Each row below is a decision by a public body or an agency, dated, with what it did and the source. The count of communities that have dropped Flock Safety systems depends on the tracker: DeFlock’s cancellation tracker and State of Surveillance put it between 50 and 102 across 27 or more states as of August 2026 (DeFlock The USA · State of Surveillance); Secure Justice, an Oakland advocacy group, put it at 214 cities and counties since 2021 by early September 2026, about 90 of them in August (Cybernews · The Hill). Flock says new customers outnumber departures (AP, Aug 16, 2026). Rows marked NC are in North Carolina.
Communities, by date
| Date | Community | What the body did | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2024 | Nashville, Tennessee | Metro Council voted down the Fusus contract, 20 to 18; passage required 21 votes | WKRN |
| 2025 to Mar 2026 | Denver, Colorado | Council unanimously rejected renewal after logs showed the city’s data searched more than 1,400 times by or for ICE; about 110 cameras came down by March 2026; a 50-camera Axon contract then advanced 7 to 6 | Yahoo News |
| 2025 to 2026 | Washington State | Courts ruled Flock data subject to public records requests; the legislature passed the Driver Privacy Act (21-day retention cap, bans on immigration and reproductive-health uses); more than a dozen agencies paused or dropped their systems | Washington State Standard · KUOW |
| Jun 30, 2025 | Austin, Texas | Council let the Flock contract expire after the city audit of a one-year trial found 117 million scans, 228 arrests, and 10 to 20 percent of searches with no documented reason or case number; in February 2026 the state installed its own plate readers in the city | KUT · EFF · KUT, Feb 2026 |
| Aug to Sep 2025 | Evanston, Illinois | Terminated for breach and deactivated 19 cameras after an Illinois Secretary of State audit found Customs and Border Protection access in violation of state law; Oak Park, River Forest and Salem, Illinois followed | Evanston RoundTable · ABC7 Chicago |
| Sep 9, 2025 | Sedona, Arizona | Council terminated unanimously after Flock’s Aug 13 statement to council that there was “no data-sharing going on” and the company’s later confirmation that CBP had accessed Sedona’s data; the city sought a prorated refund | KNAU |
| Jan 2026 | Santa Cruz, California | Canceled after finding ICE had accessed its Flock data about 4,000 times; Oxnard deactivated after a vendor error allowed more than 364,000 out-of-state queries; Richmond’s data was shared nationwide by error | Yahoo News |
| Feb 2026 | Amazon Ring | Canceled its announced partnership with Flock within days of its Super Bowl advertisement for a neighborhood camera-search feature | CNBC · NBC News |
| Apr 21 to 23, 2026 | Oshkosh, Wisconsin | Council approved a Flock renewal 5 to 2 after a company representative said the system could not build movement heat maps; the police chief found the statement false; the council rescinded 7 to 0 two days later | ACLU |
| May to Jul 2026 | Verona, Wisconsin | Ended its Flock contract; when removal stalled, the city covered the cameras; Dane County’s sheriff’s office later covered its own | Bolts |
| Jul 2026 | Los Angeles, California | LAPD let its Flock contract lapse after the Inspector General found 32.3 percent of stolen-vehicle alerts false in the sampled period, 161 vehicles, each stopped or investigated | Knock LA · Tech Times |
| Jul 14, 2026 NC | Macon County | Commissioners voted 5 to 0 to let the $47,000 Flock contract lapse; 12 cameras came down; the chair: “I work for the people, the people put me here” | Smoky Mountain News · Macon County |
| Aug 2026 NC | Boone and Appalachian State | After the log showed 1.5 million searches of campus cameras in three months, 85 percent from out of state, App State cut national network access and Boone cut sharing from more than 1,000 agencies to 41; the cameras stayed | Watauga County |
| Aug 25, 2026 NC | Asheville | City Council terminated the Flock contract, 5 to 2, and asked Flock to remove its 11 cameras; the Axon contract stands | the meeting record |
| Aug 31, 2026 | Knox County, Tennessee | The commission passed an emergency ordinance, unanimously, requiring removal of the sheriff’s about 140 Flock cameras and their data within 30 days; the hearing found the cameras had been bought in batches priced under the $25,000 threshold for the mayor’s review | WVLT |
| Aug 31, 2026 | Tempe, Arizona | Having ended its Flock program, the city pulled a nearly $7 million Axon contract from its agenda after eleven in-car plate readers were found in the packet; the mayor: the city “is not seeking another provider” | azfamily |
| Sep 8, 2026 NC | New Hanover County | Commissioners voted 4 to 0 at a special meeting to cancel the $219,000 two-year contract for 20 fixed plate readers and eight Condor cameras, after reporting showed nearly three million outside-agency searches of the county’s network since 2025; the chair: “Those safeguards are just not in place to protect the privacy of our citizens” | WHQR · Port City Daily |
| Sep 8, 2026 NC | Catawba | The town council declined to continue its five-camera Flock trial after 60 days, about $15,000 a year; the town manager on a future return: “I think there’s always a possibility on that” | WBTV · WSOC |
| Sep 29, 2026 | South Lyon, Michigan | The city council voted 5 to 2 not to renew its Flock contract, told police to stop using the cameras at once, and ordered the lenses covered | Michigan Advance |
| Sep 30, 2026 | El Paso County, Colorado | The sheriff’s office ended use of its nearly two dozen Flock cameras, effective at once, citing the program’s future and expected legislation | the sheriff’s office · The Gazette |
| Oct 1, 2026 | Montgomery County, Virginia | After suspending the cameras Sept 3 for a month’s review, Sheriff Robert Page ended their use: “Until clearer and more comprehensive standards are established, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office will not resume its use of Flock cameras.” | WDBJ7 |
The state actions, August 26 to September 1, 2026
- The U.S. Senate, August 26. Senator Josh Hawley, chairing the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, opened an investigation into how Flock collects, retains and shares data, with documents due September 8. From the letter: “Your company’s internal policies are, in practice, the only safeguards for hundreds of millions of Americans.” (the letter · Garrett Langley)
- Texas, August 27. Governor Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to halt funding for Flock cameras, as the Texas Tribune prepared to report that a state board had put at least $30 million in grants into the state’s Flock network, drawn from a $1 fee on auto insurance policies passed in 2023. The order followed charges against a Lufkin officer on 100 counts of misusing public information; at least six Texas departments had announced officers on leave, under investigation or charged in the prior month. (Texas Tribune)
- Arizona, August 27. Attorney General Kris Mayes announced a statewide review of Flock and similar systems, with a report to the legislature and governor; cities switching from Flock to Axon fall under the same review. (AZ Mirror · azfamily)
- Florida, August 31. The Department of Transportation revoked every permit for license plate readers in state rights-of-way and ended new approvals, citing a “recent exponential increase” in deployments and “concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes”; agencies have 30 days to remove the equipment. Cameras on county roads, city streets and private property are not covered. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office ended plate reader use throughout its jurisdiction; Tampa and several counties removed the state-road cameras and kept the rest. (NBC News · WLRN) In North Carolina a camera on state right-of-way sits under an NCDOT encroachment agreement; which of a county’s cameras are on state right-of-way, under what agreement, is a records question no WNC jurisdiction has answered (Records Center).
Court cases
- Schmidt v. Norfolk. The Institute for Justice’s Fourth Amendment challenge to Norfolk, Virginia’s 175-camera Flock network is before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (No. 26-1227), with the ACLU, EFF, Cato and EPIC filing in support. Fourth Circuit rulings bind North Carolina. (IJ · case tracker)
- The Supreme Court, June 2026. The Court held that acquiring mass location history is a Fourth Amendment search, rejecting the argument that a small slice of the data is not; whether the holding reaches plate-reader archives is not yet decided. (Ohio Capital Journal)
- Virginia. A suit alleges police used Flock to track one driver 526 times in four months. (NBC News)
The vendors’ responses
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 13, 2025 | Flock told Sedona’s council there was “no data-sharing going on”; by the end of the month the company confirmed CBP had accessed the city’s data; the vice mayor at termination: “not, in my opinion, an honorable company” | KNAU |
| Sep 2025 | After Evanston terminated and deactivated its cameras, Flock reinstalled them without authorization; the city issued a cease-and-desist and covered the cameras, and the last came down after a press inquiry months later | Evanston RoundTable |
| Apr 2026 | A Flock representative told Oshkosh’s council the system could not build movement heat maps; the police chief verified the next morning that it could | ACLU |
| May to Jul 2026 | Verona, Wisconsin’s emails show a “maintenance” work order where the city had asked for removal | Bolts · 404 Media |
| Aug 6, 2026 | Cities dropping Flock adopt Axon readers that mount on streetlights; Denver and Savannah re-awarded the function to Axon | 404 Media · Axon |
Flock’s policy changes, by date, are on Flock Safety. The misuse cases behind many of the decisions above are on Camera network misuse, documented cases.
Related: Flock Safety · Axon · Getting Flock Out · What Axon Contracts Do · Western North Carolina and the state