F3 believes that there are too many concerns and questions at this time for the City Council, in good faith, to approve an amended contract with Flock. There is ample evidence around the country of misuse of the data and extremely lax security measures to protect people’s privacy. We will be urging the City Council, as we did prior to the Flock discussion in October, to stand against this type of surveillance, cancel the contract with Flock and remove all cameras leased by the city. Please read our summary of the issue below and consider writing or speaking to the council in opposition.
What is Flock?
Flock Safety is one of the largest vendors of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) in the U.S. Cities across the country are installing these AI surveillance cameras along public roads, while businesses and other private entities are installing them on private property. The data is uploaded to Flock’s cloud system, where participating law enforcement agencies can search and share information across jurisdictions, states, and the country.
The Flock Camera System in Flagstaff
On June 27, 2024, the City Council entered into an agreement with Flock Safety to lease 32 license-plate reader cameras and one Flock Falcon system. The Falcon is an advanced model camera that captures details beyond license plates such as vehicle make, color, and type, and uses infrared/night vision and machine learning.
Unfortunately, in April 2025, the Coconino County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the installation of an additional 20 new stationary license plate reader cameras; installation was expected in September 2025.
On October 28 of this year, City Council discussed the renewal (termed an “amendment”) to the City’s contract with Flock in response to a citizen petition to cancel the contract. The discussion that evening took place in a packed council chambers with over four hours of public comment and council questions and discussion.
F3 sent an email to Council (read it here) in October outlining real-world examples of agencies, such as ICE, gaining access to Flock data despite the company’s rhetoric that this sort of thing doesn’t occur. F3 urged the cancellation/non-renewal of the city’s contract with Flock because of concerns with abuse and weaponization of personal data by the current federal administration. Many public speakers spoke against the contract renewal.
Flagstaff Police and the County Sheriff made arguments in support of the use of Flock cameras. In response to the criticism, Police Chief Connolly talked of creating ‘guardrails.’ He suggested making changes to the city policy on ALPRs including reducing the length of time the data is stored and, only sharing data with NAU, the Navajo Nation, and the County rather than sharing the data with 50 agencies in Arizona. The police chief also said he would provide Flock audit reports to council on a regular basis, and set up an advisory committee that he will work with on implementing technology in policing (see Technology Privacy Task Force).
The City Council did not vote at the October 28 meeting. Councilmembers Aslan and Garcia said they did not support renewing the contract, while Mayor Daggett and Councilmembers Spence, Matthews, House, and Sweet said they did support the contract renewal. Councilmember Aslan made a compelling case for canceling the contract stating that this technology in today’s political climate is particularly dangerous.
The City’s revised Scope of Work for the amendment of the contract with Flock Safety includes 31 Falcon cameras, four Falcon Flex cameras, and one solar long-range solar Falcon LR (link at bottom of this page). This appears to indicate an increase in the number of cameras leased by the city compared to 2024.
Concerns with Flock Safety and Cameras a National Issue
The concerns expressed by F3 and others at the October council meeting are shared by many citizens and leaders across the country. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote a white paper in 2022 about their concerns with Flock. They continue to express significant concerns as more troubling stories about what the company is doing with the data emerge (see the most recent: October 24, 2025 as well as F3’s October 2025 letter to Council for additional information (read here).
Sedona’s City Council unanimously voted on September 9 of this year to sever its contract with Flock Safety and remove 11 license plate reader cameras. Since then, many communities across the country have either paused or canceled their contracts.
F3’s Concerns
In addition to the concerns expressed in our October letter to City Council, and those addressed above, F3 has specific concerns related to the Flagstaff contract with Flock Safety:
- In a recent Washington state court case, the court held that Flock data are public records under the state’s public records law. This decision is not binding in Arizona. If Flock data is a public record in Arizona, then it must be stored for the period of time required by the city’s public records retention policy and the Flagstaff police chief wouldn’t be able to legally delete the data after 15 days or even 30 days. This would make meaningless a significant guardrail put in place to prevent abuse of the data – deleting the data after 14 days – that the police chief agreed to at the Oct 28 council meeting.
- Flagstaff’s police chief is in the process of creating a Technology Privacy Task Force, which will be “responsible for reviewing the city’s current technology policies, examining proposals for new technology, and providing critical input and recommendations directly to the policies.” We have many concerns about how this task force is set up and how it will function. Council should receive recommendations from this task force because issues of technology and privacy are public policy questions, and not administrative decisions. This Task Force should be appointed by the city council and should make recommendations to the council directly; it shouldn’t advise the IT Director or any other staff. In addition, this Task Force should follow the open meeting law, which includes posting meetings and taking minutes. The discussions of this Task Force must not be held behind closed doors.
What You Can Do
- Send an email to the Mayor and Council on or before December 15: council@flagstaffaz.gov
- Make a verbal public comment at the City Council meeting on the afternoon of December 16 (meeting starts at 3:00 pm). Fill out a yellow card upon entrance to the Council chambers and hand it to the City Clerk. After the presentation and council discussion of this agenda item (currently Agenda Item # 9c), the Mayor will open the floor to public comments. You will be given three minutes to make your comment when your name is called.
Links for Additional Information
Deflock.me (basic information and answers to questions)
Have I Been Flocked (an article outlining Flock’s overseas data annotation process, security concerns, and information about troubling sections of standard Flock contracts)
ACLU Iowa (recent report on the surveillance network created by ALPRs in Iowa)
Flagstaff Police Transparency Portal (Flagstaff’s ALPR policy and usage data)
Michele James
Executive Director
MJames@FriendsofFlagstaff.org |
