Which local police departments have shared Flock Safety data with other agencies, and are their sharing agreements public?
Executive summary
A growing patchwork of local police departments have shared Flock Safety license-plate reader (LPR) data with other law-enforcement agencies — sometimes via software settings and sometimes via contractual language in vendor agreements — and reporting shows both specific examples (including dozens of Massachusetts departments and at least one Texas sheriff’s office search) and sharp disagreement about how public those sharing agreements are [1] [2]. Public records projects have turned up contracts and evidence of cross‑agency searches, but many agreements rely on Flock’s template language and remain opaque unless obtained by open‑records requests [1] [3].
1. Which departments have shared data: documented examples and patterns
Investigations and reporting identify multiple concrete instances: an ACLU open‑records project found more than 40 Massachusetts police departments had contracts to deploy Flock ALPRs, and the documents show Flock’s template user agreement grants broad rights to disclose agency data to other federal and local agencies for “investigative purposes” [1]. Independent reporting also documented a Johnson County, Texas, sheriff’s office search of the nationwide Flock network in a case tied to reproductive‑health concerns, illustrating that local agencies have used Flock’s national search capability beyond strictly local investigations [2]. Localities in California — including Santa Rosa and other Bay Area agencies — have been publicly litigated or criticized for data‑sharing practices with outside agencies, and Oakland and San Francisco have faced scrutiny or lawsuits alleging problematic sharing with outside enforcement partners [4] [5].
2. How the sharing technically happens: settings, integrations, and contracts
Flock’s product architecture allows agencies to share access in multiple ways — one‑to‑one PD‑to‑PD sharing, geographic radius sharing, or statewide linkages — and markets a “national LPR network” that connects thousands of communities and agencies, enabling instant cross‑jurisdictional searches and alerts [6] [3]. Flock also advertises integrations into real‑time crime center platforms so agencies can view Flock hotlist notifications and LPR data inside analytic environments, which operationally facilitates multi‑agency access [7]. At the contract level, reporting shows that many departments signed a Flock template user agreement that includes a broad license for Flock to “use, distribute, and disclose” agency data — language that can enable sharing even if a department restricts sharing in the application interface [1].
3. Are those sharing agreements public? — Mixed transparency and selective disclosure
Some contracts and the ACLU’s Massachusetts record review have been made public through open‑records requests, and Boston’s pilot contract was notable because the city apparently rewrote Flock’s template to remove Flock’s right to disclose agency data — an example of a public agency negotiating and publishing narrower terms [1]. However, the pattern is uneven: many agencies rely on Flock’s standard template and those agreements are not uniformly published without requests, leaving the existence and exact terms of data‑sharing clauses opaque unless obtained via records requests or lawsuits [1] [3]. Flock maintains that customers “own 100% of their data” and can control sharing settings, but the company’s template license and the operational capabilities of the network complicate a simple “customer controls everything” narrative [3] [1].
4. Conflicting claims and unresolved gaps
Flock’s public statements emphasize technical guardrails, retention limits, audit logs and that the company does not sell data or contract directly with federal agencies like ICE, while critics and document‑driven reporting counter that template contract language and actual searches show federal or out‑of‑jurisdiction access has occurred without formal vendor‑federal contracts [8] [9] [10]. The sources provided document specific departments and statewide patterns (Massachusetts, Johnson County TX, several California cities), show Boston negotiated different terms, and demonstrate both contractual language and software features that enable sharing — but they do not provide a definitive, comprehensive list of every local department that has shared Flock data or a public repository of all executed agreements [1] [6] [2].
5. What this means going forward
The reporting makes plain that the practical reality of Flock’s network is a mosaic: some municipalities have negotiated public, restricted terms; many others have signed template agreements that permit broad disclosure and have operationalized cross‑jurisdictional searches; and transparency about specific sharing agreements depends on local records practices and further investigative work [1] [3]. Policymakers and advocates note the gap between vendor marketing and on‑the‑ground practice, and open‑records projects have proven the most effective way so far to surface which departments share data and under what terms [1] [10].