Flock Safety says LAPD halting the use of their license plate readers was a ‘surprise’
The short version: LAPD abruptly suspended its Flock Safety camera network over safety concerns, and Flock's own admission it was 'surprised' says a lot about who's really steering these programs.
Our Take
KTLA's Annie Rose Ramos reports that the LAPD has hit pause on its Flock Safety license plate readers after safety concerns surfaced — and that Flock itself says the shutdown caught the company off guard. That last detail is the real story here. If a vendor is genuinely blindsided when a major police department pulls the plug on its own surveillance network, that tells you how little oversight and communication exists between the company selling these systems and the cities deploying them.
We've said it before: Flock's pitch to city councils is always the same — safe, simple, automated crime-fighting. But when something goes wrong, whether it's a safety flaw, a data breach, or an unauthorized search, the response is often confusion and finger-pointing rather than transparency. LAPD residents deserve to know exactly what 'safety concerns' means here, not a vague statement filtered through a press release. Was it a hardware malfunction? A data mishandling issue? The public paid for this network and deserves the full accounting.
This kind of pause is exactly the moment for communities to ask harder questions before any camera network gets turned back on. Check our camera map to see if Flock is watching your neighborhood, and visit our take-action page to push your local council for real answers instead of a quiet reboot.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KTLA 5, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.