Why Deflock University City?
There are numerous reasons why University City must join communities all around the nation to remove Flock cameras from our streets. From ICE data sharing concerns to people mistakenly held at gunpoint, these cameras represent a fundamental shift in how we protect public safety in our community.
DOCUMENTED ICE ACCESS TO FLOCK DATA
Recent investigative reporting and public records requests have revealed that ICE and federal immigration authorities have gained access to Flock data through multiple means, despite the company's initial claims to the contrary. The evidence includes:
Direct "Front Door" Access:
At least eight Washington state law enforcement agencies enabled direct, one-to-one sharing of their Flock networks with U.S. Border Patrol during 2025, including police departments in Arlington, Auburn, Lakewood, Richland, Sunnyside, Wenatchee, and Yakima.
Unauthorized "Back Door" Access:
U.S. Border Patrol gained apparent unauthorized access to license plate data from at least ten local Washington law enforcement agencies that had not explicitly authorized such sharing, occurring from at least May to August 2025.
Five Virginia counties (Fairfax, Chesterfield, Isle of Wight, Loudoun, and Stafford) shared data with federal authorities for approximately 50 immigration-related enforcement searches between June 2024 and April 2025, despite prohibitions against using the surveillance for such operations.
"Side Door" Proxy Searches:
More than 4,000 searches of Flock databases have been conducted by state and local law enforcement agencies on behalf of federal immigration authorities, giving ICE "side-door access" to a tool for which it does not have a formal contract.
San Francisco Police Department allowed out-of-state police to make over 1.6 million searches of its Flock database, with searches explicitly marked as ICE-related, in direct violation of California state law.
Virginia's Flock Safety network was searched nearly 3,000 times over a 12-month period using terms like 'ICE,' 'ERO,' 'immigration,' and 'deportee.'
Denver's Flock cameras were accessed for ICE-related searches beginning June 13, 2024, with searches conducted by out-of-state agencies from Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama, and Florida.
This issue is of particular concern to University City, as municipalities, counties, and other agencies with 287(g) agreements with ICE continue to spring up in our direct vicinity. This includes police departments in Hillsdale, Breckenridge Hills, Woodson Terrace, St. Ann, Country Club Hills, Jefferson County, St. Charles County, and Missouri Highway Patrol.
Flock Cameras are easily hacked
Benn Jordan demonstrates how easily Flock cameras can be compromised to steal data and track people’s locations. The video highlights significant security vulnerabilities discovered in the hardware and software, calling into question the privacy claims made by the company.
System errors endanger lives
ALPR technology has created a public safety crisis, turning ordinary people into victims of violent police encounters based on technological errors that have repeatedly created situations of public endangerment. These are just a few of the most prominent cases documented in the media.
2020 – Aurora, Colorado
In 2020, a mother and her family, including her 6-year-old daughter, were pulled over at gunpoint in Aurora, Colorado and forced to lie face down on hot pavement. Police mistakenly flagged their Colorado license plate as matching that of a completely different vehicle from a different state: a stolen motorcycle registered in Montana. The incident, captured on video and widely condemned, led to a $1.9 million settlement from the city in 2024.
2024 – Toledo, Ohio
In April 2024, Brandon Upchurch was a casualty of Flock’s system when he was mistakenly accused of driving a vehicle with stolen license plates when a camera made by Flock misread the "7" on Upchurch's plate for a "2" and pinged Toledo Police.
During the encounter, Toledo police demanded that Upchurch get on the ground and, as he did so, released a police dog who then latched onto Upchurch's dreadlocks, rammed his head into the ground, and sunk its teeth into his arm. While Upchurch was taken into custody, all charges were later dropped.
2026 – Sherwood, Arkansas
A recent incident took place in February 2026, where a mother and her family were stopped and held at gunpoint in Arkansas after an ALPR mistakenly flagged her vehicle as stolen. In the recording of the incident, the officer explains to the owner of the vehicle that the issue was an issue with a mistaken reading of her license plate. He later places blame on the woman and her license plate frame for being the cause of the stop, rather than the ALPR or his failure to verify the plate.
These are a few in at least a dozen instances where misreads by Flock's automated license plate readers, or a lack of verification by officers, resulted in people being held at gunpoint, sent to jail, or mauled by a police dog, among other outcomes.
FOURTH AMENDMENT AND DUE PROCESS VIOLATIONS
The Fourth Amendment's "reasonable" standard establishes that government surveillance must comport with society's expectations of privacy, and Flock Safety's ALPR technology raises significant concerns under this framework.
Under the established precedent from Katz v. United States, individuals possess a reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements and associations, yet Flock's cameras systematically track and record the precise location, date, and time of every license plate they encounter without individualized suspicion.
This creates a detailed "mosaic" of people's daily lives, where even if individual car sightings might not be considered private, the comprehensive aggregation of this data reveals intimate patterns about religious practices, political associations, medical visits, and personal relationships; information that the Supreme Court has recognized deserves Fourth Amendment protection in cases like Carpenter v. United States. It was in this 2018 decision, the Court said "A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere."
The pervasive nature of Flock's surveillance, combined with its data-sharing vulnerabilities related to ICE 287(g) programs, transforms passive observation into an investigative dragnet that fundamentally undermines the reasonable expectation of privacy that the Fourth Amendment was designed to safeguard, particularly when the collected data is used to identify and target vulnerable populations without adequate judicial oversight.
Beyond immigration enforcement specifically, the Flock system presents fundamental due process and oversight problems. Many local agencies using Flock were completely unaware that federal authorities were accessing their data and some agencies never ran network audits or did not know how to access them.
When local law enforcement conducts a Flock search, they can access not only their own cameras but also cameras in other states and even nationwide, creating a surveillance network far beyond what local officials authorized. A Washington state court ruled in November 2025 that Flock camera images are public records that can be requested by anyone, raising additional privacy concerns about who ultimately has access to this data. The system’s audit logs have proven inadequate for oversight, as demonstrated by the millions of unauthorized searches that occurred before being discovered through independent journalism and public records requests.