Local advocates thought they had scored an important victory earlier this year after the Los Angeles Police Department declined to renew an agreement for Flock Safety license plate readers over concerns about data sharing for immigration enforcement.
But earlier this week, a controversial pilot program that would attach hundreds of license plate readers to streetlights around the city cleared the City Council, and it is expected to launch in the near future.
The new readers are made by Axon Enterprise, another heavyweight in the police surveillance market that until recently had largely avoided the intense public backlash against Flock Safety.
Dozens of cities and counties across the U.S. have ended or paused their relationships with Flock, and at least a handful have since signed contracts with Axon, which has a decades-old relationship with the LAPD and has long supplied the department with its trademark Taser stun guns and body-worn cameras.
In addition, Axon recently secured a $235-million contract with the LAPD for new body cameras, Tasers and AI-assisted software for writing police reports over the next decade.
Perhaps more than any other major tech company, Axon has benefited from the anti-Flock vitriol as it jockeys with other competitors to secure lucrative contracts to equip the 8,500-officer LAPD ahead of the 2028 Olympics.
LAPD officials have said they would be open to working with Flock again, so long as it agrees to more data-sharing safeguards for the license plate readers. Axon has said it would abide by the department’s terms.
The LAPD and other law enforcement agencies around the country have used plate-reading technology for years. The readers, which are typically mounted on patrol vehicles or light poles, work by continuously scanning license plates and checking them against vast databases of cars wanted in connection with crimes.
But Flock has emerged as the national face of public backlash over concerns that the Trump White House is using the data to locate immigrants targeted for deportation, as well as reports of police officers abusing the technology to stalk women.
The Atlanta firm — which is valued at roughly $8.3 billion and backed by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz — has said that its cameras are running in 6,000 communities in every state but Alaska.
According to the crowdsourced database DeFlock, about 100 cities have deactivated their Flock cameras, rejected new deals or canceled existing ones, with critics arguing that the cameras’ pervasiveness amounts to unconstitutional warrantless mass surveillance. Several cities, the largest of which is Denver, have signed contracts with Axon or other plate reader companies.
Nationwide, vandals have filmed themselves on social media damaging or defacing Flock cameras. Meanwhile, anti-Flock organizing groups have sprung up across Los Angeles and in places like Monterey Park. Both candidates in the L.A. mayoral race, incumbent Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman, have called for the city to permanently end its relationship with Flock.
Scores of Flock cameras are still operating citywide, but police officials say they won’t have access to them unless the Los Angeles city attorney’s office can hammer out a new agreement with Flock.
In response to the nationwide criticism, Flock has announced a host of changes, including reducing its data retention period and strengthening safeguards around searches that could violate laws in states like California that expressly forbid most sharing of information with federal immigration enforcement.
In addition to Tasers and body cameras, the LAPD is using another Axon product, Fusus, which functions like the brain of a crime center, synthesizing the feeds it pulls in — from 911 audio and body-worn, dashboard and surveillance cameras — and enabling police to watch an entire city from one place.
NPR reported that during a recent earnings call, Axon Chief Executive Rick Smith told investors that the company was “seeing a significant number of agencies want to come over to Axon and convert from existing license plate readers to us.” He attributed this to Axon’s “controls and privacy work.”
Some experts say the temporary void left by Flock presents an opportunity for vendors to get a foot in the door in securing long-term contracts with cities.
At the same time, the broader backlash against plate reader technology has prevented Axon from truly cashing in on the wave of anti-Flock sentiment, at least for now, said Joshua Reilly, a senior stock analyst at New York investment bank Needham & Co.
“They’re benefiting on the margin, but not in a significant way like you may think,” he said.
During Tuesday’s City Council meeting, council members debated the Axon pilot program after hearing from scores of people who spoke out in opposition to more cameras.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, a consistent critic of the technology, called on the LAPD to rewrite its internal policy to allow for independent auditing and to place more restrictions on how many officers can access plate scan information and when it can be shared with outside agencies.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who has also led the charge against Flock, said she was uncomfortable with the department’s use of technology that could be harnessed by a White House that is “pushing the boundaries of power every single day.”
But Councilmember Traci Park, a staunch Flock supporter whose district stretches from Pacific Palisades to LAX, said license plate data helped solve at least one drive-by shooting. Police investigating ongoing home burglaries in the still-rebuilding Palisades have been able to identify suspects, she said, in part because license plate readers frequently capture the getaway vehicles used by burglars.
The pilot program’s opponents failed to muster the 10-vote, two-thirds majority required to send it back to the Police Commission for reconsideration.
A report last month by the LAPD inspector general’s office found numerous “limitations” in the department’s existing agreements with its three plate reader vendors — Flock, Axon and Motorola — including a lack of clear language about how long data are retained and how they are shared with third parties or other law enforcement agencies.
Under the department’s new license plate reader policy, officials said the LAPD will have complete ownership of the data and will be prohibited from sharing it with certain outside agencies without approval from senior leadership. In addition, officials said, the use of plate readers would be limited to criminal investigations, missing persons cases and other “serious public safety matters.”
On Monday, a police technology watchdog group sued Park, claiming that her office refused to turn over information related to dozens of Flock devices in her district.
The group, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which has advocated for curbing all police technology, cited public records showing that Park’s office has allocated more than $450,000 in discretionary funding for the installation of more than 100 plate scanners in her district.
Hamid Khan, a longtime organizer with the group, said that companies like Axon and Flock are a small part of a Big Brother-like “surveillance architecture” and that swapping one for another doesn’t fix the problem.
“It’s not about just one license plate reader; it’s part of a much bigger system,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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