Security1 publisher2 min readPublished
Flock shed more than 90 city and county contracts in August alone
August's cancellations ran roughly 45 times Flock's prior monthly rate, and the objection Los Angeles put in writing was contractual, a clause giving the vendor ownership of the plate data it collects.
The Watch · Security desk
What happened
- Greg Abbott barred Texas state agencies from spending public money on Flock cameras on August 28, on the eve of a Texas Tribune report on how one state agency had funded its network.
- The Florida Department of Transportation barred all automated plate readers, Flock's included, from state highways on August 31, days after DeSantis said the devices violate privacy.
- The LAPD said in July it would not renew with Flock over terms giving the company ownership of data collected in Los Angeles, and as of Friday it was still negotiating with no deal.
- Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens ordered a 30-day review of the city's Flock cameras on August 17, covering system use, compliance and policy strengthening.
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Why it matters
- exposure Insider misuse has become a prosecutable exposure for the buyer rather than a privacy complaint: Abbott's office cites 100 felony counts against one Lufkin officer, with further investigations open.
- precedent Moving to a competing vendor does not restore the capability in Florida, because the restriction is written against the technology and not against the company.
- constraint Two Republican governors and a Democratic mayor moved within six weeks, which removes waiting for a friendlier administration from the list of options open to an agency.
- decision In Los Angeles any new plate-reader contract now needs public input and a Police Commission vote, converting renewal from an administrative signature into a scheduled hearing.
Take Secure Justice's two counts at their published floors. More than 90 Flock terminations in August against more than 200 since 2021 leaves roughly 110 spread across the 55 months from January 2021 through July 2025, about two a month [1][2][20]. August ran near 45 times that pace, and it supplied close to 45 percent of everything the group has tracked in four and a half years [19][20]. Both published figures are minimums, so read the ratio as an order of magnitude rather than a measurement. Austin, Cambridge and Eugene had already ended their contracts before this wave, so August accelerated a trend instead of starting one [16].
The Texas order was aimed at a funding route. According to the Texas Tribune, a state agency secretly moved $30 million out of a state tax on car insurance to build a sprawling Flock network, and Abbott's ban on state money for the cameras arrived on the eve of that report [4][3]. El Paso and several smaller Texas cities and counties cancelled after the order [14]. In Florida, several sheriffs went past the highway rule and stopped using Flock cameras everywhere [15].
The clause is where this gets operational. LAPD's stated objection in July was that Flock's terms gave the company ownership of data collected in Los Angeles, and its chief information officer, Dean Gialamas, framed the sticking point as who owns the data and what happens to it once collected [8]. Whoever owns the read sets retention and answers the subpoena. The city inspector general's audit shows what rides on that: in a two-month window, the department probed 161 car owners whose vehicles Flock had mistakenly flagged as stolen [10]. Those 161 queries are the department's to explain, under terms that put the underlying data on the vendor's side of the line [7].
The reporting leaves two gaps worth naming. It carries no response from Flock, and no figure for the company's total contract count, so 90 and 200 cannot be sized against its book [25]. Without that denominator, the honest reading of August is a rate and not a market share.
What to watch
- Atlanta's 30-day review, ordered August 17, lands around September 16, and whether it ends in use restrictions or a renewal is the tell for other large cities.
- Whether LAPD and Flock reach terms on data ownership, or the July non-renewal becomes final.
- Whether other state transport agencies copy Florida's technology-wide highway ban rather than naming a single vendor.