New York
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\n On Thursday afternoon in New York City, I sat down with Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley. We met to discuss the company\u2019s expansion from making cameras for reading license plates to building drones for law enforcement, and his response to recent privacy concerns surrounding Flock\u2019s technology.\n <\/p>\n
\n Just hours later, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez credited Flock\u2019s cameras and technology for helping to locate<\/a> the Brown University shooting suspect.\n <\/p>\n \n To Langley, the situation underscored the value and importance of Flock\u2019s technology, despite mounting privacy concerns that have prompted some jurisdictions to cancel contracts with the company.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAmerica cannot tolerate tragedies like what we saw at Brown and MIT this past week,\u201d Langley said in an X post<\/a> following the news. \u201cWe intend to continue using technology to make sure our law enforcement are empowered to do their jobs.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Langley told me on Thursday that he was motivated to start Flock to keep Americans safer. His goal is to deter crime by convincing would-be criminals they\u2019ll be caught.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI think we run a risk today as a country that a generation of people will not believe America works for them because they don\u2019t feel safe, because in some communities \u2026 you don\u2019t feel safe,\u201d Langley said. \u201cIt\u2019s too easy to get away with crime in America.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Flock is a safety technology company that works with local law enforcement agencies and private companies. The Atlanta-based company, founded in 2017, announced in March<\/a> that it was valued at $7.5 billion after its latest $275 million funding round from major Silicon Valley investors, who include Andreessen Horowitz and the Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund.\n <\/p>\n \n Its flagship product is an outdoor camera, referred to as \u201cLPR\u201d cameras, that can read license plates and identify other details about vehicles as they drive by. Flock\u2019s AI system allows police to search its network of footage for a specific car. Around 6,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States use its LPRs.\n <\/p>\n \n That\u2019s how Providence Police tracked down 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente, who police say was responsible for both the Brown shooting and the killing of an MIT professor days later.\n <\/p>\n \n Perez described plugging a description of Valente\u2019s vehicle into Flock\u2019s system. One of Flock\u2019s cameras had recently spotted the car, helping police pinpoint Valente\u2019s location.\n <\/p>\n \n Flock turned on additional AI capabilities that were not part of Providence Police\u2019s contract with the company to assist in the hunt, a company spokesperson told CNN, including a feature that can identify the same vehicle based on its description even if its license plates have been changed.\n <\/p>\n \n The company has faced criticism from some privacy advocates and community groups who worry that its networks of cameras are collecting too much personal information from private citizens and could be misused. Both the Electronic Frontier Foundation<\/a> and the American Civil Liberties Union<\/a> have urged communities not to work with Flock.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cState legislatures and local governments around the nation need to enact strong, meaningful protections of our privacy and way of life against this kind of AI surveillance machinery,\u201d ACLU Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley wrote in an August blog post<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Flock also drew scrutiny in October when it announced a partnership<\/a> with Amazon\u2019s Ring doorbell camera system that lets public safety agencies request video footage from Ring customers. Ring has previously faced criticism<\/a> for how it works with law enforcement, although its video sharing with police has been walked back in recent years.\n <\/p>\n \n Even as Flock\u2019s business grows, a number of cities have stopped working with the company. Police in Redmond, Washington, suspended operation<\/a> of their city\u2019s Flock cameras earlier this year after a report that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had used data from the cameras for deportation efforts. And the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, near where the MIT professor was killed, ended its contract with Flock earlier this month, following community privacy concerns.\n <\/p>\n \n Flock says<\/a> it can\u2019t control local law enforcement sharing data from their Flock cameras with federal agencies. When asked about the broader surveillance concerns, Langley told me it was up to police to reassure communities that the cameras would be used responsibly.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf (people are) worried about privacy, a license plate reader is the dumbest way to do surveillance. You have a cell phone. A cell phone knows your exact location at all times,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t trust law enforcement to do their job, that\u2019s actually what you\u2019re concerned about, and I\u2019m not going to help people get over that.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Langley added that Flock has built some guardrails into its technology, including audit trails that show when data was accessed. He pointed to a case in Georgia<\/a> where that audit found a police chief using data from LPR cameras to stalk and harass people. The chief resigned and was arrested and charged in November.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe have to give law enforcement tools to do their job, and we should also hold them accountable to not break the law,\u201d Langley said.\n <\/p>\n \n More recently, the company rolled out a \u201cdrone as first responder\u201d service \u2014 where law enforcement officers can dispatch a drone equipped with a camera, whose footage is similarly searchable via AI, to evaluate the scene of an emergency call before human officers arrive. Flock\u2019s drone systems completed 10,000 flights in the third quarter of 2025 alone, according to the company.\n <\/p>\n