The Town of Cortland has torn up its contract with Flock Safety, pulling five license plate reader cameras and poles out of the small DeKalb County community after Mayor Mark Pietrowski cited privacy concerns and third-party data use the town could not control. In their place, Cortland has signed a five-year, $120,871 deal with Axon Enterprise to overhaul its police body-worn and in-car camera systems.
Pietrowski directed the Cortland Police Department to cancel its Flock contract on August 21, according to Shaw Local, ending an arrangement the town first entered in 2024 for five plate reader cameras. The mayor said Flock discussions had involved police, residents and the companies themselves, and he attributed the termination in part to residents' privacy concerns. He told the paper he grew concerned about Flock data breaches and other issues as early as June, held a conference call with Flock representatives by mid-July, and later requested a meeting to air his and residents' concerns before ultimately placing a work order for Flock to remove its cameras and poles from town.
Cortland is not walking away from license plate reading technology altogether. The police department will retain plate reader capability through its patrol vehicles, and it will control that data directly without third-party involvement, according to the same report. The town will simply no longer have stationary plate readers mounted on poles around Cortland.
Why Cortland Soured on Its Old Vendor
The town's previous camera provider, Versaterm, stored digital footage in the cloud rather than on Cortland Police Department servers, a setup that made storage, retention and transmission of data to other agencies challenging, per Shaw Local's reporting. That arrangement cost the town $24,500 a year. The new Axon contract, which runs 60 months, includes a redaction studio and saves the town roughly $3,500 annually compared with the prior setup, running about $21,000 a year over five years.
Cortland officials say the new Axon system will help protect the town and its officers from accusations of misconduct, and it also includes a real-time artificial-intelligence translation feature for officers working in more than 50 languages. That capability comes from Axon's Assistant platform built into the Axon Body 4 camera, which the company designed to give officers hands-free translation directly through their vest cameras during field encounters, according to Axon. The upgrade also folds in a separate requirement: Illinois' SAFE-T Act has mandated that departments in municipalities under 50,000 residents be fully equipped with body-worn cameras since January 1, 2025, per the ACLU of Illinois.
A National Reckoning Over Plate Readers
Cortland's move lands amid a much larger unraveling of Flock Safety's footprint nationwide. More than 50 local governments and law enforcement agencies across the country have canceled, suspended or deactivated their Flock camera networks in 2026 alone, according to MLQ.ai. The wave followed an investigation documenting more than 50 law enforcement officers nationwide accused or charged with misusing plate readers to track personal acquaintances, 26 of whom were reportedly tracking romantic partners or ex-spouses. Flock CEO Garrett Langley publicly apologized on August 13 and announced the company would shorten standard data retention from 30 days to seven and make audit lockouts and mandatory case numbers compulsory by January 1, 2027, per CBS News.
Illinois has its own layer of scrutiny on top of the national backlash. In June 2025, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias directed Flock to block out-of-state agencies from querying Illinois plate readers after a state audit found the vendor had let federal agencies, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection, access Illinois plate data, according to reporting cited by the Daily Herald. State law under House Bill 3326, enacted in 2023, also bars ALPR operators from sharing Illinois vehicle location data with out-of-state agencies investigating reproductive healthcare decisions or enforcing immigration law, per Planned Parenthood Illinois Action.
Neighboring Departments Split on Flock
Cortland's decision puts it at odds with the DeKalb Police Department, which was approved for a new Flock contract in June 2026, a switch DeKalb's David Byrd said at the time was needed for updated technology and cross-agency investigations. That contract has itself drawn public concern over privacy laws and data sharing. Bruce Van Wankum has argued that any data-sharing arrangement should include chain-of-custody tracking for evidence and case management.
Other Northern Illinois communities remain divided over the technology. The Will County Board approved continued use of license plate readers through a Flock contract in a divided vote on August 21, while a Woodstock City Council meeting the day before had to be moved to the Opera House because so many residents turned out to weigh in on Flock cameras there. Cortland's reversal echoes Oak Park's earlier vote to drop its Flock deal, where trustees had similarly weighed privacy concerns against the technology's practical yield.
Concerns about misuse are not abstract. A Kenosha County Sheriff's deputy was charged in early August with misusing a Flock Safety system, allegedly using internal cameras to track a coworker for unauthorized personal reasons, according to the sheriff's office. Cases like that one have fueled the broader push by Illinois officials and residents to keep plate reader data under local, rather than third-party, control.
A Department With a Track Record
The Flock cancellation comes months after Cortland Police Officer Robert Harris was named the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police's 2026 Officer of the Year for leading a multi-state investigation into child exploitation, a nomination backed by Pietrowski and the department's command staff, according to Shaw Local's earlier coverage. Cortland, an incorporated town of 4,398 residents as of the 2020 Census, is the third-largest municipality in Illinois carrying the legal designation of town, behind only Cicero and Normal.
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