Flock Cuts Camera Data Retention After Misuse Firings

Flock Safety is tightening privacy and oversight controls on its nationwide license plate camera network after police officers were caught using it to look up romantic partners, relatives and acquaintances.

The company said Thursday it will recommend that police agencies keep license plate reader data for seven days instead of 30, and will require officers to attach case codes to searches and adopt an audit tool that flags unusual activity.

Flock says its network runs more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and serves thousands of law enforcement agencies and communities.

What Forced The Change

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that nearly 50 police officers had been charged or accused of using Flock cameras for unauthorized purposes, many of them attempts to track current or former romantic partners or family members.

In Savannah, Georgia, four police officers and two civilian employees were fired last week after a department investigation found searches involving personal acquaintances and family members, according to a police department news release. The investigation also found that an officer had allowed an outside law enforcement agency into Savannah's Flock system. The activity was identified using Flock's own audit assistance tool, and all six cases were referred to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for independent criminal investigation.

The system has also produced wrongful stops. In Wisconsin, Amber Newell was pulled over at gunpoint on Interstate 94 earlier this month after a Flock camera incorrectly flagged her vehicle as involved in a homicide. Brookfield police stopped her; Milwaukee police then told officers they no longer needed the vehicle or its occupants, and Newell was released. Milwaukee police later said the cause was an employee's failure to remove an outdated wanted-vehicle alert from the system rather than an error by Flock. Newell said she had been stopped at gunpoint earlier that same week and was afraid to drive afterward.

Since the start of 2026, more than 50 agencies or communities have canceled, suspended or rejected a Flock contract or deactivated their cameras, according to DeFlock, a grassroots group that tracks license plate reader deployments. Cameras have also been vandalized around the country.

Exactly What Flock Added

The seven-day retention recommendation is the biggest change. When Flock launched nine years ago it set 30 days as the default, while letting communities choose shorter or longer periods.

For older records, Flock is adding "Evidence Mode," which lets detectives preserve specific license plate data as evidence in an active case.

The retention change does not automatically apply to existing customers, who can keep their current policies. Communities will continue to pick their own retention periods.

Under a new "offense filtering" system, a community can allow another agency to search its cameras for specific crimes while blocking searches tied to other purposes — immigration enforcement, for example.

By the end of the year, Flock will require all law enforcement customers to adopt its audit assistance tool, which looks for unusual search activity and flags it for administrator review. Flock says it will automatically suspend users whose activity meets certain criteria for abnormal behavior while their access is reviewed.

Also by year's end, case codes will be required for law enforcement searches. Officers can bypass the requirement in emergencies, but those searches will be flagged for review.