I live in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and like many of you, I am deeply concerned about our privacy. Automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks now blanket this region. Flock Safety is the largest vendor, but it is not the only one. Cities and agencies here already operate Flock alongside Axon (fixed and in-car), Motorola/Vigilant, Genetec, Leonardo/ELSAG, Ekin, and other systems, plus readers run by universities, housing authorities, and private businesses. Data is shared across departments. Removing one brand does not end the surveillance. A city can cancel Flock tomorrow and stand up Axon, Motorola, or another platform on the same poles, with the same mass collection, the same sharing, and the same risk to innocent people. That is not a solution. That is a vendor swap.
These systems photograph every passing vehicle, log plate, make, color, and other features, and store searchable location histories. They are sold as crime tools. In practice they have become warrantless tracking infrastructure that records the movements of everyone who drives, not just suspects.
This is not theoretical. The Institute for Justice reviewed media reports and court records and documented at least 27 cases since 2018 in which innocent people were pulled over, detained at gunpoint, or jailed after ALPR errors. Most of those cases occurred since 2023. IJ itself calls that tally an undercount. Separately, a Washington Post review of police and court records found that authorities had charged or accused at least 50 officers nationwide of using plate-reader systems for unauthorized purposes, including stalking. In 26 of those cases, the documented targets were wives, girlfriends, ex-partners, or women the officer wanted to meet. Flock was used in 46 of the 50 cases. The rest involved competing ALPR products. The Institute for Justice has since cataloged more than 200 ALPR abuse incidents across error, stalking, and other misconduct. These are public floors (what made it into news and court files), not a complete census.
This fight is now national. On September 23, 2026, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a bipartisan hearing on Flock’s nationwide AI surveillance network and related ALPR systems. Witnesses included a Florida driver who spent 13 days in jail after a Flock camera tied her vehicle to a fatal crash she did not cause. Senators from both parties pressed the record on wrongful arrests and officer misuse. The CEOs of Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada were invited to testify. They declined to appear. Flock sent a letter instead. That is the posture of an industry that wants local contracts without answering for the harm.
That is terrifying and unacceptable. Public safety matters. It does not require photographing every lawful trip through Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News, Suffolk, and the rest of Hampton Roads, then pooling that data so any participating agency can reconstruct where we go.
We are not against law enforcement. We are for accountability, transparency, and the Fourth Amendment. Traditional policing and real community relationships should come first, not a regional camera grid with weak oversight, error-prone hits, and a built-in escape hatch: “if Flock becomes politically toxic, buy Axon.” Other cities have already done exactly that. We will not accept the same play here. Congress is now asking the same questions we are asking locally. Our cities should not wait for a subpoena to do the right thing.
The demand is not “take down the Flock logos.” The demand is to dismantle mass ALPR surveillance in Hampton Roads, every vendor, fixed and mobile, public and contracted, until independent, public evaluation shows it is necessary, narrowly tailored, warrant-based where the Constitution requires it, and not a substitute for actual policing. Safety that depends on tracking every resident is not safety. It is a permanent record of movement sold under another company’s name.
Join us. Sign this petition and tell local councils, mayors, and police chiefs: do not remove Flock only to install the next ALPR platform. End the regional license-plate dragnet. Protect our rights as you claim to protect our streets.