The Los Angeles Police Department allowed its three-year contract with surveillance company Flock Safety to expire on Saturday, July 12, 2026, citing “serious concerns” over civil liberties, privacy, and data collection practices.
LAPD Chief Information Officer Dean Gialamas confirmed the decision, stating: “This contract is not being renewed because of serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly around privacy and the data that is being collected from these cameras.” Gialamas added that the department may revisit a relationship with Flock once outstanding data, privacy, security, and data-sharing concerns can be addressed through a new contractual agreement.
Flock Safety, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, operates a network of at least 80,000 license plate reader cameras across the United States, allowing police and federal agencies to track vehicles. As the third-largest police department in the U.S., the LAPD was one of Flock’s largest government customers. A Flock spokesperson said the contract expiry caught the company by “surprise” and expressed confidence it could “clear up the current misconceptions” behind the decision, without specifying what those misconceptions were.
The LAPD’s exit follows similar moves by other cities, including Mountain View, California, and South Portland, Maine, which ended their Flock contracts over privacy concerns and worries that federal immigration officials used the cameras in ways that conflicted with local sanctuary city policies.
Flock has faced mounting criticism on several fronts. Researchers have documented cases of motorists being wrongly stopped or detained due to false positives from its license plate readers. The company has also experienced security lapses that exposed camera feeds and data, and lawmakers have urged federal consumer authorities to investigate Flock over weak login protections, including the lack of multi-factor authentication for police user accounts. Some communities have physically dismantled Flock cameras, with reports that the company reinstalled equipment without local authorization.
It remains unclear whether Flock’s cameras in Los Angeles will continue recording in the absence of an active contract.
Source: TechCrunch