Mounting concerns from Minnesotans about Flock cameras hit a breaking point in recent weeks, prompting vandalism to the devices and local government officials to cut ties with the company.
Many community members and immigration advocates still reeling from Operation Metro Surge say they’re concerned about warrantless surveillance, and are suspicious of federal agencies’ potential access to police camera data. But while the pushback against Flock grows in Minnesota and across the country, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office is taking steps in the opposite direction, signing a new one-year contract with Flock to install more cameras and deploy the company’s drones.
State data shows that nearly five dozen law enforcement agencies across Minnesota have recently used or are currently using Flock cameras.
“I’ve only grown more frustrated and angry and distrusting of these cameras, and the government agencies that use them as time has gone by,” said Taher Herzallah, who lives in Columbia Heights in Anoka County.
The public backlash has reached such a fever pitch that Flock issued a statement last week announcing that it will implement new safeguards. Flock is an Atlanta, Georgia-based company that is partnered with more than 7,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, according to the company.
Flock supplies license plate reader cameras and drones that law enforcement agencies use to locate vehicles and help solve crimes. The cameras use artificial intelligence to track vehicles and capture details like license plate information, location and time.
Cameras damaged across Minnesota
Several Flock license plate cameras were damaged or stolen across Minnesota in recent weeks, and multiple cities have stopped using them altogether.
All eight of Winona’s Flock cameras were reported stolen on Aug. 1, four out of Prior Lake police’s six cameras were damaged over the past few months, three Flock cameras were spraypainted in Edina on Aug. 5, and three cameras in Plymouth were damaged. Since June, six out of nine cameras have been stolen or damaged in Duluth.
Similar incidents have been reported across the country in recent weeks, including in Florida, Iowa, Arizona and Colorado.
“The fact that people around the country are revolting against Flock cameras is an indication of how dangerous these things are,” Herzallah said.
The Winona Police Department plans not to reinstall the stolen cameras. The Duluth Police Department is not renewing its contract with Flock.
The Columbia Heights City Council voted in June to end its contract with Flock because of privacy concerns, and West St. Paul’s City Manager, Nate Burkett, issued a statement on Aug. 10 announcing the suspension of the city’s contract with Flock and the removal of its cameras.
“The more I got educated on citizens’ concerns and about these other municipalities and what they had gone through, the stronger I felt that we had to protect our residents and cancel the contract,” Columbia Heights City Council Member Rachel James told Sahan Journal.
Burkett said in a Facebook post that he decided to end the contract because of residents’ concerns. He also reviewed how the police department used Flock cameras, and found “no indication that we used it for anything other than legitimate local law enforcement.”
“It is about the system itself, and whether a tool like this belongs in West St. Paul before the community understands and trusts it,” Burkett said of his decision. “On that question, the answer right now is not yes. Public trust is the precondition for a tool like this, not an afterthought.
“Trust depends on understanding, and this technology is complex and moving faster than the public conversation about it. That understanding is not yet there, and until it is, the tool is not worth using.”
While discontinuing the cameras will occasionally make police work harder, Burkett wrote, using them without the public’s trust “costs this city more than it returns.”
Dozens of Minnesota law enforcement agencies have used Flock
As required by state law, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) publishes a list of all law enforcement agencies in the state that use license plate reader cameras, and the cameras’ address if they are at a fixed location. The list includes cameras operated by Flock and other companies.
Local law enforcement agencies have access to the BCA’s license plate reader data, which contains information on suspended licenses, warrants and other license-related information, according BCA spokesperson Laura Perkins. Minnesota agencies that sign contracts with Flock and want access to the BCA data must include the BCA in a five-year contract.
Fifty-nine law enforcement agencies have entered those contracts within the past few years, according to the BCA.
Two-thirds of those agencies are suburban Twin Cities police departments, several are in northern Minnesota and a handful are in southern Minnesota. Forty-eight of the agencies are police departments; eleven are sheriff’s offices.
The agencies include the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, Willmar police, Richfield police, St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, Roseville police and South Lake Minnetonka police.
Three police departments included among the 59 agencies have recently ended contracts with Flock: Columbia Heights, Brooklyn Park and West St. Paul.
The negative criticism against Flock prompted the city of Minneapolis to issue a statement on Aug. 4 on Facebook saying it doesn’t work with the company. However, Minneapolis police use traffic cameras operated by the city’s traffic control department to catch drivers who run red lights or drive at unsafe speeds.
“Unlike Flock cameras, they are not automatic license plate readers and have strict limitations around what data can be collected,” said the city’s post.
All camera locations have warning signs and must be distributed “fairly” throughout the city and located within 2,000 feet of a school, according to the city.
Critics of Flock cameras say the technology leaves the door open for federal agencies to access information recorded by them, because some local law enforcement agencies collaborate with federal authorities. Agencies that contract with Flock control their own settings for which agencies can access their camera data, according to the company.
“To this day, we’re seeing some folks that are still scared to leave their houses because of Flock cameras,” said Abdilahi Jama, a Fridley resident. “I mean, the biggest thing is: Where is the data going?”
News investigations locally and across the country have shown that camera data has been accessed by federal agencies and others.
About 30 state, county and federal agencies across the country searched data recorded by cameras operated by Flock and other companies in at least eight Twin Cities suburbs for immigration enforcement purposes between November 2025 and March 2026, according to a July article by The Minnesota Star Tribune. A few immigration searches of Fridley’s Flock cameras were linked to the FBI in Indianapolis, but no other federal agencies that conducted searches were named in the article.
“Right now, there’s nobody watching the watchers is the problem,” said Jonathon Rehlander, a Fridley resident. “Nobody’s keeping tabs on them.”
The Star Tribune found that the majority of searches were run for cameras in Fridley during Operation Metro Surge. About 45% of residents in Fridley are people of color, according to Minnesota Compass, a demographic project led by Wilder Research.
Fridley city officials did not return messages seeking comment for this story. Fridley Police Deputy Director Patrick Faber was unavailable to comment, according to police spokesperson Kevin Titus.
Fridley resident Natividad Seefeld, who lives in the Park Plaza Cooperative, a manufactured housing community, often saw drones fly over her neighborhood and federal agents in parked cars during Operation Metro Surge. She felt like she was constantly being watched. Her anxiety about that hasn’t gone away.
“We believe a camera’s a camera any way you look at it, and it can see everything that’s in front of it,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want it here. I would love for it to go away and I want them to take it down.
“How do you stop it? How do you make our constitutional rights matter?”
Police departments share information on Flock’s website through a “transparency portal” that includes the number of Flock cameras within their jurisdiction, the number of searches conducted for their data over the last 30 days and the names of agencies that have access to their database, according to the company. That information is available to the general public.
However, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and DeFlock, an organization that exposes license plate readers, are calling out Flock for threatening personal privacy and civil liberties.
High-profile cases of Flock camera abuse include an incident from North Carolina where a police officer was accused of searching Flock cameras 31 times to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife. In Georgia, multiple law enforcement officers, including a police chief, were arrested for allegedly using Flock cameras to stalk people they knew.
Anoka County’s new Flock program
Anoka County Sheriff Brad Wise signed a one-year contract with Flock on June 30 for approximately 75 license plate readers and 10 drones. The locations for the new cameras have not been determined yet, according to sheriff’s spokesperson Tierney Peters.
Wise initially discussed a $245,000, two-year Flock contract with the Anoka County Board of Commissioners earlier this year. That contract would have required the board’s vote, but Wise’s initial proposal was never presented to the board for an official vote.
The cost of the program was later reduced to $174,500, which means it did not have to be approved by the board of commissioners. The board must review and vote on any contracts exceeding $175,000. Some Anoka County residents say the program’s new budget is an attempt to avoid input from community members who are worried about Flock. The sheriff’s 2026 operating budget will fund the program.
Anoka County Commissioner Mandy Meisner, who represents Columbia Heights, Fridley and Hilltop, said in a Facebook post that she does not support how Wise secured the contract.
“As a County Commissioner, I was neither invited to provide input nor informed of this contract until after it had already been signed,” read her July 8 post. “Instead, the Sheriff decided to move forward under the authority of the Sheriff’s Office. The contract identifies the Sheriff’s Office, not the Anoka County Board, as the client.”
Peters said Wise was not available for a phone interview. She also declined a phone interview, and issued written statements in response to Sahan Journal’s questions.
“He specifically went back to Flock to shrink the length of time from two years to one, and to get it just below the $175,000,” Fridley resident Aaron Klemz said of Wise. “It’s clear that he was using it to evade the county board’s supervision of it.”
Wise’s initial proposal for a two-year pilot program with Flock involved 200 license plate reader cameras and 16 drones.
Anoka County Commissioner Mike Gamache said he was worried about the initial proposal, because it was too expensive. However, he agreed with Wise that the cameras could help solve crimes.
“The sheriff acted as he can,” Gamache said of Wise’s contract with Flock. “I don’t have a problem with the way he did it.”
Peters said in an email that Wise struck a new, lower-cost contract with Flock “to avoid legal ambiguity and to allow the pilot to proceed under his established authority.” The reduced pilot program is a “practical way to test the system,” and the sheriff is “compliant” with the county’s rules, she added.
Peters said there is no plan for how to fund the Flock cameras beyond the one-year mark. Gamache said Wise will need to find additional funding if he plans to extend the program after that.
“That is going to have to be addressed by the county board for future years, and then we’ll have to have that discussion,” Gamache added.
There are 20 cities in Anoka County; most have their own police departments, but some smaller cities rely on the sheriff’s office for policing services.
Cities can opt out of the pilot program, which means cameras and drones will not be deployed in their jurisdictions, Peters said. Flock cameras will not be installed on portions of county roads, which the sheriff’s office oversees, that run through cities that opt out, she added.
Some city officials in Anoka County told Sahan Journal that they are hesitant about the pilot program and have some questions.
“I’m sort of trying to learn about it and weigh the benefits of it versus any costs, whether they’re financial costs or societal costs,” said Anoka City Council Member Erik Skogquist.
Elsewhere in the county, the Columbia Heights City Council voted June 8 to end its contract with Flock, which was unrelated to the sheriff’s efforts. The city’s discussions were isolated to the Columbia Heights Police Department’s use of Flock cameras, but occurred at the same time Wise introduced his first pitch for a county Flock contract.
Columbia Heights hosted public town hall meetings about Flock earlier this year with police officials. Hundreds of residents attended the meetings to voice concerns for hours. The City Council voted unanimously to cut ties with the company and remove Flock cameras that were already installed in the city.
Flock announces changes
Some of the changes Flock announced last week include adding a feature that would flag abnormal activity in camera databases for an administrator’s review. The company’s website said there will be additional updates in the coming weeks.
Flock said on its website that the company does not work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Flock spokesperson Courtney Terlecki declined a phone interview, but issued a written statement criticizing the vandalism of their cameras. She did not respond to questions about news reports detailing widespread access to camera data, or the alleged misuse of Flock’s database by law enforcement officers.
Some of the new safeguards posted on Flock’s website include:
- Agencies that contract with Flock will have the option to limit which type of offenses outside agencies can search for in their database. For example, agencies can limit searches to stolen vehicles.
- Flock implemented multi-factor authentication for users logging into Flock’s databases.
- Flock will recommend that law enforcement agencies retain data captured by its cameras for seven days instead of 30 days.
