With more than 80,000 AI-powered cameras across the U.S., Flock Safety has become one of cops\u2019 go-to surveillance tools and a $7.5 billion business. Now CEO Garrett Langley has both police tech giant Axon and Chinese drone maker DJI in his sights on the way to his noble (if Sisyphean) goal: Preventing all crime in the U.S.<\/p>\n
In a windowless room inside Atlanta\u2019s Dunwoody police department, Lieutenant Tim Fecht hits a button and an insectile DJI drone rises silently from the station rooftop. It already has its coordinates: a local mall where a 911 call has alerted the cops to a male shoplifter. From high above the complex, Fecht zooms in on a man checking his phone, then examines a group of people waiting for a train. They\u2019re all hundreds of yards away, but crystal clear on the room-dominating display inside the department\u2019s crime center, a classroom-sized space with walls covered in monitors flashing real- time crime data\u2014surveillance and license plate reader camera feeds, gunshot detection reports, digital maps showing the location of cop cars across the city. As more 911 calls come in, AI transcribes them on another screen. Fecht can access any of it with a few clicks.<\/p>\n
Twenty minutes down the road from Dunwoody, in an office where Flock Safety\u2019s cameras and gunshot detectors are arrayed like museum pieces, 38-year-old CEO and cofoun\u00adder Garrett Langley presides over the $300 million (estimated 2024 sales) company responsible for it all. Since its founding in 2017, Flock, which was valued at $7.5 billion in its most recent funding round, has quietly built a network of more than 80,000 cameras pointed at highways, thoroughfares and parking lots across the U.S. They record not just the license plate numbers of the cars that pass them, but their make and distinctive features\u2014broken windows, dings, bumper stickers. Langley estimates its cameras help solve 1 million crimes a year. Soon they\u2019ll help solve even more. In August, Flock\u2019s cameras will take to the skies mounted on its own \u201cmade in Amer\u00adica\u201d drones. Produced at a factory the company opened earlier this year near its Atlanta offices, they\u2019ll add a new dimension to Flock\u2019s business and aim to challenge Chinese drone giant DJI\u2019s dominance.<\/p>\n
Langley offers a prediction: In less than 10 years, Flock\u2019s cameras, airborne and fixed, will eradicate almost all crime in the U.S. (He acknowledges that programs to boost youth employment and cut recidivism will help.) It sounds like a pipe dream from another AI-can-solve- everything tech bro, but Langley, in the face of a wave of opposition from privacy advocates and Flock\u2019s archrival, the $2.1 billion (2024 revenue) police tech giant Axon Enterprise, is a true believer. He\u2019s convinced that America can and should be a place where everyone feels safe. And once it\u2019s draped in a vast net of U.S.-made Flock surveillance tech, it will be.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve talked to plenty of activists who think crime is just the cost of modern society. I disagree,\u201d Langley says. \u201cI think we can have a crime-free city and civil liberties. . . . We can have it all.\u201d In municipalities in which Flock is deployed, he adds, the average criminal\u2014those between 16 and 24 committing nonviolent crime\u2014\u201cwill most likely get caught.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not always, though. Back at the Dunwoody Police Department, the cops are unable to identify that shoplifter. But Fecht and his boss, Major Patrick Krieg, are quick to reel off other cases in which they say Flock was pivotal in finding offenders: an ATM theft gang that knocked off pharmacies across the East Coast until Flock\u2019s cameras tracked one of their getaway vehicles; an armed man headed into a bustling bar district identified via drone by the tattoo on his neck and apprehended before he could do harm; a woman who had pulled a gun on her neighbor. When the July 4 parade, the biggest in Georgia, comes to Dunwoody a few days later, Flock cameras will be watching for those who might disrupt it. \u201cIt just gives us the opportunity to ensure the safety of the community during huge events like that,\u201d Krieg says.<\/p>\n
No Idles Hands: Flock is investing $10 million in small Atlanta businesses, including a Tex-Mex joint and a chain of beauty salons. \u201cOne way to help prevent crime is to make sure kids have jobs,\u201d CEO Langley says.<\/p>\n
jamel toppin for forbes<\/p>\n
Fresh from a family vacation in Europe, the tall and athletic Langley is cheery, almost buoyant. Growth has been explosive, with revenue up some 70% from the estimated $175 million it booked in 2023. It\u2019s not yet profitable and has no imminent plan to be as it prioritizes growth, backed by a $275 million March funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Those numbers were more than sufficient to land Flock on Forbes\u2019 2025 Cloud 100 list of the top private cloud computing companies. Langley says turning Flock into a $100 billion business is \u201cvery within reach.\u201d Ilya Sukhar, an early investor and partner at VC firm Matrix who sits on Flock\u2019s board, agrees. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit clich\u00e9, but it does feel like we\u2019re just getting started,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not hard for me to project to a place where we get to that level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each Flock license plate reader cam costs between $3,000 and $3,500, with an additional fee for FlockOS, the operating system that makes all the data Flock collects accessible via a browser or a mobile app, based on either the number of users or cameras. Dunwoody PD, for instance, pays around $500,000 annually for its array of 105 cameras, gunshot detectors, that skittering DJI drone and the software that controls it all.<\/p>\n
Flock\u2019s growth isn\u2019t solely fueled by its 5,000 law enforcement customers across 49 states (it hasn\u2019t yet installed its cameras in Alaska). It has 1,000 corporate customers, including blue chips like FedEx, Lowe\u2019s and Simon Property, America\u2019s largest mall owner. Then there are housing and homeowner associations, small businesses, schools and organizations like the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, which has installed 64 Flock cameras across different properties in the city, including a community center that has reported a recent spike in antisemitic threats to Dunwoody police. All these customers can choose to grant the police access to their camera feeds, further expanding the surveillance coverage Flock can offer law enforcement. Many do.<\/p>\n
Langley had no experience in police tech when he and fellow Georgia Tech alums Matt Feury, 36, and Paige Todd, 40, started the company in 2017. Previously they\u2019d worked together on an app Langley cofounded for upgrading sports or concert seats to VIP-status events, where Feury and Todd were early employees. (It was acquired by Atlanta-based conglomerate Cox Enterprises and no longer exists.) Inspired by an unsolved robbery in Langley\u2019s neighborhood, the trio started work on the first Flock prototype, an Android phone camera in a waterproof box that took pictures of cars and picked out license plates that could then be searched via an app. It was crude, but proof of concept.<\/p>\n
When Sukhar first invested in Flock in 2018, the company was struggling to build the device the founders had envisioned: a weatherproof, solar-powered, always-on camera that could quickly snap accurate photos and transmit them over the internet to an Amazon cloud server where they could be reviewed and compared at scale. \u201cThat took some time to figure out,\u201d he says. By 2020, Flock had it all dialed in and was quickly building out a network of cameras that would soon extend across the country. And it already had an eager customer in law enforcement; cops loved the idea of searching a countrywide network of cameras to track down a suspect vehicle.<\/p>\n
The Vault
\nLA PLUS \u00c7A CHANGE
\nLong before Flock was blanketing America with solar-powered cameras, license plate reading was done the old-fashioned way: by humans. In 1925, the federal government had a plan to catch criminals by making plates easier to see. Ever contrarian, Forbes was skeptical\u2014not just of plate readers, but of license plates themselves.
\n\u201cLicense number plates of motor vehicles vary in dimensions, colors, heights of numerals and provisions for attachment and illumination. Ray M. Hudson, chief of the Division of Simplified Practice, Department of Commerce, wants them made uniformly alike in all States to help in the catching of law-breakers…
\nIsn\u2019t this idea hasty? Suppose the number is read in one case out of a hundred, and that the information reaches someone who apprehends the culprit in one case out of one thousand. Then the plate is useful in one case out of 100,000…
\nOn the whole, it might be better Simplified Practice to abolish altogether the large, unsightly, nightly illuminated, normally begrimed and annually rejuvenated or replaced license number plate than to standardize it.\u201d \u2014Forbes, March, 1, 1925
\n<\/p>\n
Not everyone shares law enforcement\u2019s enthusiasm for Flock\u2019s rapid expansion. Privacy advocates say the company is building an unprecedented mass-surveillance dystopia. One activist group, DeFlock, has crowdsourced a map of license plate reader camera locations that now tops 29,000, two-thirds of which are from Flock, and runs a Discord channel where users are encouraged to challenge rollouts in their area. Creator Will Freeman, based in Boulder, Colorado, says what Flock is building is \u201cmessed up and against the principles of the Fourth Amendment\u201d because \u201cthey\u2019re searching all the time.\u201d He accused Langely of wanting to \u201cput the whole country under surveillance while he profits.\u201d Other activists are less verbal. Cameras have been vandalized and stolen. There have been physical threats against company employees. Langley, who described those threatening the company as \u201cterrorists,\u201d is worried enough about being targeted that Flock\u2019s offices, manufacturing facilities and camera installation vans are purposefully logoless.<\/p>\n
But his most pressing concern by far is police-tech behemoth Axon. Flock had a burgeoning partnership with the publicly traded ($59 billion market cap) Taser creator after Axon made a minority investment back in 2020. The market incumbent, founded in 1993, had promised to promote Flock license plate readers and make them work seamlessly with Axon\u2019s tech. But in January, Axon CEO and billionaire cofounder Rick Smith killed their deal, accusing Flock of overcharging and trying to lock customers into its products. In April, Axon debuted its own stand-alone license plate reader cameras along with a shot-across-the-bow first customer: the Atlanta Police Department, a current Flock user. Axon is charging 20% less for its cameras, and early adopters get the first year of their software free.<\/p>\n
Langley is returning fire. He says Axon is a monopolist abusing its market position to choke out competition. \u201cI plan to go take them out,\u201d he says. \u201cWe will deliver a better product at a lower price.\u201d<\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t the first to make such allegations. In 2020, the FTC challenged Axon\u2019s acquisition of bodycam rival VieVu, claiming the merger would effectively create a monopoly. While the agency dropped the complaint three years later because of legal delays, three local governments\u2014Baltimore, Holmdel, New Jersey, and LaSalle County, Illinois\u2014are suing Axon, alleging much the same. Axon has denied accusations of anticompetitive behavior; the case is ongoing. In a recent investor presentation, it said it controls less than 15% of the $11 billion law enforcement market.<\/p>\n
Flock isn\u2019t without regulatory troubles of its own. The state of Illinois is investigating whether cops broke the law there when they gave out-of-state agencies access to their Flock feeds to hunt down breaches of immigration or abortion law. (Flock has since updated its tools to prevent out-of-state sharing in states with laws prohibiting it.) Last year, a Forbes investigation found Flock had regularly failed to get the correct permits and licenses to deploy its devices, appearing to break a number of local laws. Langley admits the company is \u201cstill very far from perfect\u201d but that in cases where it has struggled to get quick permit approvals from transportation agencies, waiting 12 months \u201cjust doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d He complains that \u201cit feels like we were penalized for saving a kid from being hit by a car and we got caught for jaywalking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other jurisdictions have tried either to ban or remove Flock and its ilk. Earlier this year, the city council in Austin, Texas, chose not to renew its Flock contract; one councilor cited Forbes\u2019 investigation and pointed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement having accessed Flock data.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Camden County Commission in Missouri passed a law barring police from using license plate rea\u00adders, but already deployed Flock cameras didn\u2019t come down immediately. After Flock ignored requests by local commissioner Ike Skelton to remove a camera, he took it down himself. He was swiftly charged by local prosecutors with tampering with a public utility and obstructing government operations; if convicted, he won\u2019t be able to run for public office again. The case is yet to be heard in court, but Skelton tells Forbes he believed he was operating within \u201cthe law of the land\u201d and the ordinance banning plate rea\u00adders in Camden County. He remains worried not just about his job, but also Flock\u2019s creation of a \u201csurveillance system that you\u2019ll never, ever know that you\u2019re being tracked.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of this is slowing Langley down. \u201cThe consequence of building a product that actually changes people\u2019s lives is that there will be a lot of people we piss off along the way, because what we\u2019re doing actually matters,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The company is chugging along with new products in the pipeline. It\u2019s adding car crash detection to its gunshot flagging system, Raven, and enhancements to its license plate camera feeds. Further out, there\u2019s Nova, Flock\u2019s crown jewel to be, born of the company\u2019s February 2025 acquisition of Lucidus, a Nashville, Tennessee\u2013based startup. Flock has rebuilt the Lucidus tool, though the basic premise is the same: Nova promises to knit law enforcement records with all manner of public information\u2014property and occupancy data, Social Security numbers and personal credit bureau histories\u2014and make it all granularly searchable with AI.<\/p>\n
Nova\u2019s product lead, Martin Howley, recounts an anecdote about a law enforcement partner searching for a murder suspect. Using Nova to analyze drone footage, the cops were able to determine the six-hour window in which a victim\u2019s body was dumped in a specific location, allowing them to tighten their search of Flock cameras for cars in the area at the time. In emails obtained by Forbes, an Amazon Web Services law enforcement director described Lucidus\u2019 tech as \u201cone of the most amazing tools that I have seen for law enforcement\u201d\u2014and that was before Flock got its hands on it. \u201cIt\u2019s an end run around privacy laws and the Constitution,\u201d says ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley.<\/p>\n
Expanding alongside Flock\u2019s product line is its mission. The company thinks it can not only solve crimes but improve traffic management and expedite street repairs. Langley envisions a benevolent American panopticon where everyone feels safe and cities use all the data at their disposal to improve our quality of life. \u201cWe\u2019ve got all these Flock cameras deployed from a criminal perspective,\u201d Langley says. \u201cWhy would we not then walk down to the public works department and say, \u2018stop sending people out to look for potholes. I have all that data. Let\u2019s build a better city together\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s most excited about Flock\u2019s drones. In an industrial park 10 miles north of Atlanta, in a 97,000-square-foot, $10 million manufacturing facility, he shows one off. It\u2019s unremarkable, little different from other police drones. But it\u2019s American-made. That will matter if states follow a recent Florida order banning Chinese-made drones from police use. Langley concedes that no company can outdo DJI\u2014for now. But he\u2019s going to try.<\/p>\n
Flock\u2019s first stab at that mission will be in customers\u2019 hands come August. In a test drive, a drone in Riverside County, California, rises from the roof of a Flock facility on the outskirts of town. Controlled via browser, with just a keyboard and mouse, it\u2019s like playing a video game\u2014no surprise given that Flock employed developers from the Overwatch first-person shooter game series to build it. Text pops up to explain what\u2019s on the screen: a mental health care center, a McDonald\u2019s. Then, with a simple scroll of the mouse, the camera zooms in on two men playing softball on a field hundreds of yards in the distance. The batter misses one, then hits a doozy. He has no idea he\u2019s being watched from a surveillance company\u2019s factory 2,000 miles away.<\/p>\n
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