such as law enforcement making immigration-related searches on public school-owned devices.
Conclusion
The LAPD's suspension of Flock cameras marks a significant victory for privacy advocates, but the broader ALPR network remains active. The Board of Police Commissioners is expected to debate the future of the program in upcoming meetings, weighing public safety benefits against civil liberties. For now, Angelenos can expect a temporary reprieve from one of the city's most pervasive surveillance tools. Negotiations between the LAPD and Flock Safety are ongoing. The tools will remain paused until the tech company agrees to contract terms that the LAPD believes can fully safeguard the constitutional rights of Angelenos.