Flock Exposed - The Cop Script Flock Wrote

Flock Safety distributes a coaching guide, titled "How to Speak to City Councils About Public Safety Technology", directly to the police departments that use its cameras. The guide - built from a company webinar and featuring named Flock personnel - teaches police how to pitch, defend, and protect Flock contracts against public opposition, effectively turning taxpayer-funded law enforcement into the company's sales and PR arm. Flock even hosts this guide publicly on its own website as a downloadable ebook.

The Core Instruction: "Own the Narrative"

The guide's own conclusion is a chapter titled "Own the Narrative Before Someone Else Does." Chris Colwell, who runs product consulting and training at Flock, is quoted in the manual: "This story is going to get told either way. The only question is whether you're going to be the one telling it."

Source: Footnote4a, "Own the narrative before someone else does"

The guide tells agencies not to wait for a public meeting to make their case. "The agencies that navigate these conversations successfully rarely wait until a council meeting to educate stakeholders. They brief city managers early. They meet with council members before votes occur. They share policies proactively and answer questions before public comment periods become the first introduction to the program."

Source: 404 Media, "'Own the Narrative': Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech"

Coached to Not Deny the "Mass Surveillance" Label - Just Change the Subject

Rather than disputing that its technology amounts to mass surveillance, the guide instructs police to sidestep the argument entirely. Flock strategist and consultant Jamie Hudson, whose title is Real-Time Strategist, Product Consulting and Training at Flock, tells police: "Don't avoid the concept of mass surveillance because you're not going to convince opponents that it's not." The guide tells police to spend less time defending the technology's capabilities and instead redirect the conversation to "your local need, your local community, the effect it's going to have on quality of life and crime reduction." The recommended move is to change the subject under a chapter heading called "Moving the Conversation from Surveillance to Governance."

Source: DeFlockOKC, "The Case Against Flock"; Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism / 404 Media, "How to Speak to City Councils About Public Safety Technology"

Coached to Reframe the Price Tag

The guide advises police to avoid focusing on how much the cameras actually cost taxpayers. Instead, it recommends "reframing the financial discussion itself" to focus on "the cost of unresolved crime" - shifting attention away from the contract price and onto a hypothetical cost of doing nothing.

Source: 404 Media, "'Own the Narrative': Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech"

Framing Opposition as a "Scripted Narrative" to Be Countered

The guide casts residents who raise concerns as a coordinated messaging threat to be out-maneuvered, not constituents to be heard: "Opponents have a very carefully scripted narrative. They come prepared. You should also have a carefully scripted presentation that addresses those concerns ahead of time.

Source: 404 Media, "'Own the Narrative': Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech"

A Separate Leak: Training Police to Surveil Protests

A separate leaked Flock webinar shows the company training police specifically on using its technology to monitor political protests. In November, Caity Peak, Flock's director of market management, led a webinar explaining how law enforcement could use FlockOS Real-Time Crime Centers to monitor "everything from small parades, to unexpected protests, to unprecedented disasters." Using a hypothetical "No Kings" protest in Denver as her example, Peak told officers: "I've got the video footage to monitor when things go sideways, I know when the environment is starting to shift. But I also know a lot of other things as well." She went on to describe using the system for remote monitoring of crowd momentum, advising as an incident commander: "I want to keep officers out of that; I want to keep folks from making it worse and getting attention."

Source: 404 Media, "Flock Taught Cops How to Surveil No Kings Protesters"; The New Republic, "Leaked Video Shows Flock Taught Cops How to Hunt No Kings Protesters"; MotorBiscuit, "Leaked Webinar Proves Flock Safety Actively Trains Police to Surveil Anti-Trump Protesters"

An Outside Expert's Take

Sarah T. Hamid, director of strategic campaigns at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reviewed the guide and told 404 Media: "For years, surveillance vendors like Flock Safety have shaped policy debates cities are supposed to run independently - staging council 'prep calls' and exploiting a basic asymmetry: the vendor controls the facts, and city staff are rarely positioned to challenge them. The financial interest is obvious. Flock isn't just selling surveillance, it's scripting the public case for buying it."

Source: 404 Media, "'Own the Narrative': Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech"

The activist who shared the guide with 404 Media, kept anonymous to protect them from retaliation, put it plainly: "This document shows a coordinated effort from Flock Safety to compel law enforcement agencies to convince our elected leaders to represent their interests as a company rather than the interests of concerned citizens."

Source: 404 Media, "'Own the Narrative': Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech"

Where to See the Reporting Yourself

The original investigative report is published at 404media.co, in an article titled "'Own the Narrative': Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech." Additional analysis quoting the guide directly can be found at footnote4a.org and deflockokc.com. The protest-surveillance webinar reporting is also at 404media.co, in an article titled "Flock Taught Cops How to Surveil No Kings Protesters."

Questions to Ask Your Town

Has our police department received any coaching, talking points, or presentation materials from Flock Safety or its consultants before public meetings about this technology?

Were any council members or city staff privately briefed by Flock or the police department before a public vote was scheduled?

Has the true annual cost of this contract - including renewals and add-ons - ever been presented to the public in plain terms, without being reframed around "the cost of unresolved crime"?

Were residents' concerns about mass surveillance directly answered, or redirected toward a different topic like "governance" and "oversight"?

Has our department received training from Flock on monitoring protests or First Amendment-protected gatherings, and if so, under what policy?

This page will be updated as more factual sources become available.