Flock Exposed - The Fox Auditing the Henhouse
Flock's system depends on local police departments to police themselves. Case after case shows that self-policing model breaking down, sometimes with the very people assigned to investigate misuse turning out to be misusing the system too.
There Is No Independent Auditor
Before any individual case, understand the structure. In the ordinary Flock arrangement there is no outside body reviewing how a department uses the system. The department decides whether to audit. The department decides how far back to look. The department's own supervisors review the flagged activity. The department announces the result to the public. There is no independent inspector, no civilian review board, and no outside agency built into the process anywhere.
Source: Analysis of the audit arrangements described in the departmental cases documented on this pag
That matters because an audit is only as good as the willingness of the people running it to find something. When a department investigates itself and announces that nothing was wrong, the public has no way to check that conclusion, because the only people with access to the underlying search logs are the people who just issued the finding.
Source: Analysis of the audit arrangements described in the departmental cases documented on this page
Flock's own 2026 reforms do not change this. The company's proactive lockout feature suspends a user's access when activity meets defined criteria for abnormal behavior - pending review by an administrator who works for that same customer agency.
Source: Flock Safety Press Center; Security Boulevard, "Facing Steep Criticism Over Abuse, Flock Updates Platform But Draws Skepticism From Privacy Advocates," September 2026
Two Texas Departments, Two Opposite Results
In Lufkin, Texas, the police department suspended its use of Flock after authorities accused Zachary Anthony Klein, then a Lufkin officer, of using the system to track an ex-girlfriend.
Source: Dallas Express and WBAP, "Texas Flock Revolt: 23 Governments Pull Back As Conroe Keeps Paying," September 13, 2026
In September 2026, the officer was cleared. Lufkin Police Chief Travis Brazil announced that a thorough review of all the officer's searches proved he conducted those searches for legitimate reasons, and that he was exonerated of wrongdoing while using the license plate reader technology. The review was conducted by the Texas Rangers together with the Lufkin Police Department's own Professional Standards team.
Source: KLTV, September 14, 2026, "Lufkin officer cleared of wrongdoing in Flock camera investigation"; Lufkin Daily News, "Texas Rangers clear Lufkin officer suspended in Flock investigation"; KETK
Roughly 150 miles away, a different Texas department went looking rather than responding to an accusation. The interim police chief of the Texas City Police Department decided to audit the department's use of the cameras after other cities reported misconduct with Flock. That audit identified two possible instances of misuse, the second involving a sergeant at the department, with that investigation still ongoing at the time of reporting.
Source: Houston Public Media, September 17, 2026, "Texas City police tighten oversight of Flock cameras after misuse"; KPRC Click2Houston, "Texas City PD identifies 2 possible instances of misuse of automated license plate reader technology"
Texas City's audit was notable for one detail other departments rarely match: no personnel with access to the system were exempt from the audit and review, including the Chief of Police.
Source: KPRC Click2Houston, September 17, 2026, "Texas City PD identifies 2 possible instances of misuse of automated license plate reader technology"
The department then acted on what it found, limiting search access to detectives and to supervisors holding the rank of sergeant or higher - a change that cut the number of users with search access by about two-thirds.
Source: Houston Public Media, September 17, 2026, "Texas City police tighten oversight of Flock cameras after misuse
Two departments in the same state, running the same technology, reached opposite conclusions in the same month. One reviewed an accusation and cleared its officer. The other went looking on its own initiative and found two potential problems, one of them involving a supervisor. Nothing about the technology differed between them. What differed was whether anyone chose to look, and how hard - and in both cases, that choice belonged entirely to the department being examined.
Source: Analysis of the Lufkin and Texas City reporting cited above
The Investigator Who Was Investigating Himself
In Milwaukee, detectives investigating Officer Josue Ayala found he had secretly used Flock to track the location of his romantic partner 124 times and that partner's ex 55 times.
Source: CNN, "Inside the growing police use and misuse of Flock's license-plate reader cameras"
Weeks later, one of the detectives who had investigated Ayala, Tehrangi Chapman, was himself arrested for misusing the Flock system - admitting he had used it to track two people and secretly installed a GPS device.
Source: CNN, "Inside the growing police use and misuse of Flock's license-plate reader cameras"; ACLU of Wisconsin, "Who Watches the Watchers? MPD Internal Affairs Detective Charged With Crime He Just Investigated"
A Pattern, Not a One-Off
In Savannah, Georgia, the police department fired six employees after an internal investigation and referred every case to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for independent criminal review; four officers were ultimately arrested.
Source: WTOC, "Savannah Police Department fires 6 employees over Flock Safety System misuse"; CBS Atlanta, "4 Savannah officers arrested over Flock Safety misuse. What does oversight look like in Georgia?"
In Joplin, Missouri, an internal investigation uncovered that a single officer had run one woman's license plate through the system nearly 400 times.
Source: Yahoo News, "Stalker Cams: Inside the Widespread Abuse of Flock License-Plate Readers"
In Eastpointe, Michigan, two officers were investigated for improper Flock use, with the department confirming one used the access for personal reasons and received severe discipline.
Source: Detroit News, "Eastpointe police officers investigated over improper Flock use"
In Decatur, Alabama, the police chief himself had to request an outside investigation by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency after an officer was accused of misuse, rather than trust the department's own internal review to be sufficient.
Source: WAFF, "Decatur police officer under investigation for alleged misuse of Flock safety cameras"
A Washington Post investigation identified at least 69 police officers nationwide who have been accused, charged with, or convicted of improperly using Flock and similar systems - and found that many of their own departments had not done basic oversight before the Post's reporting forced the issue.
Source: Washington Post, "We found cops who misused Flock. Their police departments didn't know."
Vague Reasons, Rubber-Stamped
The ACLU found that Flock's own audit logs show officers frequently entering vague, unverifiable search reasons like "investigation" or "susp" instead of any real explanation - logs that are supposed to be the entire accountability mechanism.
Source: ACLU, "Flock Safety Credibility Lost as it Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police Departments, and Public Across the Country"
Flock Grades Its Own Homework
Facing mounting backlash, Flock this summer piloted its own AI-powered audit tool, marketed as a way to help departments catch misuse - meaning the same company selling the surveillance system is now also selling the tool meant to police it.
Source: Boston Globe, "Flock license plate cameras under fire as Mass. police misconduct cases mount"
Questions to Ask Your Town
Does our town's police department audit Flock searches itself, or does it rely on Flock's own tools to flag misuse of Flock's own system?
Is any person or body outside our police department - a civilian board, an outside agency, an independent auditor - able to review our search logs directly, or must they take the department's word for what those logs contain?
Has our department ever conducted an audit on its own initiative, rather than in response to an accusation already made public?
Is anyone exempt from our audits, including the chief and the supervisors who conduct them?
Has anyone in our department's chain of command, including whoever is responsible for internal affairs, ever been the subject of a Flock misuse complaint themselves?
What happens when the people assigned to catch misuse are the ones best positioned to get away with it?
This page will be updated as more factual sources become available.