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The New York Times published a major Flock Safety investigation on August 10 by Kashmir Hill and Fernando Alfonso III. It is serious journalism, arriving in a national media wave that includes far more critical coverage from a wide range of major national publications and broadcasters.
What makes the NYT piece distinctively good news for Flock is not what it says but how it frames the story: Flock is controversial, yes, but essentially inevitable. That frame is built on Flock's own scale numbers, a police union claim that goes entirely unchallenged, and courts repeatedly cited as having ruled against challengers. The piece closes with a critic's own words as a concession to Flock's permanence: "It's kind of a hydra situation. You chop down one, and 20 more take its place."
IPVM has covered Flock extensively from inside the surveillance industry. Here are seven significant things the piece missed:
- Police abuse is an escalating systemic crisis that proves the thing Flock most fears, that it tracks people, yet the NYT gives it limited emphasis
- Camera destruction is a coast-to-coast operational movement the NYT mentions only briefly, that is casuing significant financial pain and problems for police
- Cancellations are accelerating sharply, new signings are slowing, and Flock is contesting contracts city by city at rising cost, yet the NYT presents zero cancellation data and lets an unverified police union claim stand unchallenged
- A major legal and regulatory wave, including class actions, state law violations, and mounting legislative pressure, is largely absent from the piece
- Increased scrutiny of installation and permitting failures is adding a new category of operational drag that Flock previously brushed aside
- Flock's internal condition is severely strained, with the CEO receiving death threats and his CCO publicly implying he lied on video
- The hydra framing may be right about LPR generically, but Axon is actively taking Flock's market share; the new hydra heads are not Flock
Police Abuse Proves Flock Tracks People
Police abuse of Flock is escalating into a systemic crisis, and the NYT's limited emphasis on it overlooks two things that matter most. First, the public is deeply sensitive to police misconduct, and the scale here is far beyond what the NYT conveys. The Washington Post published a 33-minute investigation just eight days before the NYT piece documenting 50+ officers charged or accused across 12+ states. Savannah PD fired six employees in a single incident over the weekend. New cases are emerging near-daily as departments examine their logs for the first time; the cases were always there, they just were not being looked for. IPVM projects documented abuse cases will easily reach the hundreds by year's end.
Second, and more damaging to Flock, each abuse case proves the thing Flock most desperately denies: that it tracks people, not just cars. Flock's own CLO slipped on video and admitted as much. Officers have used Flock to search by tattoos, clothing, and physical descriptors, not license plates. Every new abuse case is also a new demonstration of what the system actually does.
Camera Destruction Is a National Movement
The NYT mentions camera destruction only briefly, naming three cities. The reality is a sustained national movement. Cameras are being cut down, shot, paint-bombed, and thrown into canals in broad daylight, with people filming it and posting the videos publicly — and being cheered on for it. An anonymous activist known as "NoMark" claims to have destroyed 30 cameras across multiple states without being caught; a 437,000-member r/FlockSurveillance subreddit treats each new destruction video as a victory and funds legal defense for those arrested. When a West Virginia man was arrested for destroying cameras, dozens of Facebook commenters volunteered to provide him alibis. A UFC champion posted "America salutes you" to camera destroyers, reaching 1 million views. Nobody outside Flock knows the full scope — the documented cases are almost certainly an undercount — and Flock quietly began paying to replace vandalized cameras without any public announcement.
Cancellations Accelerating, City-by-City Grind
The NYT names four cities that have suspended or canceled contracts and lets a police union spokeswoman's claim, "new cities are signing contracts faster than others are canceling them," stand without challenge or verification. Cancellations have accelerated sharply through 2026, with July the highest single-month total ever recorded. Meanwhile, new signings are decelerating as the political cost of adopting Flock rises for local officials.
Beyond the raw count, the operational cost of defending each contract has risen sharply. Politicians and police chiefs who once quietly renewed now face organized opposition, public hearings, and media scrutiny at each renewal. Flock's lobbying spend 10x'd to over $1 million in 2025. The spokeswoman's claim comes from a self-interested source and the NYT presents it as the authoritative counter to the cancellation trend with no independent verification.
Legal and Regulatory Wave
The NYT cites the Norfolk ruling as representative of courts having largely sided with Flock and frames the legal picture as settled. The legislative and regulatory pressure building in recent months tells a different story. Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a bill to bar federal funding for ALPR systems. Multiple lawmakers have called for a national pause on Flock deployments. Flock's own CEO called for LPR regulation in all 50 states, an acknowledgment that the current unregulated status is untenable. On the litigation front, Milberg, one of the largest class action firms in history, leads a group suing Flock for potential billions. Texas fined Flock for operating without a license. Illinois found Flock violated state law. The class action litigation, state law violations, and Flock's own CEO calling for regulation go unmentioned in the NYT piece.
Installation and Permitting Failures
The NYT does not mention Flock's installation record. Flock installed cameras without permits across Florida, Illinois, and South Carolina, with hundreds of unpermitted cameras documented. Flock reinstalled 19 cameras in Evanston after the city ordered deactivation; Cambridge called a similar reinstallation a "material breach" and terminated its contract. Beyond permitting, a road safety advocate documented Flock camera installations that violate highway safety standards, including cameras mounted without proper guardrail clearance.
When public sentiment was positive, Flock could push through installation problems. Now every violation is scrutinized, forcing departments to audit installations and relocate cameras, adding legal exposure and political cost on top of everything else Flock is managing.
Internal Crisis
The NYT quotes CEO Garrett Langley as reflective and evolving. The internal reality is more strained. Flock's CSO disclosed that Langley receives daily death and doxxing threats; employees are also receiving threats. At a recorded public forum in July, CCO Josh Thomas publicly implied Langley lied, comparing his own CEO to Donald Trump: "Just because he lies doesn't mean that." Neither walked it back. Flock has quietly removed key liability protections from customer contracts, blocked itself from the Wayback Machine, and rebranded its logo away from "Safety." These are not the moves of a company executing a confident strategy.
The Potential Hydra: Axon
Axon is not mentioned once in the NYT piece. The hydra framing may be right about LPR generically, but it is wrong about Flock specifically. Denver replaced Flock's 111 cameras with Axon in February 2026, the first major city publicly documented switching to a competitor. Axon claims a $100 million LPR pipeline just 14 months after launching fixed cameras. Axon's market cap exceeds $30 billion; its existing body camera and Taser relationships run through the same agencies evaluating LPR vendors. Axon President Josh Isner has explicitly positioned Flock's crisis as "an opportunity for us as really the trusted brand." Motorola and Genetec are also competing. When cities cancel Flock, they often do not go dark; many switch to competitors whose brands are not embattled. The new hydra heads are not Flock.
Conclusion
From inside the surveillance industry, Flock's crisis is not viewed as a passing storm. The concern is broader: that sustained public backlash against networked mass surveillance could permanently alter the industry's relationship with the public, well beyond Flock. Flock may survive, but the situation it faces is far more damaging than the NYT's framing suggests. The inevitability frame, built on Flock's own scale numbers and one unchallenged police union quote, overlooks the seven significant dimensions of Flock's current crisis.