To the Virginia Beach City Council, City Manager, and Virginia Beach Police Department:

We, the undersigned residents of Virginia Beach and concerned members of the community, call on the City of Virginia Beach to end its contract with Flock Safety, remove Flock automated license plate reader cameras from our streets, and permanently prohibit the use of Flock’s surveillance network by city agencies.

Our right to move freely without being tracked
Virginia Beach should be a city where people can go to work, visit friends, attend religious services, seek medical care, participate in protests, or simply drive across town without their movements being systematically recorded and stored in a private surveillance database.

Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers do more than identify vehicles involved in a particular crime. They create records of vehicles passing particular locations, allowing law enforcement to search for patterns of movement after the fact.

That fundamentally changes the relationship between residents and their government.

Being suspected of no crime should not make a person’s movements subject to government surveillance.

Public safety and privacy do not have to be opposites
We recognize that Virginia Beach Police have cited Flock technology as a useful investigative tool. The department has publicly described cases in which Flock technology helped investigators locate vehicles connected to serious crimes.

But the fact that a surveillance technology can be useful does not mean that unlimited or widespread deployment is justified.

Police already have powerful investigative tools available to them, including traditional license-plate readers, cameras, witnesses, warrants, subpoenas, forensic evidence, and other investigative techniques.

Virginia Beach should not normalize a system in which the movements of ordinary, law-abiding residents are continuously captured simply because they happen to drive past a camera.

The risks are too great
Flock’s system raises serious questions about:

• Mass surveillance of people who have not been accused of wrongdoing;
• Data retention and the possibility of information being stored and searched after the original purpose has passed;
• Sharing of information across jurisdictions and agencies;
• Unauthorized or improper searches;
• Tracking individuals' movements without a warrant;
• Potential use of surveillance data for purposes unrelated to the original justification for collecting it;
• The lack of meaningful public consent before surveillance infrastructure is deployed;
• Dependence on a private company for a system capable of revealing highly sensitive information about where people travel.

Recent nationwide scrutiny has highlighted concerns about improper searches and law-enforcement misuse of Flock systems. Flock announced changes to its platform in August 2026, including stronger auditing requirements and shorter data retention, but civil-liberties advocates have argued that those changes do not adequately address the fundamental issue of law-enforcement-controlled access to extensive location data.

Virginia Beach should learn from other communities
Virginia Beach does not have to wait for a surveillance scandal before acting.

Other Virginia communities have already reconsidered Flock contracts. Charlottesville and Staunton have canceled their contracts amid concerns including privacy, cost, and potential abuse.

Across the country, dozens of jurisdictions have likewise rejected or ended relationships with Flock Safety.

Virginia Beach should be a leader in protecting both public safety and civil liberties—not a follower waiting until residents' privacy has already been compromised.

We demand accountability
We call upon Virginia Beach officials to:

1. Terminate the City's contract with Flock Safety at the earliest legally permissible date.
2. Stop the collection of new Flock license-plate data by Virginia Beach agencies.
3. Remove or deactivate Flock cameras operated by or on behalf of the City.
4. Conduct a complete public accounting of the City's relationship with Flock Safety, including the contract, costs, number and locations of cameras, data-retention policies, agencies with access to Virginia Beach data, and all applicable data-sharing arrangements.
5. Release a public report identifying how Flock data has been accessed and used, subject to legally required protections for active investigations and personal information.
6. Prohibit city agencies from replacing Flock with another mass license-plate surveillance vendor without a transparent public process, City Council approval, and meaningful community input.
7. Establish clear limits on any future automated license-plate reader technology, including strict retention limits, warrant requirements where legally appropriate, independent auditing, restrictions on data sharing, and meaningful public oversight.

This is about what kind of city we want to be
We support effective policing.

We support investigating violent crime.

We support finding missing people and holding dangerous offenders accountable.

But public safety should not require turning every driver into a potential subject of surveillance.

Virginia Beach has an opportunity to draw a clear line: Police should investigate people suspected of crimes—not collect detailed records about everyone simply because they are driving through the city.

We ask the Virginia Beach City Council and City Manager to listen to their constituents, reconsider the City's reliance on Flock Safety, and end the contract.

Public safety matters. So does privacy.

End Virginia Beach's Flock surveillance program.