Like groups of birds, cities around the country seem to be banding together against a hawk-like automated license plate reader system called Flock.
But among the exceptions in the Valley is Phoenix PD, which uses an automated license plate reader not connected to the controversial Flock Safety company.
On July 1, 2022, Phoenix City Council approved a $9 million contract with Motorola Solutions, doing business as Vigilant Solutions, for its Law Enforcement Archival and Reporting Network (LEARN) database.
On June 4, 2025, it also approved a $2.4 million contract, good through June 18, 2029, for the National Vehicle Location Service database, which “allows license plate data and images to be aggregated and analyzed for law enforcement,” according to city documents.
A report to Council in June of last year also sates, “LEARN provides agencies with a way to manage vehicle hotlists, query historical license plate reader data and use advanced analytics for enhanced investigations.
“LEARN is a hosted solution that allows data sharing and interoperability with other law enforcement agencies nationwide. Together, NVLS-LEARN subscriptions services help the department reduce auto thefts and related crime involving vehicles, increases auto theft vehicle recovery rates and increases investigative leads to reduce auto thefts and vehicles used in gateway crimes (i.e robbery, burglary of residence).”
According to city documents, “The LEARN database is an online analytic platform that allows license plate data and images to be aggregated and analyzed and provides law enforcement agencies with the ability to manage hotlists, query historical license plate reader data, and use sophisticated analytics for advanced investigations.
“LEARN is a hosted solution that allows data sharing and interoperability with other law enforcement agencies nationwide.”
The controversy over Flock cameras reached a frenzied pitch over the last two weeks. First, Chandler canceled its Flock contract after a troubling audit.
It announced last week an officer resigned after he was confronted about misusing the system. He said he had been tracking the movements of an elderly relative.
Surprise, Goodyear and Apache Junction also announced their police officers are under investigation for allegedly misusing Flock data. In Apache Junction, an officer resigned after admitting to having used Flock to track his wife’s movements.
The cases in neighboring jurisdictions, topped by multiple reports of license plate reader abuse around the country, fuel the raging debate in Tempe – which has had a tortuous relationship with Flock.
On Aug. 10, Tempe announced it was slamming the brakes on “all data sharing” from its 33 Flock cameras. According to a city press release, “This was in response to privacy concerns expressed by the community and the recent misuse of the system by two local law enforcement agencies.”
The release, apparently alluding to Chandler and Apache Junction, came just before Goodyear and Surprise joined the sheepish crowd of potential police Flock abuse.
“While we had previously restricted data sharing to Arizona law enforcement agencies only, this additional step will further safeguard Tempe’s data and ensure we maintain appropriate control over access,” said Tempe Police Chief Ken McCoy.
That probably sounds good to new Tempe City Councilman Bobby Nichols, who was elected May 19 and took office July 1.
Long before he was sworn in, Nichols, an assistant state attorney general, hammered away at Tempe’s Flock contract.
“I spoke at the last Tempe City Council meeting to demand, again, that Tempe terminate its contract with the unsafe surveillance company known as Flock Safety,” Nichols posted in January.
One of his key campaign points, according to the “Bobby for Tempe” website:
“Keeping Tempe residents safe from ICE, including by ending the city’s current contract with Flock, a company that conducts invasive ICE surveillance.”
Nichols did not respond to a request for comment on Tempe’s Flock announcement last week.
Four months ago, Tempe City Council – without more than vague references to its long-running contract with Flock – approved a 60-day trial of Axon’s ALPRs.
Axon is providing the cameras at no cost to the city.
At the March 26 meeting, Tempe Mayor Corey Woods enthusiastically promoted the Axon program.
He sounded like a vigorous proponent of ALPRs.
“From my perspective, our residents, our business owners, and officers have the absolute right to both feel safe and be safe. And I do think that automated license plate readers can be a tool to, frankly, help that happen.
“License plate readers are designed to alert officers when a vehicle associated with an Amber Alert is nearby. … these license plate readers don’t use any kind of facial recognition whatsoever. They simply read license plates, so the license plate reader doesn’t care who’s driving the car, their race, their financial status, or their nationality,” the mayor said, adding:
“The license plate reader simply just checks to see if the car was reported stolen, or perhaps connected to a crime, or even a missing person, like in the case of an Amber Alert.”
Without mentioning the controversy that led to Tempe tapping out of Flock, Woods enthused: “This really has helped our officers return stolen cars to residents, and also see if … these cars have been involved in serious crimes.”
Woods then seemed to grudgingly tip his cap to ALPR critics:
“However, we do listen to people in the city of Tempe, across Arizona, and across the nation, and we understand that there is definitely concern about data sharing with groups like ICE as well as HSI. And I can … definitively say the city of Tempe has not done that and will not do that.”
Without discussing the difference between Flock and Axon’s Outpost system, Woods continued:
“We remain committed to being a welcoming community where all of our (residents), regardless of who you are, can feel safe. That’s why we are piloting this trial with Axon at no cost to the city of Tempe taxpayer.
“Axon is a local company, just up the road in Scottsdale, so better sometimes to use a company that actually is right up the street than perhaps one that’s across the country where you can’t get to their headquarters.”
He stressed there was no long-term commitment, with the Axon 60-day deal being a chance “to see if this technology would actually work well for us and would work well for the men and women of the Tempe Police Department.”
Woods received unanimous agreement on March 26.
At a Chandler City Council meeting three months ago, people protested the city’s use of Flock Safety cameras and demanded that the city discontinue their use.
(Ken Sain/Staff)
Flock in Scottsdale
Tempe’s northern neighbor is also taking a hard look at its Flock contract.
“Based on resident input and my own concerns regarding Flock,” Scottsdale Mayor Lisa Borowsky said, “I have requested a presentation and discussion to be agendized in the near future.”
Recently reelected Councilwoman Solange Whitehead was more adamant about the license-plate readers.
“My top priority is to end Scottsdale’s contract with Flock,” she stated.
Meanwhile, homegrown Scottsdale police tech mega player Axon is rolling out a direct Flock competitor called Outpost – which Tempe is testing.
Automated license plate readers – also known as ALPRs, or just LPRs – are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of passing vehicles, storing details like your car’s location, date, and time.
Tempe’s 33 Flock cameras are not those that catch red-light runners and represent a fraction of the many cameras that tie schools and other places into its Real Time Operations Center.
If you’re out for a drive, 85 Flock cameras might track you through Scottsdale. Cruising along Scottsdale Road as it turns into Rural Road, some of the 33 Flock cameras would follow your Tempe journey.
Once you hit the northern border of Chandler, Flock cameras will still be visible – but are turned off.
Chandler’s action is too new to make the anti-ALPR website deflock.com’s “Recent Victories” list of 100 communities across the country that have rejected ALPRs.
Deflock complains, “These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime.
“These systems are marketed as indispensable tools to fight crime, but they ignore the powerful tools police already have to track criminals, such as cell phone location data, creating a loophole that doesn’t require a warrant.”
Debate over Flock rocketed to headlines around the country over the last month.
According to a recent New York Times article, “Police officers can query Flock’s databases to track people in intimate detail without a warrant. Some have used them to stalk romantic partners. ICE agents have used them to hunt immigrants.
“One Texas officer used them to track a woman across state lines who was suspected of having an abortion.”
Based in Atlanta, Flock Safety produces a license-plate reader program used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies, including the Scottsdale Police Department.
The Atlanta-based company says its “license plate recognition cameras can be placed almost anywhere to capture detailed data about license plates and vehicles used to commit crimes, enabling quick and efficient action.”
The website haveibeenflocked.com allows users to enter their license plates to see if they have been “Flocked.”
The website also sorts by cities that use Flock.
According to haveibeenflocked’s Tempe Police section, “We have seen a total of 112,948 searches for this agency, performed by approximately 281 persons over 1,416 days between June 22, 2022 and May 7, 2026.”
This is hardly just a local issue, as the American Civil Liberties Union also has problems with Flock.
“The cloud automatic license plate reader company Flock is building a dangerous nationwide mass-surveillance infrastructure, as we have been pointing out for several years now,” according to the ACLU’s website.
The ACLU complains Flock “allows police to do nationwide searches of the resulting database, giving even the smallest-town police chief access to an enormously powerful driver-surveillance tool.”
The system is secure, the company insists:
“Flock Safety is dedicated to ensuring our customers’ privacy by safeguarding all data and information collected through our devices.”
In a BBC News story this week, Flock founder Garrett Langley was asked if the company waited too long to protect tens of thousands of its cameras, licence plate readers and drones from police abuse.
His reply: “Yes.”
But, he added, Flock is cutting the number of days most data is retained, from 30 days to seven, and abnormal searches and uses will also automatically be flagged.
According to the BBC story, 50 cities cut ties with Flock this year. Langley told the BBC that 16 cities that had turned off Flock services have in the last three months come back to the company.
And he conceded the ACLU’s demand that police should need an active case number to search Flock’s data was appropriate:
“They’re right,” the Flock leader said. “I think it should be required.”
He noted abusive police officers are armed with guns. “I think a camera is very far from a deadly weapon,” Langley told the BBC, “but I would say it’s a very powerful tool. We should hold it incredibly accountable.”
Flock Safety license plate-reading cameras in Tempe, Scottsdale and elsewhere in the Valley are far larger than the Motorola Solutions camera Phoenix deploys.
(file photo)
Enter Axon
Axon Enterprises is best known to Scottsdale residents for its intensely-disputed plan to build an apartments-condos-hotel-office complex in North Scottsdale.
Nationally, Axon has been praised for its nonlethal Taser police weapons and police body cameras.
Axon is now flying Outpost, a direct challenge to Flock.
During its May 6 Axon earnings call, JP Morgan analyst Joseph Cardoso – without specifically mentioning Flock – asked Axon management “are you actually seeing folks rip and replace hardware to essentially install Outpost?”
“We absolutely are,” replied Josh Isner, Axon’s president.
He claimed Outpost “is performing exceptionally well in the field, and relative to incumbents in the space, our product is outperforming them in terms of lane coverage. plate reads, performance in bad weather – all the things that our customers would expect from an Axon product.”
Isner added, “It’s cheaper, that’s certainly helping in the context of competing against incumbents.”
The Axon president explained to earnings call listeners that Outpost utilizes two cameras: “one is for plate reads, and the other one is just for CCTV.” He used the abbreviation for closed-circuit television, also known as video surveillance.
Isner praised Outpost for “safer outcomes,” stating the company can market “the trust in Axon, the belief from our customers that we do things the right way, from data privacy, from making sure the community had a voice in product development, all these things combine into what looks like another transformative hardware program here.”
AFN Executive Editor Paul Maryniak contributed to this report.