US cities cancel Flock Safety surveillance camera contracts amid civil‑rights backlash

Resistance to the deployment of Flock Safety’s AI‑powered license‑plate reader (ALPR) cameras is growing across the United States. More than 5,000 law‑enforcement agencies have installed the devices, which the ACLU says number between 80,000 and 100,000 nationwide and conduct over 20 billion scans each month. The cameras, originally marketed for standard policing, are now being used for immigration checks, monitoring protests and even tracking pregnant people’s travel to enforce abortion bans.

The ACLU’s “Get the Flock Out” campaign highlights the lack of oversight, noting that data is uploaded to a national database that any agency with a contract can query. Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told reporters, “There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things.” ACLU privacy attorney Chad Marlow added, “Our country is in a kind of uniquely anti‑surveillance environment.”

Cities are responding. According to the public‑information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 contracts were terminated in 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026. Amazon‑owned Ring announced it would cease doing business with Flock Safety. In California, Santa Cruz became the first municipality to end its contract after an ICE agent’s fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis prompted council member Susie O’Hara to demand action.