Activists to take aim at Flock cameras at tonight's Springfield council meeting

A group identifying itself as Flock Out SGF plans to present a demand for transparency on the use of license plate monitoring cameras at tonight’s meeting of Springfield City Council.

Spokesperson Isaac Protiva presented Springfield Business Journal with an advance copy of a packet of information the group plans to present to council Monday. The packet formally requests a period for public comment followed by a council vote before Nov. 1 on the city’s contract with Flock Safety Inc. to operate automated license plate readers in the city.

On its website, Flock Out SGF identifies itself as “a collective of concerned citizens who value privacy and transparency.”

Protiva indicated his group would like to provide input to council on the contract, which he said is valid for multiple years unless canceled. The November deadline is not related to an upcoming council vote on a contract, he noted.

“Our intention is to provide City Council with the information to support proper procedure for evaluating this contract through publicly accountable channels,” he said.

Although an internet search reveals grassroots organizations whose members object to traffic surveillance systems and support digital privacy are operating in communities throughout the nation, Protiva said Flock Out SGF is a local coalition.

“Flock Out SGF has a completely local origin and remains entirely locally run,” he said via text. “It was founded December 2025.”

He said there are no formal officers in the organization.

“We have a small core group that meets regularly to develop strategy, and a wider group that helps with research, Sunshine requests and other tasks,” he said.

Accountability is one issue driving the organization’s efforts, according to the packet.

“The Springfield Police Department has refused to provide audit logs showing who has accessed Flock Safety data, and for what purpose,” the packet states. “Withholding this information prevents public oversight of surveillance use, prevents detection of potential misuse and prevents evaluation of whether access complies with existing policy or law.”

In an interview, Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams said an audit log would show that only law enforcement officers use the data.

“No one else has access to the data,” he said.

He noted the department has a large number of reciprocal agreements with law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. All are listed in SPD’s online transparency portal that gives details about the system and its use within the city limits.

The transparency site lists hundreds of nationwide organizations that have access to SPD data from the Flock Safety system; these include the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and numerous city and county law enforcement agencies, ranging alphabetically from Abbeville, South Carolina, to Zionsville, Indiana, police departments.

Information provided to SBJ by the city public information office states that Flock Safety cameras use artificial intelligence and image recognition to identify the plate number and vehicle details like make, model, color, body type and unique features like bumper stickers, roof racks or damage. Together, the information creates a “fingerprint” of the vehicle that can be useful even if the plate is missing or obscured.

Data is transmitted to cloud storage on Amazon Web Services, and Flock Systems is not permitted to share or sell it without permission. It is retained for 30 days and then auto-deleted if not flagged for an investigation.

City information officials say the system has been used to recover stolen vehicles, sometimes within minutes, and to track suspects or missing persons. Flock Systems data has also been used to solve major crimes, such as the murder of Chaviz Nguyen in 2023.

Potential for misus
The 11-page packet provided by Flock Out SGF details misuse of Flock Safety cameras. It reports on action by a similar organization, Deflock Joplin, that uncovered alleged misuse of the Flock Safety network in January 2026 through a public records request out of Washington, D.C., bypassing the Joplin Police Department.

In this instance, Flock Out SGF maintains that an officer was placed on administrative leave for searching for one license plate some 400 times and another plate almost 150 times over a 14-month period.

A January statement from the Joplin Police Department on the city website confirms an allegation of misuse and an internal investigation of an unnamed officer.

“During that investigation, it was found that this single Joplin Police officer did violate the policy regarding department equipment and systems,” the Joplin Police statement says. “An audit of the Flock (license plate reader) system showed that no other policy violations were committed by any other Joplin Police personnel.”

Williams said he was familiar with the Joplin situation, and he stressed the speed with which that department addressed the issue.

“Human beings being what they are, nothing can be completely foolproof,” he said.

But SPD took the Joplin incident as a lesson, Williams said, and reviewed its processes and procedures and added further fail-safes against misuse.

“We always had an internal auditing process, but we put some parameters in place,” he said. “If an employee meets one of those thresholds, internal affairs gets an alert.”

The incident gets checked out, and the employee must have a meeting with Williams, he said.

“If there’s something that isn’t legit, that would initiate an investigation,” he said. “Every keystroke is logged; every request is logged. You can’t get around that. Someone can’t do that without someone else knowing.”

Williams said supervisors perform random checks on their staff to make sure no one is using the system for personal reasons.

“There are lots of fail-safes. I would never say never, but that would be very unusual – unique, even,” he said. “You can what-if and conspiracy it to death, but we use it solely for legitimate purposes – law enforcement purposes.”

The information packet details other varieties of misuse of the camera system, in Missouri and throughout the country, including 11 instances of stalking of estranged spouses and former romantic partners from 2021-25. Many of these are documented in the packet through media and watchdog sources, which cites with citations of 16 references.

The packet also alleges that the system has been used to track protesters at events.

Williams said the system would not be used to find out who’s at a protest.

“If it’s part of an investigation into criminal activity, absolutely, we’d utilize it,” he said, “but to find out who’s where? There’s no reason to do that.”

Flock Out SGF additionally alleges that nationally, Flock Safety has been used to target ethnic groups and surveil people seeking reproductive healthcare.

Williams said he had a similar concern raised by nonprofit Grupo Latinoamericano, whose members asked him if the system is being used to monitor immigration.

“We don’t use it for immigration,” he said. “We don’t even use it for traffic.”

That’s a key point about Flock Safety license plate readers, of which Williams said there are 48 in the city. The transparency portal says there are 51. Springfield has traffic cameras in place to monitor those offenses, but the Flock Safety system would only be used in criminal activity, like a hit-and-run crash. Williams said a fatal hit-and-run was investigated with Flock Safety data about a year ago.

“We can use it as a tool along with everything else we’ve got,” he said.

The city has had license plate reader cameras for 15 years, Williams said.

“They never generated as much interest,” he said. “Flock is so prevalent, and the network is so much more integrated nationwide. It’s so much better than everything else in sharing information and allowing us to solve crimes.”

Grassroots action
Individual residents concerned about Flock Safety camera use have regularly appeared before Springfield City Council during public comment periods since February, as SBJ reporters have observed, though SBJ has not previously reported on the issue.

“Many locals have spoken at City Council about Flock that are not part of our group,” Protiva said. “It is indeed a widespread issue with considerable grassroots organizing around it.”

The SPD online transparency portal explains the use of the cameras in an overview, stating that the department aims to capture objective evidence without compromising individual privacy.

“SPD utilizes retroactive search to solve crimes after they’ve occurred,” the overview states. “Additionally, SPD utilizes real-time alerting of hotlist vehicles to capture wanted criminals.”

The department also has reciprocal use agreements with agencies that have access to its Flock Safety cameras, the page states, but adds data is used for law enforcement purposes only.

“Data is owned by SPD, retained within the Flock system and is never sold to third parties,” the transparency portal overview states.

The page details policies and usage statistics in what the department calls “an effort to ensure proper usage and guardrails are in place.”

The transparency page states only license plates and vehicles are detected, and people are not. The Flock Safety website says the cameras do not use facial recognition technology.

Prohibited uses outlined on the transparency page are personal use, immigration enforcement and traffic enforcement. Data is retained for 30 days, the site states.

There were 968 user search sessions recorded over the last 30 days, as of 10 a.m. today, with 736,497 unique license plate reads in the last 30 days.

Protiva said Flock Out SGF is requesting a council vote on behalf of residents.

“From our community conversations, this is what most agree on: This contract should not have been signed without public comment and without a council vote,” he said.

On the Flock Safety website, the company promotes the safety benefits of its system.

“Flock connects communities, businesses and public safety so incidents can be understood clearly and decisions can be made on facts,” the company website states.

It states that more than 10,000 missing people were located through the system in 2025, and that the company’s systems supported more than 1 million legal cases last year. It adds that 12,000 communities use Flock Safety cameras. The website also states 20% of crime in the United States is solved with Flock Safety data, though Williams said that figure sounded high to him.

Williams said there are other companies that do the same job that the Flock Safety cameras do, so he has been surprised at the level of attention this one company has garnered.

“It kind of surprised me, the level of distrust and misinformation centered around one company,” he said. “I’m not sure why people aren’t attacking the whole system.”

Flock Safety says on its website that access to the system is limited, and searches must be tied to a reason. Additionally, as in Joplin, use of the system is easily reviewed.

It adds that local agencies decide who can access data and assign permissions based on job roles.

“The system is built to support specific, case-based investigations,” the Flock Safety website states. “It’s not meant for broad, always-on watching of people. In plain terms, it’s built for cases.”

Williams said his department will continue to address any questions the public may have about the use of the Flock Safety system.

“We’re trying to respond accordingly with accurate information – we’re not trying to hide anything,” he said. “There appears to be a very small group of folks involved in an anti-Flock crusade.”

The Flock Out SGF information packet notes cameras were first installed in 2022 on a trial basis without a council vote. A council meeting in May 2023 brought the first mention of Flock Safety cameras, the packet notes, and the city signed a 60-month contract for $225,000, payable at $45,000 per year, later that month.

SBJ sought confirmation from the city of contract data, but it was not available by deadline.

Flock Safety, headquartered in Atlanta, was founded in 2017.