Last Friday, the City of Flagstaff canceled its contract with Flock Safety after the city council voted unanimously to stop using the cameras. Flagstaff is the latest city to cancel its contract with the camera provider after questions have been raised about the lack of privacy the cameras impose on citizens.
Supporters of the traffic cameras argue that they help law enforcement solve crimes, locate missing people and arrest wanted fugitives. As Flagstaff was canceling its contract, another city, Providence Rhode Island, was crediting its 70 Flock cameras for helping them locate Claudio Neves Valente, the suspected Brown University shooter.
But communities across the nation are moving to remove the cameras from their jurisdictions after privacy concerns have been raised in recent weeks. Ferndale Michigan ended its contract with Flock on November 13, 2025, after ethical concerns were brought to its attention. San Marcos also cut ties with Flock earlier this month over privacy issues.
In August, two ranking congressional members, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Robert Garcia (D-CA) launched an investigation into Flock Safety “over its role in enabling invasive surveillance practices.”
In light of the cancelations by several cities, Flock Safety sent “unsolicited” emails to police departments, highlighting the cameras’ success in crime fighting, and blaming the cancelations as a “coordinated attack” against the company. The unsolicited email goes on to state that “activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness” are “producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines,” and they are turning “a public record process into a weapon” against the use of the cameras.
At least one city responded to the unsolicited email by moving to cancel its contract with the company. Staunton Virginia’s police chief, city manager and city council moved to cancel the agreement after receiving the email that suggested that Staunton had fallen under the influence of political activists.
Notwithstanding the email sent out by Flock Safety, privacy concerns have led to questions about their use across the nation, including in El Paso.
El Paso Has Deployed 150 Since May
According to Flock Safety, the El Paso Police Department operates Flock cameras in the city.
See where the cameras are located in El Paso
Deflock is a website that tracks the growing use of Flock cameras and the privacy implications their use causes citizens. It lists 158 cameras in use in the El Paso area. According to Flock’s latest information, there are 149 cameras in El Paso.
However, in an August 22, 2025, memorandum by El Paso Chief of Police, Peter Pacillas, to the city council, he advised them that his police department had deployed 150 of the Flock cameras across town.
According to Pacillas, the 150 cameras were paid for by a one-year grant from the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority (MVCPA) through a grant they awarded to the city in 2024. The MVCPA is a state agency tasked with streamlining motor vehicle services across the state. It is funded with a $5 fee assessed to car insurance companies per motor vehicle they insure.
The MVCPA awarded $2,010,810 for fiscal year 2024 for the city’s “auto burglary and theft prevention task force.” It was the second highest grant awarded during that period from the $39 million it awarded, according to the agency’s list of grants awarded.
Pacillas wrote in the memorandum to city officials that the police department used $702,500 to deploy the Flock cameras for one year. The grant award ends on March 2026, according to Pacillas’ memorandum, and the contract with Flock Safety ends on May 16, 2026. Pacillas added that the cost of the cameras was fully covered by the grant.
Pacillas went on to list examples of the effectiveness of the cameras for law enforcement purposes, adding that the task force “has had several success stories.”
Questions about the cameras in El Paso first appeared on Reddit in July after a poster noted that the cameras were appearing around El Paso. City Representative Chris Canales responded to the Reddit poster on the platform, writing that “as far as I am aware, the City of El Paso and El Paso Police Department do not have any agreement with Flock Safety.”
We reached out to Canales today to inquire about the cameras in El Paso.
In an email response today, Canales wrote that the “El Paso Police Department does have a limited contract with Flock Safety,” adding “that I only learned of somewhat recently after cameras started popping up around the city and I asked some questions.” Canales went on to add that “the contact is funded by a grant that expires in 2026, and it’s my intention to not allow it to renew or to otherwise terminate it at the earliest possible time in 2026.”
Canales added that, “while I spoke with Chief Pacillas about this and he put some of my immediate fears at ease due the specific ways in which El Paso PD is using Flock, I’m still very much not comfortable with it overall and I don’t think it’s something El Paso should be using moving forward given the privacy issues and misuses I’ve seen in other cities.”
Two recent issues in particular have raised questions about how the Flock Safety dashboard can be misused even with safeguards in place. One was a case where a sheriff used the camera data to try to prosecute a woman for having an alleged abortion and another report discovered that some users of the system were misusing the data for immigration purposes.
Flock Camera Used for Abortion Investigation
Flock cameras are not used only for tracking stolen vehicles or missing people, in at least one case, Flock data was used by the Johnson County sheriff for an abortion case according to an investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published in October.
According to EFF’s investigation, Johnson County Sheriff Adam King used Flock’s license plate reader cameras to track a woman during an abortion investigation. Calling the use of the cameras for the abortion case as “false” and “misleading,” King denied using the cameras for the investigation. King said that the use of the cameras was for the “safety” of a “missing person,” the woman they were investigating.
However, a sworn affidavit by the lead detective revealed that the investigation was about an abortion case.
When news first broke about the possible use of Flock’s cameras for an abortion investigation, Flock Safety issued a statement calling the news “purposely misleading,” adding that the sheriff had said that his department was using the cameras to help locate a “missing person.” The affidavit later revealed that it was not a missing person, but an abortion case.
King is scheduled to go to trial in March on charges of retaliating against a witness and sexual harassment in an unrelated case.
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Flock Camera Data Used for Immigration Enforcement
In November, it was revealed that license plate cameras were being used by immigration officials to track “suspicious” vehicles traveling near the border in Texas. Immigration agents ask local police officers to stop vehicles they suspect of illegal activity to help in their investigations. Among the cameras used are Flock cameras operated by police departments across Texas.
Although transparency reports about the use of the Flock data say that the pictures taken by the cameras are not used for immigration enforcement purposes, in May of this year, journalists at 404 Media found that “local police are doing lookups in the nationwide system for ICE.”
The problem lies in the fact that police forces outside of El Paso can use the Flock data collected in El Paso for immigration purposes, through a “back door” by sharing data collected to the Flock network. When accessing information in the data collected, police must provide a reason for looking up the information. An open records request for information accessed showed reasons supplied included “immigration,” “ICE,” “illegal immigration” and others related to immigration enforcement.
An audit report acquired from the Danville Police Department through an open records request found that when the police department performed a search for “ICE+ERO” on March 6, the records returned included responses from over 77,000 devices across the country that are connected to the Flock network.
Although the El Paso Police Department explicitly states on its Flock Safety transparency report that it does not use the Flock camera data for immigration enforcement, its data is, nonetheless, shared across the Flock network nationwide. A review of the 339,335 records released under the open records requests filed with the Danville Police Department, shows at least seven incidents where El Paso olice were included in the Danville searches, although none were immigration related.
The El Paso Police Department shares the data it collects with around 350 other agencies.
The open records request led to an audit of how the data was used revealing that searches related to immigration enforcement were being made in violation of the policies of the Virginia law enforcement agency.
Among the agencies listed by Flock Safety that the El Paso Police Department shares its data with includes a county commissioner’s office – Harris County Pct.3 Commissioner.
Tom S. Ramsey has served as the Harris County Pct3. Commissioner since 2020. When the Harris County Commissioners voted to allocate $1.3 million for helping undocumented immigrants’ legal fees in October, the sole Republican on the commission, Ramsey was the only one to vote against the measure.
It is not clear why the El Paso Police Department lists Ramsey as having access to the camera’s data on the department’s transparency report. A commissioner’s office does not provide law enforcement raising the question as to why the El Paso’s police department would provide him access to its camera data.
In addition to privacy and misuse of data concerns, last week, the Texas Department of Public Safety began investigating Flock Safety after the company’s private security license, which is required to operate in Texas, was suspended by DPS for “failure to maintain proof of liability insurance.” Although the company has said it has since rectified the problem, the DPS investigation remains open.
But license plates are not the only thing Flock cameras track as a recent exposure of Flock data due to negligence in applying security revealed that people are being tracked as well.
People Tracking Flock Camera Open to Anyone on the Internet
As we were working on finalizing this story yesterday, 404 Media published another story revealing that other Flock surveillance cameras specifically designed to track people were left open for anyone with an internet connection to review 30 days’ worth of data captured by the cameras. Flock’s Condor cameras can be used to track people as they make their way across the city.
What made this latest discovery more concerning for the privacy of citizens is that the footage caught by the camera was available openly on the internet without even a password to secure it. Anyone who knew the link could sit thousands of miles away and watch people go about their daily lives without knowing they were being stalked.
The company has responded to the leaked facial recognition data by blaming a government agency for not following its suggested security protocols, like adding a password to the feed.
30 Days of El Paso Camera Data
Flock Safety provides on its website a “transparency report” for each city where their cameras are deployed.
The El Paso Police Department operates 149 license plate readers and other Flock cameras. Between November 23 and December 22, 2025, the cameras detected over one million vehicles, of which 6,097 resulted in some type of alert, according to Flock’s December 22 information. In the last 30 days, there were 722 searches performed in the data captured by the cameras. According to the data provided by Flock Safety, the El Paso Police Department has not conducted an audit of who has accessed their camera information.
It is not known whether El Paso PD operates the people-tracking Condor cameras as they are not publicly listed in their transparency report.
However, it should be noted that 404 Media’s report noted that Bakersfield’s transparency report does not list a Condor camera individually, but they observed at least one in the city during their investigation.
In reviewing El Paso’s transparency report against Bakersfield, we noted that the two reports state that “facial recognition, people, gender, race” are “not detected.” The problem is that 404 Media found at least one Condor camera in Bakersfield that is specifically designed to track individuals, raising questions about the accuracy of the transparency reports posted by Flock Safety.
For people concerned about privacy and the Flock cameras, they must also now contend with private companies now using the Flock cameras without government oversight and sharing the data they collect to the Flock network accessible by agencies across the nation.
Not Just for Law Enforcement
Flock Safety does not limit its cameras to law enforcement officials only. The cameras are being used by the Simon Property Group, which owns Cielo Vista Mall. Simon shares its camera data with police. A former Simon employee at San Diego’s Las Americas Premium Outlets said that “as soon as you come in,” your license plate and information is “in the system.” Lowes uses the Flock cameras as well. Academy Sports and FedEx also use the cameras.
As demonstrated by the mall operator, Simon, the use of the Flock cameras does not have official oversight as to how the footage is used and who it is shared with further raising privacy concerns.
City Officials Respond To Our Queries About the Cameras
Soon after we started asking questions about the use of Flock cameras in El Paso, the City’s Strategic Communications Director, Laura Cruz-Acosta sent an email to the mayor and city council today.
In the email, Cruz-Acosta confirmed the use of the Flock cameras and addressed the concerns we asked city officials about.
According to Cruz-Acosta’s email, “the Flock system includes multiple safeguards designed to protect privacy and limit use strictly to legitimate law enforcement purposes.” She added that the “access to the system is restricted to authorized personnel, and use is limited to legitimate law enforcement use such as stolen vehicles and vehicles associated with active criminal investigations.”
Her response did not address how the city ensures that outside agencies could misuse the data once it is available on the Flock network.
She did, however, point out that “the system also maintains audit logs that show who accessed data.” She added that the “system maintains audit logs for accountability and transparency, allowing the department to review access activity and ensure compliance with policy and applicable laws.” Cruz-Acosta’s email went on to add that the “audit logs are maintained continuously within the system and are available for review by department leadership as needed.”
As for how the El Paso cameras are used, Cruz-Acosta wrote that the cameras “generate real-time vehicle alerts tied to legitimate law enforcement needs, including stolen vehicles and vehicles associated with active criminal investigations.”
Nonetheless, two El Paso City Representatives Chris Canales and Lily Limón are skeptical of the cameras and concerned about their possible misuse. Canales wrote that he doesn’t “think it’s something El Paso should be using moving forward given the privacy issues and misuses I’ve seen in other cities.”
Lily Limón told us in an email response today that she remembered that the city council was informed about the cameras earlier in the year and were told that they “would be used to respond to criminal activities.” Limón added that she is concerned about the privacy issues surrounding the cameras and will “start a deep dive in January,” to ensure that El Pasoans’ privacy is not being “violated.” Limón added that one of the first things she wants to confirm is that El Paso’s camera data “is not being used for immigration purposes” by having the city review the audit logs for instances of other law enforcement agencies conducting searches on El Paso’s data for immigration purposes.
Flock Safety Ignored Our Requests for Comment
When we started working on this story yesterday, we reached out to Garrett Langley, the CEO and founder of Flock Safety, to comment about the privacy concerns over his company’s cameras. Langley did not respond to our request for comment, and instead forwarded it to Holly Beilin, the Senior Director of Communications, within minutes of receiving our email request.
Beiling wrote back letting us know that the company welcomed “the opportunity to respond, but respectfully, an hour and half is an extremely short deadline to provide a response from a company CEO.” Beiling asked if we would extend the deadline today.
We notified her this morning that we had delayed our story until later today and would wait for her comments until this afternoon so that we could include them. Neither Beiling nor Langley responded in time for us to include their comments in today’s story. If we receive a response from them after publication, we will update the story to include their responses.
Picture credit: Flock Safety advertising material.
This article is published in partnership with El Paso Herald Post.