Fresno will not renew its contract with Flock Safety when the license-plate-reader agreement expires, city leaders announced, as a police officer remains under investigation for allegedly abusing the camera network for reasons that had nothing to do with a criminal case. Mayor Jerry Dyer said the company's safeguards simply have not held up, and the city now plans to shop for a different vendor while writing its own rules for how plate data gets collected, stored and shared.
“The safeguards that they have put in place have not proven to be effective,” Dyer said, according to the Sacramento Bee, which first reported the city and law enforcement leaders had decided Flock Safety had become too susceptible to misuse to keep using it. The announcement came Friday at Fresno City Hall. Exactly when the current contract lapses is murky — the Bee and GV Wire both reported a February 2027 expiration, while KVPR previously reported the deal runs through March 2027.
An Officer Under Investigation
The nonrenewal lands alongside a messier internal problem. Fresno Police Department's Internal Affairs unit opened an investigation on September 8 after accusing an unnamed officer of abusing Flock data and misusing a separate statewide database, per the same Bee report. That officer was on paid administrative leave by late October pending the outcome, and the department has not identified the officer or said whether the allegations have been substantiated.
GV Wire's reporting adds another layer of concern: Fresno's license-plate data had been accessible to out-of-state law enforcement agencies even though the police department never authorized that sharing. An audit did turn up immigration-related searches run by local agencies, but officials said none of those searches originated from federal agencies or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Flock told the city that a system update was responsible for the unintended sharing and said it has since corrected the issue, according to the same GV Wire account.
Money, Cameras and a Grant That Paid for It All
How much Fresno has actually spent on Flock depends on which record you check. The Bee describes a three-year contract dating to 2023 running about $500,000 a year, totaling $1.5 million, funded through a state Organized Retail Theft Prevention Grant. Fresno's own Legistar agreement record, however, shows a master service agreement dated February 22, 2024, capped at $1,498,690.41, with a later amendment adding up to $136,500 for the Department of Public Utilities and bringing total agreement compensation to as much as $1,668,440.41. The city owns the camera equipment itself and pays Flock for the software service that runs it, and estimates of the camera count also vary — one report put the network at 70 fixed readers, including one GV Wire previously noted sits near Blackstone Avenue and the River Park shopping center.
Police Chief Mindy Casto has defended the cameras as a crime-fighting tool, telling officials that investigations into murder, rape, assault, shootings, burglary and other crimes have fallen since 2021 and crediting fixed license-plate readers as a primary reason violent and property crime dropped in the city. The cameras, which police say capture license plates, can be used to search for a vehicle tied to someone officers are looking for. Casto has also cited a years-old breach in which a small Midwestern police department searched cameras nationwide, including Fresno's, listing the reason as immigration — an incident she pointed to as evidence of the kind of outside misuse the city is trying to guard against.
A New Ordinance in the Works
Councilmember Nick Richardson said he plans to introduce an ordinance that would codify citywide rules for surveillance cameras more rigorously than the police department's existing internal policies. “His ordinance would codify the rules across the city and be more rigorous,” the Bee reported, with Richardson saying the goal is a consistent citywide framework that sets clear expectations, restrictions and accountability. GV Wire separately reported city officials have floated a 30-day data-retention limit alongside restrictions on how the information can be used. Fresno officials have also considered adding a feature that would let private camera owners voluntarily link their footage into the police network.
Dyer, Casto and Richardson all said plans for a replacement vendor and a new camera ordinance were already underway before this week's city council election, according to the Bee. That election could reshape the council that eventually votes on any new rules — council member-elect Ariana Martinez Lott has been critical of Fresno's Flock contract, and candidate Naindeep Singh, who is leading his own council race, has raised similar objections, meaning the council could look different by the time Richardson's proposal comes up for a vote.
Flock's Response and a Wider Pattern
Flock Safety has said each search is now tracked through a permanent audit trail, a company statement reported by the Bee. The company has also said it will require audit assistance and documented case-code requirements for all law enforcement customers by the end of this year, and is rolling out a proactive lockout feature that suspends a user's access after abnormal search activity pending administrator review. Separately, NBC News reported Flock plans to shrink its default data-retention window from one month down to one week, prompting officers who want to hold onto footage longer to enter a case number first.
Fresno is far from alone in reconsidering Flock. GV Wire reported Santa Cruz became the first California city to drop the company, terminating its contract in January, and the Los Angeles Police Department ended its own Flock deal on July 11. The Los Angeles City Council had earlier decided, in early July, to renegotiate its contract after residents pushed back over privacy concerns, the Bee noted. Per KQED, Richmond, Santa Cruz, El Cerrito and Los Altos Hills have all pulled back from or canceled their own Flock contracts.
Misuse allegations have surfaced elsewhere too. A San Jose police officer was fired in September after using Flock to obtain data that the officer then handed to a relative suspected of domestic abuse, according to the Fresno Bee. A Massachusetts mayor fired two officers last month for using the cameras for personal reasons, including tracking a romantic partner, that same reporting noted. A Fresno police audit covering September 14 through October 13, 2025, recorded 8,318 searches and 506 active users, though GV Wire reported the audit process itself only involved choosing 100 searches and randomly analyzing three of them.
