We support professional policing, first responders who are paid well and receive good benefits and pensions, and programs that build trust between policing agencies and communities. ALPRs do not help with any of these goals – in fact, they break trust in policing capabilities and remove human contact between law enforcement and citizens.

What is Flock/ALPR Technology?

“ALPR” stands for “Automated License Plate Reader”. In contrast to traditional license plate readers used by police for decades, ALPRs are usually overseen by A.I. programs run from cameras that are installed at traffic intersections, trails, parks, and neighborhoods. While the companies that sell this technology to cities claim that they are solely for local police access and only used to capture the license plates of passing cars, these cameras and the A.I. programs behind them are actually part of a vast, nationwide surveillance network that can be hacked, accessed by federal agencies, and are used to build profiles of American citizens.

Argument 1: “Flock/ALPRs are effective in fighting crime”

Fact: There is no comprehensive data or study that demonstrates ALPR effectiveness.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) provides only two recent research documents related to ALPRs like Flock, and notes that the survey is not comprehensive, not scientific, and purely anecdotal. SOURCE.

Flock’s claim to solve “10% of the country’s crime” is sourced to a single paper by two Flock employees, using a very small sample dataset, that itself admits that “existent research on ALPR effectiveness typically does not attribute crime clearances to ALPRs directly, with case studies relying upon retrospective attribution based on case clearances over time or comparing ALPR-equipped groups with non-ALPR-equipped groups. Further, existing research relies either upon handfuls of anecdotal interviews with ALPR-equipped law enforcement agencies or deep dives into the ALPR use data of a single city, agency, or even a subset of officers within an agency at a time.” One of the academic researchers who oversaw the study is now questioning its methodology and conclusions.

Sources:

Fact: The Fourth Amendment includes “persons” in its list of things that are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. It’s one thing for a private citizen to film in public – that’s legal, but if that same person were to follow another through every public avenue, recording their every movement and sharing it, those actions could cross the line into stalking. Previous case law is even clearer when it comes to the actions of law enforcement in surveilling private citizens:

  1. Katz v. United States, 1967: Justice Stewart, in delivering the majority opinion, ruled that the FBI could not surveil a public phone booth without a warrant.
    • “The Fourth Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements.” And “once it is recognized that the Fourth Amendment protects people — and not simply ‘areas’ — against unreasonable searches and seizures, it becomes clear that the reach of that Amendment cannot turn upon the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure.”
  2. United States v. Knotts, 1982: Officers tracking a car a short distance is not necessarily a violation of the 4th Amendment, but the justices noted that this is in a very grey area.
  3. United States v. Jones, 2012: Law enforcement places a GPS tracker on a suspect’s vehicle and tracks his movements for 28 days.
    • Scalia: “The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that ‘[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.’ It is beyond dispute that a vehicle is an “effect” as that term is used in the Amendment.”
    • Sotomayor: “Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that GPS monitoring—by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may ‘alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.’”

Fact: Many innocent people have been falsely accused of crimes, jailed, or prosecuted because of mistakes made by ALPR A.I. systems. Just a few examples:

  1. Española, NM, 2024: Two sisters, one 12 years old, were pulled over and handcuffed after a Flock camera mistakenly ID’ed their car as a stolen vehicle. They are now suing the city.

  2. Aurora, CO, 2020: A mother and her children are pulled over at gunpoint and handcuffed after a Flock camera mistakenly flagged their license plate. They obtained a $1.9 million settlement from the city in 2024.

  3. Columbine Valley, CO, 2025: A woman is falsely accused of stealing a package, with Flock’s supposed tracking of her vehicle as the reason. The accusing officer told her: “You know we have cameras in that town. You can’t get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing, correct?”
  1. One video on Flock’s “Privacy and Trust” Page states: “It’s taking a picture of the back of a car. It is not observing humans. It’s not tracking people. There’s no race or gender identification, there’s no biometrics in a Flock LPR device, period.”
  2. Another states: “There’s a common misconception that Flock shares data on behalf of our customers. The reality is, we will always have customers be in control of their data.”

Fact: Flock’s very own patent proves that statement A is a falsehood, and that Flock is built from the ground up to identify, track, and store information about human beings, vehicles, and even animals and objects in a database.

  • “For example, if the object class of the identified object is that of a human being, then the object detection module 154 may further analyze the image 501 using a neural network module 507B configured to identify different classes of people (male, female, race, etc.). Subsequently, with aspects of the person identified, the object detection module 154 may leverage other, more detailed neural networks 507, 509 to further identify aspects of the person such as, but not limited to, a neural network 509D for identifying clothing types (jacket, pants, shorts, hat, etc.) and a neural network 509ZZ for gauging height and weight.” And
  • “With the outputs from the relevant neural networks 507/509, the object detection module 154 may work to store the outputs in database 120 in association with the image frame 501 (and, by extension, the video footage segment that contains the image frame 501) along with the time and location data. In this way, the database may be configured to be leveraged by the historical analysis module 162 and/or search module 156 and/or alert triggering module 158 as previously described.”

Fact: Flock has, in many cases, shared access to local cameras and police networks without permission or disclosure, even in violation of State Law – such as NM SB40, passed this year in regards to LPRs and privacy.

  • Illinois, 2025: Flock allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access cameras, even though it violated state law.
  • Oshkosh, WI: The Police Chief and City Council unanimously decide to cancel their agreement with Flock after the company lied and said they do not create heatmaps of citizens. From https://footnote4a.org/news/pattern-of-life:
    • “Pattern of Life is the Flock feature that turns a string of camera reads into a behavioral profile. You pick a plate. Flock plots every camera that captured it — across a jurisdiction, across a region, across the nationwide network — onto a map, with a heat map overlay that brightens where the vehicle spends its time. You toggle the window: 14 days, 30 days, longer. What comes back is the shape of a driver’s week: home, work, church, doctor, lover, gun range, union hall, rally – each node glowing in proportion to how much of a life is lived there. It is not a theoretical capability. It is not a roadmap item. It is a marketed, shipped, demonstrated feature of FlockOS, and Flock’s own staff describe it in their own training materials.”
  • Mountain View, CA, 2026: The Police Department and City Council cancel a contract with Flock after discovering that Flock allowed federal access to Mountain View’s system without the MVPD’s knowledge or permission:
    • “During the prior federal administration, from August to November 2024, several federal law enforcement agencies accessed Mountain View’s Flock Safety ALPR system for one camera via a ‘nationwide’ search setting that was turned on by Flock Safety. This setting was enabled without MVPD’s permission or knowledge. The federal agencies that accessed the one camera’s data include Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives offices in Kentucky and Nashville, TN; Langley Air Force Base in Virginia; the U.S. GSA Office of Inspector General; Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada; and an Ohio Air Force Base. Flock Safety did not retain records for that time period, which means the vendor cannot determine whether searches of Mountain View’s data resulted in license plate information being shared.”
    • There are many, many cities now canceling contracts with Flock, even in New Mexico:
  • We maintain that moving to an alternate ALPR system is not acceptable, as this technology is a violation of civil liberties regardless of the carrier.

Other Concerns:

Flock employees accessed cameras where children are present
    • NM SB40, New Mexico’s Driver Privacy and Safety Act, passed during the 2026 legislative session, is lacking and will not prevent New Mexican’s data from being shared, sold, or exposed. The Act puts few limitations on the activities of ALPR vendors, probably since New Mexico has no jurisdiction over data stores in another state as ALPR data is likely to be. It is essentially impossible to legislate data sharing or enforce data protection laws. For example, it is illegal to call a phone number on the Do Not Call list for the purposes of solicitation, yet we all receive multiple spam calls per day.

Timeline:

  • According to the City’s own financial policies, the 2 line items on Page 44 for “License Plate Reader/Drone/Shot Gun Detector – Capital Costs” total less than $50,000 – meaning that anyone with purchasing power can simply sign a contract for ALPR services without a council vote (they only vote on items more than $50k). This is a common pitching practice by Flock representatives to get around scrutiny for purchasing of their services.
  • May: I emailed each councilor, the Mayor, City Manager, Police Chief, CFO, and Assistant Attorney (when they still had one), requesting a meeting to present my concerns around Flock and ALPRs. City Manager Frank Chiapetti met with me and I presented him with the fact sheet on this page. He assured me that the City would keep concerned citizens informed and in the loop, and that he would pass the fact sheet on to the City Council.
  • June: I presented the fact sheet at a City Council meeting, and reiterated my openness to meeting with any on the Council who had further questions.
  • September: The Deflock map displays two Flock cameras installed in Gallup: one at Home Depot, which contracts with Flock nationwide, and one near the police building on Boyd Avenue, but I have taken a good look in the area and cannot see an ALPR camera, so this report is unconfirmed.
  • Next steps: I have submitted an IPRA request to the city regarding all correspondence and contracts between the city and Flock or other ALPR companies, and will publish my findings on this website for the public.