Cities swap Flock cameras for Axon readers as surveillance continues

ACLU warns Axon expansion builds broader surveillance system

Longmont’s experience reflects a national pattern that has caught privacy advocates off guard. Flock Safety operates more than 120,000 automated license plate readers (ALPRs) on roads across the United States, scanning plates billions of times every month. Local law-enforcement agencies use the system to search for stolen vehicles and missing people; privacy advocates say the cameras constitute a dragnet because queries do not require warrants and routinely capture information about drivers not suspected of crimes.

The Longmont city council voted unanimously in March to approve Axon’s ALPRs after Flock’s contract lapsed in December. Axon, a $48 billion company that produces Tasers, body cameras, and digital-evidence storage, has replaced Flock in at least seven municipalities across five states. The Longmont contract has not yet been finalized, but council members included additional requirements for data protection, transparency, and a one-year evaluation.

Andrew Palmer, a Longmont resident who had pushed for the original Flock cancellation, told the city council that residents had no opportunity to question law enforcement’s claims about Axon before the vote. “You gave us no chance to rebut,” Palmer said at the meeting. Kellen Lask, a software engineer, added: “Normally I get days or weeks to talk about a system like Axon’s.” A buzzer cut him off before he finished.

Longmont Assistant Chief of Police Phil Piotrowski said police chose Axon partly because Flock’s policies were more likely to result in data being shared more widely with other government agencies. “It’s the exact opposite approach” with Axon, Piotrowski said. Flock announced last week that it was introducing an easy way for local police to block external agencies from searches related to immigration enforcement. Axon’s policy was a deciding factor for Longmont and other police departments, Axon president Josh Isner told investors in February. “We’re hearing directly from customers – some of whom came to us from other vendors – that our track record on privacy and ethics was a deciding factor in their decision,” Isner said on an earnings call.

Marlow, of the ACLU, said Axon’s expansion is not coincidental. “We’ve absolutely seen them lurking in the shadows, waiting for Flock to fail and then rushing in,” Marlow said. Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University, warned that Axon’s existing infrastructure in police departments could combine with newer tools to create a more expansive surveillance system than Flock alone represented. An Axon AI-driven platform called Fusus combines Axon cameras and other city-owned or private visual feeds to “connect the dots across your entire data ecosystem,” the company’s website says.

“We’ve never had that before – the power of AI and the power of linking these things together,” Ferguson said. “If you’re only focused on a tool and a company, and not a system of surveillance … then you’re kind of missing the bigger picture.”

The replacement is happening despite continued public concern about ALPRs. William Beckett, a Denver resident, said the city’s recent switch from Flock to Axon cameras made no practical difference. “We’re still recording every single license plate that goes by – regardless of suspicion of a crime, or without a need for a warrant,” Beckett said. Denver’s Axon ALPRs will store data for 21 days, less than the company’s 30-day default but longer than Flock’s new one-week retention.

Flock’s policy changes last week followed a year of contract cancellations. DeFlock, the national advocacy organization tracking ALPR deployments, said at least 56 municipalities have deactivated, cancelled, or rejected Flock contracts in 2026. Flock introduced updated policies on auditing, data retention, and data sharing, though critics said the changes do not go far enough.

Removing the cameras has proven difficult even after contracts end. Syracuse, New York, took more than three months to get Flock’s municipal cameras removed after lawmakers cancelled the contract; Syracuse police “moved to unplug” them after a May deadline passed with no action from Flock, according to local outlet Central Current. Two cities in Wisconsin, Oshkosh and Verona, faced similar delays. In Oshkosh, the cameras are still up four months after the agreement was revoked, according to resident and activist Cari Tetzlaff.

“They spent money on sending employees to defend the company at municipal committee meetings, yet they can’t send a staff member to come collect these cameras,” Tetzlaff said. The city sent its own personnel to cover the uncollected cameras with garbage bags after activists proposed the idea. Evanston, Illinois, and Dayton, Ohio, used the same approach.

“It feels negligent for Flock to leave their cameras mounted in cities that don’t want them there,” Tetzlaff said. “We’ve had many storms this summer. The garbage bags can blow off.”

Privacy advocates argue that the gold standard for protecting drivers’ privacy is to not use ALPRs at all, according to the ACLU. New Hampshire caps retention at three minutes. Daniel Schwarz of the New York Civil Liberties Union said longer retention periods increase the predictive value of the data. “The longer you keep data, the longer it has predictive value,” Schwarz said. “We all move in certain patterns.”

In Syracuse, activists including Gen Garcia, chair of the Syracuse DSA’s international solidarity committee, said they want to ban all ALPRs. “Flock has been made to be the villain in this. It’s not just Flock: it’s the idea that there we are being over-surveilled,” Garcia said.

Local momentum has not yet translated into federal law. Congress is considering bills that would restrict and regulate ALPR use. More than two dozen municipalities, predominantly in California and Massachusetts, have established transparent local review boards to assess surveillance technology, according to the ACLU. In Longmont, Palmer is planning to apply to serve on a proposed technology advisory citizen board, which the city council discussed in June but has not formally created.

Shakeel Dalal, another Longmont resident, said the campaign’s initial framing may have been too narrow. “One thing I wish we have done more effectively from the very beginning was to make clear that it’s not just Flock, it’s data governance,” Dalal said. “And I think if we had sent that message more clearly, we might be in a different place from where we are today.”

Flock and Axon did not offer comment by press time.