LAPD said it won't renew the expired agreement with Flock Safety due to privacy and civil liberties concerns.
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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 FlockA 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.
