Last reviewed: September 19, 2026
Some police departments publish a public Flock Safety Transparency Portal.
That is useful.
A portal may show camera count, data retention, recent vehicle detections, number of searches, hot-list activity, department policies and examples of cases where the department says Flock helped.
We encourage departments to make this information available.
But a transparency portal is a starting point for understanding the system, not necessarily a complete description of everything the system can do or how it is used.
What a portal proves: what the published page displayed on the date you reviewed it.
What it does not prove: that every technical setting matches the display, that all sharing paths or products are shown, that audit controls are actively used or that the same information remains current later.
Verify consequential claims with city records, configuration exports, policies and audits.
Start with the date.
Look for Last updated.
A portal gives you a snapshot.
Camera counts can change. Retention settings can change. Policies can change. Sharing relationships can change. Products can change.
If you use a portal statistic publicly, record the update date with the number.
Look at the retention period.
The portal may show a value such as:
Data Retention: 30 days
That is important local information.
It is not necessarily the complete lifecycle of every record.
Specific observations may be preserved for investigations, exported into case files or otherwise handled separately when legally appropriate.
Use the current local value rather than replacing it with a generic vendor default.
Look carefully at “Total Cameras.”
Read the definition underneath the number.
Some Flock portals define total cameras to include LPR and other cameras.
That means:
Total Cameras does not necessarily mean Total ALPR Cameras.
There may be different products included in the number.
If the distinction matters locally, find the actual inventory.
“Vehicles detected” sounds simpler than it is.
A portal may report hundreds of thousands or more vehicle detections over a rolling period.
Use the definition the portal provides.
The number does not automatically mean that many different people were tracked, that many unique physical vehicles exist in the database, or that many crimes occurred.
It is a measure of what the camera network detected.
The significance is the scale of routine collection.
Detection is not suspicion.
A vehicle can be detected because it drove to work, went to the grocery store, visited a friend, passed through town or simply used a public road.
A detection does not mean the vehicle was under investigation.
Collection happens first.
Most vehicles entering the system are ordinary traffic.
Then look at the number of searches.
A portal may report the number of user search sessions during a period.
That tells you how actively the system is being queried.
It does not tell you that the same number of crimes were investigated, suspects were identified, arrests occurred or searches produced useful information.
One investigation may involve multiple searches.
One search may return nothing useful.
Another may be extremely important.
The number answers:
How much search activity occurred?
It does not answer:
What did those searches accomplish?
Search volume can lead to better questions.
Ask:
- What types of investigations were those searches connected to?
- How many produced useful leads?
- What offense categories were involved?
- How many resulted in enforcement action?
- How many searches returned nothing useful?
- How many users performed those searches?
- How are searches audited?
You do not need to assume the number is good or bad.
Use it to understand how the system is actually being used.
Now look at the hot lists.
A transparency portal may identify the sources against which the system generates alerts.
Hot lists can contain vehicle information connected with legitimate law-enforcement purposes such as stolen vehicles, wanted persons or missing people.
Then ask:
Which lists are used locally?
Who can add locally entered alerts?
How long do those alerts remain active?
What verification occurs before officers act?
A hot-list hit is not an arrest.
Do not read thousands of hot-list hits as thousands of criminals caught.
A hit means the system generated a match against configured information.
Multiple cameras may encounter the same vehicle. A vehicle may produce repeated alerts. Some matches require additional verification. Some may not result in enforcement action.
Hit and confirmed crime are different things.
Look at “What’s Detected.”
The portal may tell you what the department says its deployed system captures.
Compare that with the vendor’s technical descriptions and the actual products purchased locally.
If another product is present, such as a video system, its capabilities may differ from the LPR cameras summarized on the portal.
Look at “What’s Not Detected” too.
A portal may state that the LPR deployment does not detect facial recognition, people, gender or race.
Report that accurately.
Also understand what the statement refers to.
A vehicle-focused LPR product is not the same thing as separate video-search products that may search for people using visible non-biometric characteristics.
Identify the actual product before generalizing.
Read the Acceptable Use Policy.
This section may explain how the department says the system may be used and what uses are prohibited.
Record those restrictions.
Then, if necessary, find the full department policy behind the summary.
A portal description is helpful.
A complete policy may contain more detail.
Policy tells you what should happen.
Audit records can help tell you what did happen.
Suppose a portal says personal searches are prohibited.
Good.
That tells us the rule.
If the question is whether anyone ever performed a personal search, the policy cannot answer that.
Remember the four-part distinction:
- Vendor capability - what the company says the product can do.
- Local configuration - what this agency has enabled.
- Written policy - what users are officially allowed to do.
- Actual use - what records show happened.
A transparency portal often helps most with the middle two.
Read the access section carefully.
A portal may summarize controls such as individual accounts, required search reasons and audit logging.
Then ask:
- How many users have access?
- What roles have access?
- What constitutes a valid search reason?
- Does anybody approve searches beforehand?
- Who reviews logs afterward?
- How frequently?
A portal showing that auditability exists is not the same as showing how actively local supervisors use it.
Look for sharing information.
Some portals provide more sharing information than others.
If your local portal does not list sharing partners, do not conclude:
This department shares with nobody.
The portal may simply not answer that question.
Look for local policy, sharing configuration records or other documentation.
Missing information is not automatically suspicious.
If a portal does not show sharing partners, false-alert rates, user counts, audit findings or another field, that does not prove the department is hiding something.
The portal may simply not be designed to display it.
The correct conclusion is:
Not answered here.
Then decide whether the unanswered question matters enough to research elsewhere.
Read the success stories.
Transparency portals may include examples where the department says Flock helped an investigation.
Read them.
They can demonstrate genuine capabilities and real uses.
Understand what a success story proves.
A success story can show:
The system was useful in this case.
It usually cannot prove:
- the crime would never have been solved without it;
- the entire camera network reduces crime;
- the deployment pays for itself;
- or the privacy tradeoff is justified.
Those require different evidence.
Anecdotes are useful.
They are not causal studies.
The portal itself is not evidence that everything is fine.
A polished transparency page can feel reassuring.
Residents should appreciate meaningful disclosure.
Then keep asking the policy question.
A department can have good audit logs, clear rules, short retention, responsible officers and a transparent website while residents still conclude:
We do not want government routinely creating this movement database.
Transparency improves oversight.
It does not settle whether the system should exist.
The portal is also not evidence that everything is terrible.
Do not see one million detections and announce that police ran one million searches on residents.
Do not turn thousands of hot-list hits into thousands of false accusations.
Read the definitions.
Use the numbers correctly.
Then make the argument.
Compare portal claims with public records.
A strong local research process may compare the portal with:
- current contract;
- camera inventory;
- department policy;
- sharing records;
- audit reports;
- meeting records;
- and budget documents.
If everything agrees, great.
If something differs, find out why.
Maybe one source is older. Maybe one includes video cameras and another counts only LPR. Maybe the configuration changed.
Do not assume deception before checking definitions and dates.
Save the date and the number together.
Write:
As of [date], the department’s Flock Transparency Portal reported [number] cameras and [number] detections during the preceding reporting period.
That is much better than converting a rolling statistic into a permanent municipal fact.
A portal can help identify excellent FOIA questions.
After reading it, you may discover the most important unanswered question is who the department shares with, how often audit logs are reviewed, which products are included in the camera count or what happens after a hot-list hit.
Now you can request one focused record.
That is much better than filing:
Give me everything you have about Flock.
Use public information first.
Request only what fills the important gap.
A five-minute portal review
Answer these questions:
- When was the portal last updated?
- What is the stated retention period?
- How many cameras are reported, and what does the definition include?
- How many vehicle detections occurred during the reporting period?
- How many searches were performed?
- Which hot lists are used?
- How many hot-list hits occurred?
- What uses are prohibited?
- What does it say about verification before action?
- Does it identify sharing partners?
- What important question does the portal not answer?
Now you understand much more than someone who simply saw a camera count.
Transparency is good.
We mean that.
Departments that publish useful policies and statistics make public oversight easier.
Officials should encourage it.
But transparency answers:
Can residents see more clearly what government is doing?
Our campaign asks another question too:
Should government be doing it at all?
Those are different questions.