Flock Safety’s network of more than 120,000 automated license plate readers has faced a sustained wave of rejections and cancellations in 2026, with more than 50 agencies or communities deactivating cameras, ending contracts, or declining new ones according to tracking by the advocacy group DeFlock.
Earlier counts documented 82 terminations across 28 states from 2021 through May 2026, including 39 in the first five months of the year.
High-profile decisions include the Los Angeles Police Department allowing its contract to lapse in July over civil liberties, privacy, and data-control concerns. Denver, Santa Cruz, Mountain View, and numerous smaller cities and counties in Texas, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and elsewhere followed similar paths.
Opposition has been bipartisan, appearing in both progressive urban areas and conservative rural communities.
Residents and officials cite continuous mass data collection without warrants, potential for tracking daily movements, and insufficient transparency about camera locations or data use.
Police departments and Flock defend the technology as highly effective for recovering stolen vehicles, locating missing persons, and solving crimes, with the company reporting billions of monthly scans supporting investigations.
Yet public meetings have featured heated testimony, and advocacy campaigns such as the ACLU’s “Get the Flock Out” have amplified concerns. Some cities that canceled Flock later adopted alternative ALPR vendors with tighter rules.
In mid-August, Flock announced mandatory auditing, shorter data retention, case-code requirements, and sharing filters in an effort to restore confidence.
Critics, including DeFlock, dismissed the changes as inadequate, arguing the core architecture remains a form of warrantless mass surveillance.
The cancellations have not halted overall network growth, but they mark one of the most significant organized pushbacks against a police technology platform in recent years.
