With Erie’s contract with surveillance technology company Flock Safety up for renewal next spring, some residents are questioning whether the town’s use of automated license plate readers strikes the right balance between public safety and personal privacy.
Mayor Andrew Moore and police Chief Lee Mathis addressed the topic during a public Q&A session last week, where members of the community voiced concerns about data protection, potential misuse and the possibility of expanded surveillance.
The Erie Town Council approved the use of Flock cameras in May 2022, and the Police Department deployed its first 12 cameras that July. The system has since expanded to 24 cameras.
Green spots mark where Flock Safety cameras are located in Erie. (Town of Erie / courtesy image)
Mathis said the technology was initially adopted in response to rising crime, with a focus on vehicle thefts, and has helped officers identify and recover stolen vehicles.
“I do know that we were able to recover many more stolen vehicles and we were able to find those types of plates much quicker once we deployed the system,” Mathis said.
With a population estimate exceeding 41,000 by the end of 2025, Erie has more than doubled in size since 2010, when it had about 18,000 residents.
As the town continues to grow, the department will “have to add staff,” Mathis said, adding: “Flock does make us more efficient.”
“But Erie is a very safe community. We’re trying hard to keep it that way,” he said.
How Flock works in Erie
From 2023 to 2025, Erie officers arrested 52 people on warrants identified through Flock alerts, according to Mathis. Last year, Erie’s Flock cameras registered 2,317 “hot list hits,” flagging vehicles associated with law enforcement purposes such as stolen vehicle reports, missing persons or outstanding warrants.
Flock’s automated license plate readers capture still images of passing vehicles and their license plates, recording where and when they were detected. Flock cameras do not use facial recognition, according to the company’s website.
Authorized officers receive alerts when the system detects a license plate associated with a law enforcement database.
Officers can also search previously collected images as part of an investigation, provided they document a legitimate law enforcement reason, such as a case number or computer-aided dispatch number. Mathis said Erie recently shortened its data retention period from 30 days to seven days in response to community concern about privacy.
“We’ll lose some things, taking it from 30 to 7, but we’ll still get the majority,” Mathis said.
Under department policy, the technology cannot be used for immigration or traffic enforcement, harassment, personal purposes or usage based “solely” on protected characteristics such as race, sex or religion, according to the town’s Flock webpage.
Mathis said the Flock system has safeguards in place to protect data, including multifactor authentication and audits designed to flag unusual searches or officer activity. Access is restricted to authorized law enforcement personnel, and the Erie department owns its data, which is “never sold,” the town’s page says.
‘A Trojan horse’
Residents at the Flock Q&A session still questioned whether those data protections are sufficient, and whether Flock is leading Erie down a slippery surveillance slope.
“I believe that this is a Trojan horse,” one resident said. “I don’t think that we’re taking this seriously enough that it is a step into drones being over Erie. … You could just go out of control with it depending on who’s in office and who’s in the police system.”
“There has to be guardrails,” the resident added.
Others pointed to incidents elsewhere involving alleged misuse of Flock technology.
In Georgia, a police officer was recently fired and placed under investigation after being accused of using his department’s license plate reader system to search for his ex-girlfriend’s vehicle. And closer to home, a Denver woman has filed a federal lawsuit against town officials and Flock after she was accused of stealing a package from a home she says she had never been to.
“There’s a lot of concern about officer abuse and misuse,” Mathis said. “And I agree. Every profession has bad apples. We do our best to keep them out of Erie, obviously.”
“I like Flock. I don’t consider it surveillance. I don’t think it’s overly intrusive on your privacy or mine. … I think it helps make our community safer,” Mathis added.
In neighboring Lafayette, the City Council this month voted in favor of removing over $70,000 in funding tied to Flock from next year’s budget.
Moore, who plans to resign from the mayoral seat in November, said funding for Flock is currently included in Erie’s proposed 2027 budget, meaning money would be available to renew the contract when it expires in May.
But he said residents would have additional opportunities to weigh in before the Town Council makes a decision about the contract.
One opportunity for community feedback could be the town’s community survey, typically conducted in odd-numbered years. Moore said the 2027 survey could include questions about Flock if council members choose to seek broader public input.