LAPD Just Dumped Surveillance Tech Giant Flock Safety. Here's Why.

Our Take

Credit to Tech Side HQ for digging into a story that surveillance boosters don't like to talk about: these systems aren't plug-and-play crime-fighting magic, they're expensive data-management headaches. If LAPD really did cut Flock loose, it's a useful data point that even well-funded departments can't just bolt a camera network onto their operations and call it done. The backend — storage, integration, audits, who gets to query what — is where a lot of these contracts quietly fall apart.

This matters because the surveillance industry's whole pitch depends on inevitability: buy the cameras, and mass plate tracking just becomes permanent infrastructure. Stories like this poke a hole in that narrative. Contracts expire. Budgets get scrutinized. Councils ask why they're paying for a system that mostly generates false leads and data-sharing headaches. That's an opening for public pressure, not a reason to relax — vendors lose one contract and go sell the same pitch to the next town over.

If you want to know whether Flock or a similar ALPR network is already running in your area, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your city not sign one of these contracts in the first place, our take-action page has the tools to make that case at your next council meeting.