LAPD cancels Flock contract after cameras falsely flagged vehicles as stolen
The Los Angeles Police Department has let its contract with Flock Safety expire after an audit found the company’s license plate reader cameras were incorrectly flagging vehicles as stolen.
The audit by the department’s inspector general, released last Friday as the contract was expiring, found that 161 vehicles were falsely labeled as stolen in August and September 2025. The false positives were linked to Flock’s “hot list” feature, which alerts law enforcement in real-time to license plates they’ve deemed noteworthy whenever they pass one of the department’s nearly 2,000 cameras.
“When a license plate matches with a vehicle of interest on a Hot List, an alert will appear on the police vehicle’s Mobile Digital Computer,” the report said. “Often, officers will approach the vehicle with extreme caution or conduct a ‘high-risk’ stop. This involves calling for back up, air support and a supervisor and ordering the suspect out of their vehicle.”
The report said given the nature of such stops, false positives increase “the risk of unnecessary enforcement actions, including vehicle stops and wrongful detentions, or a confrontation with serious consequences.”
32.3% error rate
During the two-month period examined by the inspector general, Flock’s software issued alerts that accurately flagged 337 stolen vehicles — meaning that Flock was wrong nearly one-third of the time. As Futurism noted, LAPD officers had a 1-in-3 chance of pulling over an innocent driver.
The audit said the 161 false positives were determined to be not stolen after investigations following traffic stops.
“In addition to creating an inconvenience for vehicle owners, these inaccuracies can affect individual liberty interests, erode public trust, and potentially create substantial legal and financial liability concerns,” the inspector general wrote.
Flock has not commented on the audit. However, the company released a statement Monday on the LAPD’s decision to let its contract lapse.
“We are confident that through ongoing discussions with LAPD, we can clear up the current misconceptions that led to Friday’s disappointing pause,” Flock said. “We hope to resume our successful partnership with the department soon.”
In a statement to KABC in Los Angeles, the LAPD’s chief information officer, Dean Gialamas, said the department would discontinue “using Flock services until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”
The LAPD’s contract decision and the discovery of the audit come in the wake of multiple high-profile incidents in which Flock’s system improperly targeted vehicles.
In one example, an editor for the vehicle news website known as The Drive recounted last week how his vehicle was tracked and pulled over by law enforcement in Minnesota after a police department in California flagged a vehicle he was reviewing for his job as stolen.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
