New York City Police Department officers searched Flock Safety’s automatic license plate reader database over 1,000 times over nearly three years, despite the department not having a contract with the surveillance technology company, according to records obtained by two privacy organizations.
An investigation conducted by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and LatinoJustice found that the NYPD accessed Flock’s database 1,710 times between March 2023 and December 2025, with many of the search purposes not specifying the reason for accessing Flock data. The records were obtained through the Have I been Flocked website, which compiles Flock audit logs through open records requests.
The NYPD has previously said it does not have a contract with Flock but acknowledged that a “limited number of authorized NYPD personnel can access a national commercial LPR data repository.”
Nearly 1,000 of the searches examined by STOP and LatinoJustice contained either no meaningful explanation or only vague entries such as “investigation,” “wanted person,” and “inquiry.” Other search justifications consisted of numbers, a license plate, or serious crimes such as homicide or burglary. At least 131 searches listed the Queens district attorney’s office as the requesting agency.
The groups have filed a public records request seeking NYPD audit logs, communications, or agreements involving Flock, training materials, and policies governing searches. They are also seeking information on whether officers accessed the system through another agency’s contract.
Flock’s system allows participating police departments to search license plate scans captured by networks of automatic cameras. The Atlanta-based company says the agency or other customer operation camera owns the data it collects and determines whether to share it. Sharing is not automatic, but agencies can make their camera data available to individual departments, including the federal government, or opt into Flock’s data network, which allows authorized agencies to search a specific full license plate across participating cameras.
Flock says every law enforcement search must be tied to an investigative purpose and is automatically logged, allowing supervisors to review how the system is used. The company also says it does not sell customer data.
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Recently, Flock outlined new guardrails for data searches following Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)’s invitation to CEO Garrett Langley to testify before a Senate judiciary subcommittee on the company’s technology, but Langley declined. Flock said it began requiring users to select a standardized offense type in December 2025 and will require a case number for every law-enforcement search by the end of this year, according to a copy of Flock’s eight-page letter obtained by the Washington Examiner. The only exception will be emergency searches, which the company said will be flagged for administrator review.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the NYPD and Flock for comment.