It's nearly impossible to commute to work, visit a friend or take a trip without spotting one of Flock Safety's oblong black cameras on the roadside.
As my colleague Quinlan Bentley and I began to dig deeper into this network of license plate reader cameras, we confirmed our suspicion: these cameras are everywhere.
Over several weeks, we requested records from every law enforcement agency across Cincinnati's metropolitan counties and Northern Kentucky. We examined contracts, camera locations and department policies to learn who was using these cameras and how they were being used.
We also spoke with privacy and legal experts, and police officials, to understand the technology and figure out where departments are striking a balance, especially as
people have taken action by cutting down cameras and advocating for their removal at city meetings.
Ohio public records law makes Flock data opaque
This wasn't easy to report. Several departments pushed back upon our records requests, specifically for the location of their cameras and Flock's audit logs. City attorneys claimed the locations of the cameras are security infrastructure, confidential law enforcement investigatory records or otherwise exempt under a provision recently added to public records law.
"Given the recent attempts to sabotage such cameras, locally and across the county, Springfield Township believes that the discretionary disclosure of those documents (which are exempt from disclosure requirements) is neither warranted nor reasonable," said Laura Abrams, law director for Springfield Township.
Ohio lawmakers added a line to the 2025 appropriations bill exempting "images and data captured by an automated license plate recognition system" from public records. Enquirer attorney Jack Greiner notes it's unclear why the Ohio legislature put this information off limits to the public.
"But the bigger problem is that some municipalities are using this narrow exception to shield any information regarding the Flock cameras from public review," Greiner said. "This is not justified by the letter or spirit of the law."
We requested three kinds of audit logs that Flock generates for police:
- Organizational audits, showing every time someone queried the Flock network;
- Network audits, showing every time someone outside of the department queried the department’s data as part of a national network search;
- And "offense type" reports, which detail the top offenses by which someone queried the Flock network.
Police have been caught misusing the Flock system at departments as close as Dayton and as far as in South Carolina. These reports are a vital means for the public to audit police and ensure the system is not being used inappropriately.
Still, with records from 106 departments, what we found was that Flock has become the universal camera of choice for all but two agencies.
The reason? The powerful network that lets police search, track and alert upon license plate they are interested in – the same one that has landed Flock in the hot seat.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Using public records, here's how we reported on Flock's web of cameras
