Billions of plate reads happen every month. That’s not a dystopian projection — that’s Flock Safety’s current operating reality: 120,000 cameras across 49 states, serving more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies. Against that backdrop, 2026’s municipal resistance is the most documented pushback the company has faced. At least 56 jurisdictions canceled, deactivated, or rejected Flock contracts this year, with DeFlock’s tracker recording its highest monthly cancellation volume since it began tracking in 2021.
The named departures are meaningful:
- Los Angeles let its contract expire
- Asheville voted to terminate its agreement
- Chandler discontinued cameras after a documented misuse finding
- Coralville, Lynnwood, and Edmonds ended or suspended contracts
Flock’s counter-narrative cuts through all of it. The company reportedly claims roughly seven new cities join for every one that doesn’t renew.
When the Cameras Go Wrong
The scandals that moved this debate from niche privacy circles into mainstream city politics are specific, documented, and difficult to dismiss.
Abstract privacy arguments only move so many city councils. What’s moving them now are concrete cases. In Milwaukee, a police officer was charged after allegedly using Flock to secretly tracking users — a romantic partner and the partner’s ex — 124 and 55 searches respectively. The misuse reports didn’t stop there. Columbus halted data sharing after an audit found more than 1,700 possibly immigration-related searches. Cleveland records reportedly showed nearly 2,000 queries using terms such as “immigration,” “ICE,” or “Border Patrol.”
The platform’s architecture carries its own documented vulnerabilities. NIST’s vulnerability database lists CVE-2025-47823 — a hardcoded password flaw in Flock Safety LPR firmware through version 2.2. Then there’s the Nationwide Lookup feature, which allows out-of-state agencies to search data across Flock’s broader network. Flock told Palo Alto the feature was disabled in October 2025. The fact that it existed at all is the point — like discovering your building’s supposedly private entrance key works on every door in the city.
The Math Doesn’t Lie
Your city council vote matters — it just doesn’t move at the speed of an $8.4 billion valuation company with 120,000 cameras already in the ground.
Flock Safety carried an $8.4 billion valuation into 2026 and raised $275 million the year before. It operates across thousands of law enforcement jurisdictions nationwide. The municipal cancellations represent democracy functioning exactly as designed. The problem is democracy wasn’t built to outpace a surveillance company with that kind of capital and that much infrastructure already embedded in communities across 49 states.
