LAPD Allows Flock Safety Contract to Expire July 13 Over Data Privacy Failures

LAPD Chief Information Officer Dean Gialamas stated the department requires new contractual controls on data retention, access logs, and third-party sharing before any renewal. The decision follows documented cases in Mountain View and South Portland where Flock data enabled federal immigration enforcement despite local sanctuary ordinances. Flock operates the 80,000-camera network directly; LAPD never held the feeds.

404 Media documented multiple exposures where Flock cameras remained publicly accessible without authentication and where DEA personnel used a local officer’s credentials to query plates. Researchers have recorded repeated false-positive stops resulting in armed detentions. The pattern shows license-plate readers at city scale generate persistent location histories without effective audit trails or error-rate thresholds.

Flock’s model relies on rapid municipal deployment followed by data federation across agencies. When contracts lapse, cameras often remain active under prior agreements or are reinstalled without notice. LAPD’s exit marks the largest single-agency termination to date and forces other departments to confront identical gaps in multi-factor authentication and retention limits.

The department has signaled it will seek revised language on storage duration and access controls. Absent those terms, similar contract reviews are expected in the next procurement cycles of the five largest remaining Flock municipal customers.